Russ Feingold should run against Obama (and Palin)

c/o The First Post

Alexander Cockburn: The US needs a mutiny. And the senator from Wisconsin is the man to lead it

By Alexander Cockburn

So much for 2010 as the year of mutiny, when the American people rose up and said, "Enough! Throw the bums out!" As the dust finally clears after the midterm elections, and the bodies are hauled from the field of battle, guess what? It was all so predictable. The safest thing to be in 2010 was an incumbent. 

Out of 435 seats, 351 incumbents will be returning to the House in January. In the Senate, out of 100 seats, 77 incumbents will return in January. As the libertarian Joel Hirschorn puts it, "Welcome back to the reality of America's delusional democracy where career politicians will continue to foster a corrupt, inefficient and dysfunctional government because that is what the two-party plutocracy and its supporters want for their own selfish reasons."

Now it's on to 2012, through a largely familiar political landscape, right down to Sarah Palin telling ABC TV and the New York Times that yes, she might just go all the way and run for the Republican presidential nomination.

It's the only ray of sunshine currently available to Barack Obama, now seemingly mesmerised by the verdict of the press - that the people have spoken and the President must "move to the centre". Onto the butcher block must go entitlements - Medicare, Social Security. The sky darkens with vultures eager to pick the people's bones.

As Obama reviews his options, which way will he head? He's already supplied the answer. He'll try to broker deals to reach "common ground" with the Republicans, the strategy that destroyed those first two years of opportunity.

What do the next two years hold? Already there are desperate urgings from progressives for Obama to hold the line. Already there are the omens of a steady stream of concessions by Obama to the right.

There's hardly any countervailing pressure for him to do otherwise. The president has no fixed principles of political economy, and who is at his elbow in the White House? Not the Labour Secretary, Hilda Solis. Not that splendid radical Elizabeth Warren, whose Consumer Financial Protection Bureau the Republicans are already scheduling for destruction. Next to Obama is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the bankers' lapdog, whom the president holds in high esteem.

In the months ahead, as Obama parleys amiably with the right on budgetary discipline and deficit reduction, the anger of the progressive left will mount. At some point a champion of the left will step forward to challenge him in the primaries. This futile charade will expire at the 2012 Democratic National Convention amid the rallying cry of "unity".

But the White House deserves the menace of a convincing threat now, not some desperate intra-Democratic Party challenge late next year by Michael Moore or, yet again, Dennis Kucinich.
There is a champion of the left with sound appeal to the sane populist right. He was felled on November 2, running for a fourth term as US senator and defeated by a Republican. He should rise again before his reputation fades. His name is Russ Feingold, currently a Democrat and until the present Congress expires in January, the junior senator from Wisconsin.

I counsel him to decline any job proffered by the Obama administration and not to consider running as a challenger inside the Democratic Party. I urge him, not too long after he leaves the Senate, to spread the word that he's considering a presidential run as an independent; then, not too far into 2011, to embark on such a course.

Why would Russell Feingold run? Unlike Teddy Kennedy challenging Jimmy Carter in 1979, Feingold would have a swift answer. To fight against the Republicans and the White House in defence of the causes he has publicly supported across a lifetime.

He has opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His was the single Senate vote against the Patriot Act. His was a consistent vote against the constitutional abuses of both the Bush and Obama administrations.

He opposed the North American Free Trade Agreement and the bank bailouts. He is for economic justice and full employment and thus a champion the labour movement could support, as opposed to Obama, who triumphed in 2008 courtesy of union money and grassroots organising and who has kicked labour in the teeth ever since.

Feingold is the implacable foe of corporate control of the electoral process. The Supreme Court's Citizens United decision in January was aimed in part at his landmark campaign finance reform bill.
A Wisconsin voter wrote to me in the wake of the election, "Feingold likely lost because his opponent's ads, including billboards with pictures of him and Obama, as well as TV and radio ads, and last-minute phone bursts, convinced many voters that he has been a party-line Democratic insider all these years."

What an irony! Feingold has always been of an independent cast of mind, and it surely would not be a trauma for him to bolt the party. Ralph Nader, having rendered his remarkable service to the country, having endured torrents of undeserved abuse from progressives, should hand the torch to Feingold as a worthy heir to that great hero of Wisconsin, Robert La Follette, who ran as an independent for the presidency nearly a century ago.

The left must abandon the doomed ritual of squeaking timid reproaches to Obama, only to have the counselors at Obama's elbow contemptuously dismiss them, as did Rahm Emanuel, who correctly divined their near-zero capacity for effective challenge.

Two more years, then four more years, of the same downward slide, courtesy of bipartisanship and "working together"? No way. Enough of dreary predictability. Let's have a real mutiny. Run, Russ, Run!

The Case for a Primary Challenge Against Obama.

c/o The Atlantic

July 8, 2011
by Conor Friedersdorf

Presidents will continue to break their promises so long as they're assured of their party's nomination come re-election time

 Obama appears to be at Boehner's left. But is he really? Maybe a smidge. (image c/o Reuters)

Ask a typical tea partier when his discontent with the political establishment began. Often as not he'll point to the Bush Administration. The list of grievances is long: the profligate spending, the new entitlement for prescription drugs, the Harriet Miers nomination, the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Most tea partiers now think compassionate conservatism itself was ill-conceived.

So where were all the protest rallies back when Bush was president? It's a question tea party critics love to ask. The implication is that the protest movement is motivated by partisanship and antagonism to Obama more than principle. In fact, discontent on the right during the Bush years was genuine. Tongues were held for reasons including these: a desire to support the president in the war on terror, misguided partisan loyalty, a conservative movement that acted as unprincipled apologists and attack dog enforcers for the president, and perhaps more than anything else, a dearth of options. Circa 2003, when Medicare Part D was enacted, a primary challenge against Bush was unthinkable. What was an upset conservative to do, vote for John Kerry?

By their lights, he'd have been worse.

Liberals should understand that predicament. It's exactly the one in which they now find themselves. President Obama won't face a serious primary challenge prior to Election 2012, but that isn't because he has governed as the left would've wanted. He is trying to keep American troops in Iraq beyond his own withdrawal deadline. His executive power claims are every bit as bad, and sometimes more extreme, than the excesses the left blasted when Bush was responsible for them. The prison at Guantanamo Bay remains open. Warantless surveillance on innocent Americans continues. Whistleblowers are in greater legal jeopardy than they were. The economy is terrible. Health-care reform was more corporatist than progressives would've preferred. We're now waging an illegal war in Libya that'll cost over a billion dollars, even as we prepare deep cuts to social welfare programs. Despite promises to the contrary, the FBI is still raiding medical marijuana dispensaries in jurisdictions where they're legal under state law. Promised advances in government transparency haven't materialized.

The left would be justified in lashing out, given the Grand-Canyon-sized chasm that separates the rhetoric of candidate Obama from the behavior of President Obama. By and large, however, they've kept quiet about the abuses and unlawful behavior of the man who occupies the White House, with a few notable exceptions, compared to their volume and passion during his predecessor's tenure. That's partly because they've focused their attacks on the tea party, and politicians like Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. The truth of the matter is that even if a conservative like Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, the soft spoken advocate of a truce on social issues, won the nomination, the vast majority of liberals would support President Obama's reelection anyway.

It is their feeling that they've got nowhere else to go.

Is there any way out of this cycle, whereby every president is virulently hated by the opposition and proceeds to betray his ideological allies, who submit for lack of an alternative? Are we condemned to a political establishment that has failed all of us? If things proceed as before, perhaps Obama will win re-election, continue to betray his base and the ideals he articulated in 2008, and sow the seeds for a left-leaning tea party equivalent. There is, however, one flaw in that plan: isn't the rhetoric of candidate Obama mostly what those people want to hear from a champion?

In a provocative essay, James Poulos lays out another possible future. It's deeply counterintuitive. He argues that the existing tea party can appeal to the whole political spectrum if its leaders and rank-and-file have the will to make it happen:

Democrats have not been so disillusioned with a sitting president of their party since Robert F. Kennedy ran in 1968 to unseat Lyndon Johnson. Liberal confidence in the most basic principles of Democratic rule have been shaken to the core by Barack Obama's intensification of Bush-era policies that even divide the right. The left cannot field a challenge to what increasingly strikes good-faith liberals as the rule of a corporatist police state. The Green Party is a husk. The radicals are a rump. Outside the right, there is now no viable political alternative to Obamaism -- the greatest partisan disappointment in generations.

But until Republicans make some fundamental changes to their party platform, the left is prepared to accept from the Democratic Party many generations of abuse and depression. This is why liberal elites are deep into a crash program to hardwire the public mind with their caricature of Tea Partiers as a virulent, violent fringe peddling moral hatred and social suffering. At the present moment, it sounds farfetched to say that only the Tea Party can address this concern in a way that can attract liberal voters to Republican candidates. But does it sound any less farfetched to say that establishment Republicanism can gain the support of any liberals worthy of the name?

His theory has this going for it: Tea partiers and disaffected liberals have in common a mistrust of the political establishment, a plausible critique of centrists, a desire to hold candidates they elect to their promises, and legitimate grievances with widespread appeal. As a student of partisan media, however, it is unthinkable to me that they'd join forces to elect even a reformed version of a Tea Party Republican. In a better world, ideological movements wouldn't rely on vilifying adversaries as the people who are "destroying America" while advancing their own causes.

But our world is one where there is not only a psychological temptation to do so, but huge financial incentives for people like Rush Limbaugh, Keith Olbermann, Andrew Breitbart, Mark Levin and Michael Moore to stoke the pathology. If the other side is as malicious in their intentions as these entertainers say, it would be folly for the non-establishment right and left to join forces.

Thus failed "centrists" keep hanging around.

What I'd like to see, apart from everything else, is a return to strong primary challenges against sitting presidents. It's easy to understand why they don't happen. But hard to argue that we wouldn't be better off if President Bush had been forced to worry a bit more about fiscal hawks, and President Obama was worried a bit more about anti-corporatists and the anti-war, civil libertarian left.

Here's the Deal with Russ for President:

c/o The Democrat Deal

Today marked the launch of a new organization and website [russforpres.com] spelling out what has been whispered about in progressive circles for some time. There may well be a Russ Feingold Presidential Campaign in the preliminary stages.

Recently, a "draft Russ for Senate" campaign in WI has come up short. No one from his inner circle to state political pundits are expecting him to enter the senate race, a race polls show he would take by a landslide. Why? Is it that he has set his political sights higher?

While the former Senator may not enjoy the name recognition of Gov. Dean (neither did Dean til he ran for President), few individuals are held in higher regard by the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party. A champion of civil liberties, worker's rights, a public health insurance option, peace overseas, a David to the Goliath of corporate influence in Washington, Sen. Feingold has been busy with his PAC, Progressives United since leaving office. A direct response to Citizens United, a corporate funded right-wing PAC repeatedly charged with ugly yet effective disinformation campaigns, Progressives United seeks to separate corporate money from the political process and promote greater transparency and accountability in government.

The fact is, many democrats are feeling disenfranchised after two and a half years of the Obama Administration and looking for a way to channel that frustration in a positive way. Recent polls show a majority of Democrats would like to see a primary challenger to Obama than would have him run unopposed. Russ 2012 may just be what they are looking for. We sure could do much worse.

For what it's worth, Mr. Feingold, consider us very much on board.

Find the original article in the Democrat Deal here.

Russ Feingold Is Emerging as a Significant Force Against Corporate Control of Our Government

c/o The Huffington Post
by Pearl Korn

It seems like every week another scandal is bringing down one of the high profile "stars" in Congress. After his bizarre press conference this past Thursday, Anthony "That's Not My" Weiner will no doubt be tempted to take the same low road as so many before him and become a high-paid lobbyist, joining the likes of former Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, who recently signed on with the Chamber of Commerce. Chaos and diversion are indeed running high in our nation's capitol. When will the Hill get back to addressing the people's business? Not anytime soon, it seems. It's much easier to strut and fret over the fools among them than to tackle the real issues dragging our country down.

In contrast to the sideshow on the Potomac turning our collective stomachs, it is refreshing to see former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold taking the less-traveled high road to become a visiting Professor of Law at Marquette University in his home state, while at the same time building his Progressives United PAC. After 18 effective years in the Senate -- scandal-free, I might add -- we can only hope that his future accomplishments as an organizer and activist will rival those he had in the Senate, as he recruits and builds the progressive movement and inspires new followers to act more boldly in taking back our country from corporate and special interests.

He will begin by working to overturn the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, holding our elected officials accountable for their votes and pushing Congress forward on real and meaningful campaign finance reform -- all issues to which the Senator devoted his political career in Congress. Certainly the passage of the Fair Elections Now Act would go far in cleaning up the "pay-to-play" culture that currently owns elections in this country. Small donations of under $100 from individuals, matched by government funding -- that is the way to real campaign finance reform.

Progressives United is presenting a practical, commonsense mission that all progressive organizations should embrace and unite behind. Campaign finance reform and overturning the Citizens United ruling must be major goals for all progressive organizations in this coming election. Otherwise, nothing in our politics will change and our votes will be meaningless. Candidates must be pressed to step up to the plate on these issues if they want our support, and our President can finally deliver on his 2008 campaign promise to change the way Washington does business by using his bully pulpit to urge action. Imagine how the country would embrace him if he had the courage to publicly put on notice the fat cats and special interest donors that currently rule the day in DC.

The Feingold name and reputation for integrity are already being felt and seen in his ability to pull together over 2,400 small donors from across the country, raising $130,000 in less than a week for Democratic candidates running for office in the recall election in Wisconsin, scheduled for August 9th. This is a vintage Feingold response to those members of the legislature who supported Governor Scott Walker's vicious attack on state and public workers, ending their long-honored collective bargaining rights. Feingold has picked up on a rising anger across the country, which will hold serious implications for the rest of the Republicans governors and legislatures nationwide if they continue their naked power grabs and unbalanced, abusive austerity measures. The mission of Progressives United will also include "... support (of) national, state and local candidates who stand up for our progressive ideals." In short, Russ aims to take back our democracy, one legislative seat at a time.

Russ can also play a role in bringing together leading progressive organizations to overturn the Citizens United decision, organizing the robust, growing movement of millions already working to achieve this historic goal. Organizations like PCCC, PDA, Move To Amend (already a 100-organization strong coalition), Public Citizen, CREDO, DFA, RootsAction and the AFL/CIO can use their organizing talents and resources to take the message right to candidates in their districts. Richard Trumka, president of the AFL/CIO, has already warned Democrats that they will not be supported this time around just because they are Democrats. Perhaps we might even see a resurgence of MoveOn, with its 5 million members joining this growing movement - could we finally see a real, united progressive revolution in the making to counter the Tea Party's buffonery?

This is exactly the right time for coalition building among progressive organizations to unite and work together for a common cause, and I see Russ Feingold as a leader and powerful voice helping to accomplish this. But to really have a national impact, to recruit and build real and sustainable grassroots support and get the message out, all of these organizations must come together under one umbrella, forming a real coalition and raising large sums of money collectively, a concept that is usually foreign to progressive nonprofit advocacy organizations.

20,000 flocked to join Progressives United in its first two months, raising $1 million. Now the former Senator has a real opportunity to place an addendum on the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (better known as the McCain-Feingold Act), which, despite its good intentions, did not place a lid on the out-of-control money influencing elections and the corruption it breeds. But McCain-Feingold was a good start, and the shock to the system it represented was evidenced in the seven years it took to pass it. An important note worth mentioning here is that every dime raised by Progressives United can be viewed on its site.

Of course, one could argue that "da money" has become even more pervasive and corrupting in our politics since the McCain-Feingold Act was passed almost a decade ago. Then again, who could have anticipated an extremist, rightwing majority in the Supreme Court handing Citizens United and its corporate cronies - with their "personhood" status -- the keys to our government. Russ was the Chairman of the Sub-Committee on the Constitution in the 111th Congress, so he can have an authoritative hand in drafting a template for an amendment to overturn this corrosive decision. He can also lobby on behalf of the American people to his former colleagues in Congress, backed by a massive nationwide grassroots movement. Remember, this is the uncompromising, independent Senator who was the lone voice in the Senate to vote against the Patriot Act; who produced the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act of 2007; who voted against the Iraq War in 2002; and who voted against the "Bush Surge" in Iraq; and who also made every effort to censure Bush and Cheney for their transgressions.

These are just a few of the highlights of a legislator that put his words into action every day that he served the people of Wisconsin and America in the Senate. A great deal of his career was devoted to accountability and campaign finance reform, while still managing to serve on numerous committees. He is a man worthy of a cabinet position, or perhaps even our presidency -- Feingold 2016, anyone? We deserve someone like Russ Feingold, who kept in touch with his constituents by holding 72 town halls in every county in his state, keeping tabs on the pulse of its people. Added to all of his legislative accomplishments is the fact that he was Phi Beta Kappa and a Rhodes scholar. Does anyone else in Congress even come close to those bona fides?

Russ is so respected that when the Wisconsin State Democratic Convention in Milwaukee on June 3-4 ran a straw poll, he emerged as the hands-down winner as the choice for Senator to replace Herb Kohl - who will not seek reelection to the Senate in 2012 -- and as Governor in 2014 when Scott Walker's (hopefully) one and only term ends. For the time being, he has made no public decisions on those possible races, or even reentering politics, though he has offered Labor Day as a time for a decision. I, for one, hope he remains the people's lobbyist and activist, unencumbered by the fuddy-duddy old boys' club in the Senate.

Perhaps President Abraham Lincoln's famous words of hope for a "... government of the people, by the people, for the people..." will yet ring true again -- with a little help from Russ Feingold and his growing movement.

With Jonathan Stone

Barack Obama is Destroying the Democratic Party

c/0 The Daily Kos

Thu Jul 07, 2011
by PaulMunison

Ever since Obama's election in 2008, the Democratic party has lost significant ground everywhere. The party has lost 63 House seats, seven Senate seats, nine governorships and over 700 state legislative seats.

It would be one thing if he was out there fighting for Democratic principles, but instead he's out there cutting core Democratic programs like Social Security and Medicare.

We all worked very hard to elect a Democratic Congress in 2006 and Obama came in and tore it all down with his idiotic and naive quest for bipartisanship at any cost. Democrats are probably locked out of controlling the House for a generation because of redistricting and will probably soon lose the Senate as well.

Im really thinking that it would have been better had McCain been elected in 2008. At least then we would still have a Democratic Congress that would be fighting him if he tried to cut Social Security and Medicare.

We should really look to find a primary challenge to Obama in 2012. They dont have to win, they just have to put some scare into Obama for pissing on the Democratic base with his contempt for Democratic programs. Even someone like Dennis Kucinich would be decent for this.

Obama needs a primary challenge if he cuts Social Security

c/0 Dailykos.com

Thu Jul 07, 2011

by PaulMunison

Barack Obama needs a primary challenge in 2012 if he cuts Social Security. It doesn't have to be someone with the stature of Hillary Clinton or Howard Dean. It can even be someone like Ed Schultz.

The point isn't for this person to win against Obama. The point is to force Obama to the left and let future Democratic politicians realize that cutting Social Security is not something you are going to get away with without a major fight from the base.

In 1990, after George H.W. Bush pissed on his base by agreeing to a major tax increase, Pat Buchanan ran against him in the 1992 Republican primary and got 39% of the vote against Bush in New Hampshire and forced Bush to the right. 

After this, no Republican dared to accept a tax increase.

If Obama gets a semi-serious primary challenge that can at least draw a respectable vote in New Hampshire, this will teach future Democratic politicians that you dont piss on your base the way Obama is.

If Obama cuts Social Security, he deserves a primary challenge.

Hundreds of liberal activists pledge to oppose Obama in 2012

c/o The Raw Story

By Sahil Kapur
Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011 
 

WASHINGTON – Hundreds of liberal organizers and anti-war activists have signed a petition pledging to oppose President Barack Obama's renomination in 2012 unless he reverses course in Afghanistan and pushes for significant cuts to military spending.

he is not happy.

"We vow not to support President Barack Obama for renomination for another term in office, and to actively seek to impede his war policies unless and until he reverses them," the petition reads.
From former high-ticket lawmakers to ex-intelligence officials to veterans advocates, the petition (available here) has garnered the support of a multitude noted figures, including Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, retired FBI agent Coleen Rowley, and 2006 US Senate candidate Jean Hay Bright.

"We wanted to express our willingness to take a stand," said seasoned anti-war activist David Swanson, the creator of the pledge, in an interview with Raw Story. The signatories, he added, declared their "absolute unwillingness to support Obama" unless he "takes on the war machine."
"Half of what we wanted to do was simply to inform people of what's been happening for the past two years," Swanson said, referring to the growing military budget, the increasingly unpopular war in Afghanistan and misconceptions about the end of the Iraq war. "People, to a huge extent, don't even now what's going on."

"So our goal is to pressure him or to replace him, but certainly also to educate people."
Swanson said the activists haven't coalesced around a preferred alternative for the 2012 Democratic nominee, but he described ousted Democrats Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) as potentials who "would be far and away better than President Obama."

Two other potential candidates, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), said they won't run in 2012 and discouraged a Democratic primary challenge, adding to the view that an Obama renomination is a foregone conclusion.

But Swanson said he and the petitioners rejected the view that liberal activists should settle for flawed Democratic candidates and instead focus their resources on attacking Republicans.

"I think if you're going to eliminate the use of party primaries to advance your interests, hold your nose for two full years, and then vote for someone who is against almost everything you stand for, but is just not as bad as somebody else, then you've really given up on democracy," he said.

"We ought to think of this more in terms of pressuring elected officials to improve where they are, to move in the right direction."

Swanson has over the last decade served as a spokesman for Kucinich and progressive entities such as the AFL-CIO affiliated International Labor Communications Association, ACORN, and more recently a campaign called StopTheChamber.com.

He added that there's something "incredibly dishonest" about criticizing President George W. Bush's war and military policies without applying those same standards to Obama.

Will Obama face a primary challenger in 2012?

c/o The Christian Science Monitor
By Linda Feldmann, Staff writer

Washington

President Obama has to worry both about the newly empowered Republicans and about the possibility of a primary challenger from his left. Sen. Russ Feingold is one name that has come up, although a spokesman has denied such plans currently.

our candidate.

It’s been a week since Sen. Russ Feingold (D) of Wisconsin lost his bid for a fourth term and concluded his concession speech with a ripsnorting call to action: “It’s on to the next fight. It’s on to the next battle. It’s on to 2012!”

Was Senator Feingold hinting that he may run for president, presumably in a Democratic primary challenge against President Obama? Or perhaps he was thinking the other senator from Wisconsin, Herb Kohl (D), may retire in 2012, and Feingold might compete for that seat? Or maybe he wasn’t thinking all that specifically, and just having a Howard Dean moment. Hard to believe it’s been almost seven years since the onetime Democratic presidential candidate delivered his famously over-exuberant concession speech in Iowa that ended with a screaming “Yeah!”

The day after the midterms, Feingold’s press secretary put out a statement maintaining that the senator “has no current plans to run for anything.” Notice the qualifier – “current.” That does not rule out a decision tomorrow to run for something.

And so the guessing game goes on. Mr. Obama, weakened by his midterm “shellacking,” has to worry both about the newly empowered Republicans and about the possibility of a primary challenge from his left. Former Governor Dean’s name was also floated as possible primary challenger, but his spokeswoman seemed more definitive: “He is absolutely, categorically not running in 2012.”

If someone halfway serious were to “primary” Obama, it could be devastating. President Ford was primaried by Ronald Reagan in 1976, sending a weakened Mr. Ford into the general election against Jimmy Carter, who beat him. President Carter was then primaried by Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, who took his challenge all the way to the 1980 Democratic convention. Carter beat Mr. Kennedy, but lost in the general to Mr. Reagan.

Republicans are more than happy to suggest Obama will face a serious primary challenger. At a Monitor breakfast on Nov. 4, Republican pollster Bill McInturff floated Feingold’s name, mentioning the Afghanistan war (which Feingold opposes) and Obama’s failure to close the Guantánamo Bay prison camp. Feingold is, after all, well known for staking out principled positions. He was the only senator to vote against the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act. And he bucked his own party this year in voting against financial regulatory reform, saying it didn’t go far enough in reining in Wall Street.
Democratic strategists are just as quick to shoot down a Feingold candidacy.

“My guess is you’re shellshocked. You’ve got a prepared speech and you don’t want to give it, so you throw out some crazy line like Howard Dean did,” says Peter Fenn, a Democratic communications consultant. “I would call it a throwaway line.”

If Feingold did decide to run, he would have to be taken seriously, says Bruce Buchanan, a presidential historian at the University of Texas, Austin. But he’s not sure he sees the Wisconsinite taking the plunge.

“If he made a serious go at it, he’s smart enough and well enough informed and principled enough to stick to his guns,” Mr. Buchanan says. “But I’m not convinced he would want to do what he would realize would be a very damaging thing to his party.”

There’s another element to Obama’s expected reelection campaign that would make it especially difficult for a primary challenger to knock him out: the black vote. As the first African-American president, Obama is expected to hold on to the vast majority of black voters, a key part of the Democratic base.

Still, that may not stop primary challenges. Some suggest that Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D) of Ohio, who ran in 2008, may try again, though he would be seen as token opposition from the left. What about Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton? She has insisted every which way she has no intention of opposing the boss. And in the 2008 Democratic primary, she came in to the right of Obama.

All this is “Washington getting wee-weed up on the first day of a new election cycle that is two years away,” Feingold spokesman John Kraus said last week.

Perhaps. But in fact, if someone were to mount a serious challenge to Obama, he or she would need to get started pretty soon on organization and fundraising. All the jockeying on the GOP side of things shows the cycle has already started.