Is the Democratic Party Trying to Oust Obama and Nominate Hillary Clinton

Well, dear readers, you can now say you read it here first last week. Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell made it almost official when he gave an interview this week to Newsmax TV, and among other things, said when asked if he ever regretted Obama’s 2008 victory over Clinton:

“I think Barack Obama took the worst set of problems any American president had been given, and has done admirable. Do I think Hillary would have done as well? Sure. But she would have been encumbered with the same set of problems. Might she have done better? She had a little bit more experience.
“Sen. Obama was a legislator all his life. Sen. Clinton had a little bit of experience in the executive branch when she was with her husband. So she might have done things a little differently, but again, with those overwhelming problems, who knows?”
Rendell, how worked very hard for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, said: “I believe Hillary Clinton would have made a great president in 2008, and, as you know, I worked my heart out for her. In the last month and a half of the campaign I was almost the last spokesperson she had; in fact, one reporter called me the last of the Mohicans. But her job as secretary of state has convinced me, and I think also has convinced millions of Americans, that she would have been a lights-out president.”
Rendell also stated that President Obama is wrong to attack people in the center of his party when one of them criticizes his policies. Rendell says they are not being disloyal.
Governor Rendell is apparently ready to help Obama, but he says that the center of the Democrat Party has taken to the TV circuit because the White House does no accept outside input very well.
He included Bill Clinton’s recent discussion of the tax cut extensions in this and said by criticizing the President’s position when it needs to be done, these Democrat leaders are actually building their bona fides with the public for supporting Obama later in the campaign.
“I guarantee you that Bill Clinton in October, when it counts, when the rubber meets the road . . . will be the best salesperson for the Obama re-elect that you can find,” Rendell said.
“The Obama campaign sometimes takes the position that if we say anything critical we’re being disloyal. We’re not. We’re being realistic. And I think, as a result, we’re much better persuaders, much better advocates for the president’s re-election.”

The important thing in this glancing attack on Obama’s presidency is that it comes from a former Governor of a critical state for the November election, who was also Homeland Security Secretary, who represents the center of the Democratic Party, and who has been a friend of the Clintons for a long time.
It is, dear readers, a classic “attack with on hand and apply the bandage with the other hand” approach to telling someone things they do not want to hear, rather like saying, “this is for your own good” when you take privileges away from a child for something he has done.
And, to do it in public during a closely contested presidential campaign year when you are ostensibly on the side of the candidate you are attacking - and to boot he is the incumbent President - is very risky at best.
Personally, I think this may be the beginning of a test program to see if there is sufficient support for easing out President Obama and nominating Hillary Clinton in 2012.