MSNBC panel: Hillary’s biggest problem is going to be Obama

posted at 10:41 am on November 14, 2014 by Noah Rothman

The great distancing from Obama in which Democrats will need to engage if they have any hopes of retaining the White House in 2016 has already begun.
In a segment on Friday’s Morning Joe, the panel of MSNBC guests tackled recent comments from Obama strategist David Axelrod who suggested that Hillary Clinton’s biggest obstacle on the road to the White House will be herself.
“I think the danger for Secretary Clinton is that, as was the case in 2007, her candidacy is out in front of the rationale for it,” he said.
MSNBC’s panelists did not entirely agree. The Huffington Post’s Sam Stein and MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch agreed that the most formidable roadblock that could prevent Clinton from succeeding Obama is Obama.



“Part of the problem is just Obama,” Stein observed. “Clearly voters have soured on the guy, and he’s going to be in bad straits with the poll numbers come then.”
“They’re just tired of it,” Deutsch noted. “People are just ready to change the channel.”
This phenomenon of an electorate desiring “change” after a president’s second term in the White House is perfectly predictable. There is a reason why only one two-term president in the post-war era, Ronald Reagan, was succeeded by a member of his own party.
For an invaluable quantification of this phenomenon and an explanation for why Democrats will face historically regular headwinds in the effort to keep the White House in 2016, read Dan McLaughlin’s deep dive into the data:
“The history of American politics since 1856 (and to some extent before then) has been one in which the two parties are in a precarious equilibrium, even in periods of apparent one-party dominance,” he wrote. “A lot more can happen in two years, and history is never destiny. But the history of American elections following the re-election of an incumbent strongly suggests that the Democrats face a much more significant challenge in retaining the White House in 2016 than the conventional wisdom would have you believe.”
The in-party’s most common response to this argument would have been to cite the rising electorate consisting primarily of young voters, single women, and minorities. These voters will, it was believed, allow Clinton to buck history’s trends. With two elections now clearly indicating that this rising electorate does not turn out when Barack Obama’s name isn’t on the ballot, even the White House is no longer making this argument.
It turns out we are not at the end of history, and the emerging Democratic majority remains constricted. Like so many of his predecessors, Obama will be a drag on his party by the end of his term.

http://hotair.com/archives/2014/11/1...campaign=straw