June 04, 2010 01:33 AM UTC

Whose White House? Obama's or Rahm's?

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• by: wade norris

As we all now know, a second alleged job ‘dangle’ was made by the White House to a potential Senate Primary candidate – this time it was Andrew Romanoff to prevent his primary challenge to Appointed Senator Michael Bennet.

Republicans like Darrel Issa (who it now seems is less than honest about his military record) are trying to gin up an attack on the President over this non job offer. Is there something there? I doubt it. But the fact that the White House has been meddling in primaries by the clearing the field for Kirsten Gillibrand and by endorsing Conservative Dems like Arlen Specter, Blance Lincoln, and now Michael Bennet for Senate races is both historically unwise and potentially dangerous to Obama.

If you are like me, you can see that there is a distinct difference between the Obama organization on the campaign, and the Obama White House.

I smell a rat, and he is Rahm Emmanuel. If Obama is as smart as I know he is, he will learn from FDR’s mistake and change course in regard to Rahm.

The White House’s involvement with Senate primaries may seem to be business as usual, but that is not the case.

Obama has been involved in more primaries than any President since FDR.

http://www.politico.com/news/s…

“History warns Obama on primaries”

by Matthew Dallek

The White House promised full support to GOP Sen. Arlen Specter when he switched to the Democratic Party a year ago. So Obama’s team had approached Rep. Joe Sestak, the primary challenger now gaining on Specter, in an effort to ward off this intraparty contest.

Obama is entangled in other Democratic primaries, as well. His White House has endorsed incumbent moderate Democrats in a handful of key midterm races. It has actively intervened in support of Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas……

The biggest political debacle in modern times was when President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened in a series of 1938 midterm primaries.

FDR considered the 1938 primaries an “act of vengeance against Democrats who had betrayed him” during his 1937 court-packing fight, as Jeff Shesol, author of the new book “Supreme Power: Franklin Roosevelt vs. the Supreme Court,” said in a recent conversation.

The president’s attempted “purge” of conservatives from Democratic ranks proved a stunning setback for his standing – and his New Deal agenda. FDR speechwriter Sam Rosenman later called the purge a “grave mistake.”

Roosevelt’s preferred primary candidates lost in droves. Democrats also lost seats in the 1938 general election. Conservatives gained congressional strength and administered a substantial political blow to the New Deal.

Consider that FDR was trying to re-align the congress with primaries to get conservative members of congress out and more liberal members in. It backfired and hurt the efforts of his New Deal Agenda.

Here, incredibly, Obama is blocking primaries of Conservative Democrats from Liberal/Progressive challengers. Not only has Obama endorsed Lincoln, Specter, and Bennet, without letting the primary voters weigh in, the White House has also been offering back door job ‘dangles’ to Sestak and Romanoff.

Here in Colorado, Democrats are getting calls from the DSCC to donate to their funding, when they are running ads directly for one candidate over the other.

FDR lost the opportunity to get the full impact of his administration by these primary losses. Obama, so far, is 0-2 and looking to go 0-3 in his Senate primary preferences.

This is bad politics for President who represented transformational change on the campaign trail. These moves have upset the base voters in these states who now have defied the White House’s choices.

It does not seem like the Candidate we knew. This is Rahm’s methods – Chicago/blago style politics.

Do the grassroots democrats matter to him? Wasn’t he the one that called the Grassroots left ‘fucking retarded?’

Was this the logic that candidate Barack Obama was thinking when Hillary Clinton’s election machine was already called ‘inevitable?’

Shouldn’t our candidates get the same benefit of the Primary system

that got Obama himself into office?

Not to mention that the Republicans are looking for any chance to pounce on any perceived wrong doing by the Obama administration.

Mr. President, start listening to the grassroots and to the advisers who got you into the White House and stop listening to Rahm Emmanuel and his kind. Not only will it keep you out of legal trouble, but it is the smart thing to do.