[Peace-discuss] After you've gone & left me crying...

[C. G. Estabrook]

["Horse-race politics" (= who's ahead? - as in sports teams) is one of the ways 
we're conditioned to avoid talk about real politics (= whose interests are being 
served? - as in classes) in this country.  But understanding how our rulers are 
manipulating the political class is the beginning of thinking about how to 
oppose them.  Otherwise we're likely to be sold another bill of goods, like 
Obama. Here Alexander Cockburn speculates about what's going down with the next 
US presidential election.]

...The 2012 battlefield could turn out to offer the voters a choice not of three 
but of four serious candidates. The last time this happened was in 1948, which 
saw a fierce contest between the Democrat Harry Truman and the Republican Thomas 
Dewey, and also, on the left, the Progressive Party's Henry Wallace (formerly 
FDR's vice president) and on the right the pro-segregation Dixiecrats, led by 
Strom Thurmond.
The wild card for the Republicans is Sarah Palin. She has made it clear she's 
contemplating a run for the nomination, and not a week goes by but that the 
Republican high command gnashes its teeth at her enduring popularity with the 
party base, which is unfazed by Palin's gaffes with which the pundits and 
late-night comedians have such sport. The latest is her designation of North 
Korea as America's trusted client and ally.
But pundits and late-night comedians don't turn out in primaries and caucuses, 
and Palin's supporters do. It's to the low and middle-income populist 
Republicans that Palin is playing when she snaps back at former first lady 
Barbara Bush who told Larry King she hoped Palin would stay in Alaska. Palin 
promptly played the class card: "I think the majority of Americans don't want to 
put up with the bluebloods." She may not know much about the Koreas, but Palin 
can be a sharp counterpuncher.
If Palin does make a strong showing in the early primaries and the frantic 
Republican leadership cannot find an opponent tasked with overwhelming her and 
beating Obama, then we could see another independent making a challenge for the 
Republican/independent constituency.
And who would that be? The man with the money and the ambition for the role is 
the present mayor of New York, 68-year old Michael Bloomberg, the tenth richest 
man in the United States, who quit the Republican Party in 2007.
Last month, the Committee to Draft Michael Bloomberg announced it was renewing 
efforts to persuade Bloomberg to wage a presidential campaign in 2012. 
Bloomberg's repeated denials of any intention to run are not taken as gospel.
An Obama-Feingold-Palin-Bloomberg donneybrook would make the 2011-2012 political 
season one to look forward to. "I don't think about Sarah Palin," Obama told 
Barbara Walters last week when she asked him if he felt he could beat the 
Alaskan, who had earlier told Walters she could beat the President in 2012.
Mr President, you lie! Of course you think about Palin. Each night, as you and 
Michelle kneel at the bedside in prayer to the Disposer Supreme, you jointly 
implore him to ensure Palin wins the Republican nomination. Obama knows who came 
from behind in that 1948 four-way race: the Democrat, Harry Truman.

Read more: 
http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/72028,news-comment,news-politics,alexander-cockburn-white-house-2012-whos-ready-for-a-four-way-race,2#ixzz16SItN1gj