From Huffington Post:

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell predicted on Tuesday that if the president escalates America’s military involvement in Afghanistan he could very well face a primary challenger in 2012…

Which is both typical of liberal Democrat politics, and a continuing reminder of just how pathetic liberals are. Boiled down, what Rendell is saying is that if Obama responds to changing circumstances in Afghanistan and sends more troops (or, presumptively, if he just refuses to draw down after July of 2011), then there could be a primary challenger to him. Shades of Bobby Kennedy against LBJ in 1968!

While it should be kept in mind that Rendell was a Hillary backer in 2008, it cannot be ignored that he represents a significant portion of the Democrat coalition on this. And the fact that he’s airing this in public shows the level of dismay Obama is generating on the left. There is clearly a growing level of anger out there over the fact that the new, liberal dawn hasn’t come about as expected on election night, 2008.

I will have to rate the emergence of a serious primary challenger to Obama as a 1-100 shot. But this is still vastly different from “absolutely impossible”, which would have been my judgment even a couple weeks ago. Its still not at all likely because, quite simply, any Democrat who did challenge Obama would be doomed politically, even if they snatched the nomination away from him – there is no way that the broad mass of African-Americans would forgive the Democrat who ousted Obama;come November after that, black voters would stay home in droves, thus assuring not just a GOP Presidential win, but also a massive win in House, Senate and other down-ballot contests (Democrats are extraordinarily dependent upon high black turnout voting 90% Democrat). The Democrat who brought this about would be utterly finished in politics.

And so, I don’t think any of the potential serious challengers would do it. For instance, Hillary ages, but she is also in good health and 2016 is not too long from now. Why end all chances of it in 2012 when a mere four years later she’d have a chance of grabbing the brass ring?

On the other hand, if 2010 turns out badly for the Democrats and the economy slips deep in to recession/depression in 2011, then the choice for the Democrats may come down to figuring out how to save the party. Staying loyal to Obama won’t be much worth if by January 2013 they’re facing a GOP President backed by 300 House and 60 Senate Republicans. With that, in just two years all of Obamunism can be undone and great strides made in dismantling the entire Democrat power structure.

We’ll have to see how it comes out – but clearly things are not rosy in Democrat-land at the moment.

Once again Pennsylvania’s Democrat governor makes the corruption news:

State Attorneys General regularly hire private plaintiffs lawyers on a contingency-fee basis to prosecute cases. The trial bar returns the favor with campaign donations to state office holders. And despite the inherent conflicts of interest and questionable ethics of the practice, corporate defendants have rarely challenged such arrangements. Which is why a motion pending before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is so remarkable — and deserves more public attention.

Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a subsidiary of Johnson & Johnson, is a defendant in a lawsuit filed by the state of Pennsylvania over Janssen’s antipsychotic drug Risperdal. The state alleges that Janssen has improperly marketed the drug for off-label uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Janssen denies the accusation, but the merits of the case — which hasn’t gone to trial yet — are not what’s at issue in the motion before the court.

Rather, what’s at issue is the fact that the civil action against Janssen is being prosecuted on behalf of the state by Bailey, Perrin & Bailey, a Houston law firm. And it turns out that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s Office of General Counsel was negotiating this potentially lucrative no-bid contingency fee contract with Bailey Perrin at the same time that the firm’s founding partner, F. Kenneth Bailey, was making repeated campaign contributions totaling more than $90,000 to the Democratic Governor’s 2006 re-election bid.

Janssen’s motion seeks to invalidate the contingency-fee arrangement and lays out a detailed timeline of Mr. Bailey’s political contributions and the subsequent actions of the Governor’s office.

The article goes on with the time line, and its pretty damning. Rendell, of course, first gained national notoriety with his attempts to suppress the soldier vote during the 2004 campaign, as well as rather questionable vote totals in Democrat-heavy areas of Pennsylvania which moved the State to Kerry in 2004. Rendell, former mayor of Philadelphia (a city not noted for clean government), is hip deep in the disgusting, pay-for-play politics of our time, raised to the normal mode of governance when Democrats rule the roost. How does he get elected and re-elected?

For the longest time I just put it down to sheer stupidity on the part of the people – I mean, come on, corruption so obvious and so destructive that only idiocy could explain how people get away with it. Lately, however, I’ve been revising my views. Hardly anyone pays close attention to politics – there might be 5 or 10 million people in America who take a daily interest in it, another 20 million who look into it on a fairly regular basis, but all of this together is only about 10% of the population and about 25% of the electorate. Most people don’t pay that much attention – and therein lies the ability of scoundrels to prosper…not because people are stupid, but because – it seems to me – that we are hard-wired for faith and thus have a natural presumption to believe what we are told.

We’re supposed to have faith in only one thing, as it were, but being what we are and surrounded by the temptations of the world, we often place our faith in created things and people rather than in God…and thus we trust the news, trust the politician (even if we say we don’t), trust the apparent consensus of opinion. It takes something really brazen and out front for us to start doubting in any consistent manner. Unless someone like Rendell is caught robbing a church, the basic assumption of the people is that he’s relatively honest and trying to do a good job – and most of the time most of the information provided doesn’t go into arcane details of corrupt practices, as detailed in the linked article.

Its a hard thing to actually get this right – to strike a balance, that is, between our requirement to be generous in our views but also skeptical about the motivations of others. But it is something we must do – the trick must be learned, lest we become forever the playthings of people who believes rules are made to be broken, all the time and everywhere. Blessed are those who believe without seeing, but Our Lord never said “blessed are those who believe but never think about their beliefs”. The key is to think about things – to ponder just why someone wants to do a particular thing and, especially, wants us to act in a certain manner. If we think things over carefully, we are likely to come to a reasonably correct solution. And thus the normal mode of the scammers is to call everything a crisis demanding immediate action, no thinking to slow things up.

A hurricane, flood or earthquake requires immediate action – but if it isn’t about to knock your house down, action can be delayed and, indeed, must be delayed while we think through the likely effects of whatever is proposed. Rendell might not be breaking any laws in what he’s doing – but the laws he may be on the right side of are a hodge-podge of ad-hoc actions, likely enacted on the run, and tailor made for crooks to take unfair advantage. Out here in Nevada we have a rather clever provision for amending our Constitution – it must be passed on two successive elections by the vote of the people. This allows for calm reflection and for passions, if aroused, to be cooled. We need more of this sort of thing in all government actions – wait a bit, and lets think things over.

Calm reflection by a well informed electorate is the key to success in any democratic republic, like ours – we must get away from crisis-mode governance and back to a much more deliberate manner of proposing, enacting and enforcing laws. We do more of that, we’ll end up with less of Rendell, and that would be a good thing for our country.

Open mouth, insert foot:

Gov. Ed Rendell, one of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most visible supporters, said some white Pennsylvanians are likely to vote against her rival Barack Obama because he is black.

”You’ve got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate,” Rendell told the editorial board of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in remarks that appeared in Tuesday’s paper.

To buttress his point, Rendell cited his 2006 re-election campaign, in which he defeated Republican challenger Lynn Swann, the former Pittsburgh Steelers star, by a margin of more than 60 percent to less than 40 percent.

So, what Rendell is saying is that white Democrats are racists and just as they put him into the governor’s mansion, they’ll also put Hillary over the top in Pennsylvania.

Anyone out there know of an even stupider statement in campaign ‘08?