Certainly the Hillary supporters can say that – though if Hillary had won, then Obama supporters would be all “I told you so”, because Hillary is just as much a liberal as Obama and would have pursued the same economic policies…though she might have done better on the whole health care issue, given her past lessons-learned.

But can it happen?  Can there be a serious, Democrat challenger to President Obama?  Andrew Malcolm over at the Los Angeles Times points out some salient facts:

…Strong support among liberal Democrats for Obama’s jobs record has plummeted 22 points from 53% down below a third. African Americans who believe the president’s measures helped the economy have plunged from 77% to barely half.

Obama’s overall job approval on the economy has slid below 40% for the first time, with 57% disapproving. And strong disapprovers outnumber approvers by better than two-to-one.

Those are the sort of numbers which indicate a primary challenger is coming – and as Malcolm points out, Vermont’s socialist Senator, Bernie Sanders, has called for just that.  Trouble is, it just can’t happen.  Even if you are a super-liberal Democrat who is upset that Obama hasn’t been sufficiently leftist (given how socialist he’s been, we conservatives now wonder just how commie a Democrat would have to be to please the Democrat base), you just have to know that (a) you can’t take the nomination away from Obama (the Democrat party is firmly under Obama’s control and even if someone started to do well with the voters, the Democrat leadership would ensure that Obama got the nomination, no matter what) and (b) even if you did by some miracle beat Obama for the nomination you’d go down to crushing defeat in November as Obama supporters (especially among African-Americans) took revenge for you knocking off their guy.  And not only would you not win the Presidency, but the fact that you divided the party would mean a crushing GOP victory all the way down the ballot.

So, no, there won’t be a Democrat primary challenger for Obama – not unless it is entirely a fringe candidate who won’t even get to 10% of the vote.  There will be no replay of Ted Kennedy’s 1980 challenge to Jimmy Carter.  The Democrats are stuck with Obama – they know that in the end it is better to lose with him at the top, if it comes to that, than to divide the party in a quixotic attempt to oust him…they’ll still lose, but lose even worse.

This is the wages of foisting a lie upon the American people.  As I pointed out on September 22nd,  2008:

…Obama is the “Un-Named Democrat” – the stealth candidate who can be all things to all men without being anything concrete to anyone. You want someone who will heal racial divisions? Obama. Re-unite the people of the United States? Obama. End the campaign in Iraq? Obama. Reverse global warming? Obama. Make foreigners love us? Obama. If there’s something about the past 8 years which has gotten on your nerves, Obama is the guy to fix it…not that he’s told you how he’ll fix it…

And he never did tell us how he’d fix it.  He just kept speaking in broad, uplifting generalities while a host of minions (including the MSM) went forth to tell the people that Obama was The One…that his “narrative” was so good, that he was so good looking, that he was so well-spoken…and he’ll fix it all.  Don’t vote for tired, old, white McCain…vote for energetic, young, black Obama.  Come one, just do it – it’ll be great.

But it was all a lie.  Obama wasn’t a post-racial healer; he belonged for 20 years to a racist “church” headed up by a mountebank of the worst order.  Obama didn’t want to re-unite us; he was pledged to “spreading the wealth around” which implies setting one group against another.  Obama couldn’t make foreigners love us; they didn’t hate us because of who was in charge, but because of what the United States is.  On and on – each bit of the Obama narrative false from start to finish.  And now Obama has been in office for two and a half years and people can see that it was a false narrative…but now Democrats can’t get rid of him.  They are lashed to the mast of the SS Obama and if he goes down, they go down with them.

And it serves them right – nothing better in the world than the operation of justice.  Lies brought the Democrats victory in 2008, and those lies will bring them defeat in 2012.