Wesley Clark for Obama VP in 2012

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 9/13/11

The last time a Republican was elected to the seat, which covers parts of Brooklyn and Queens, was nearly a century ago, says Allysia Finley of the WSJ. That would be Anthony Weiner’s NY 9th U.S. District. Brooklyn was long considered the dead center of Democratic politics in America. Indeed, the century of populist liberal thinking was born in Brooklyn. That a Republican would take it today would send the Democrats through a sea change. It already has.

It makes no difference who wins today in Brooklyn. Change is here, but not the kind that Obama called for. If Obama wants to survive in 2012 he needs to make an immediate radical shift. Obama’s lost promise was identified immediately after his nomination. The choice of Joe Biden for VP established the paradigm. This would not be new as Reagan, Kennedy and Roosevelt brought in the new; new demands new people. This would be a party of old hacks and returned political favors. Hillary made it worse. And the foul-mouthed Thugee Society from Chicago gave the appearance of a vengeance agenda.

First off, get Joe Biden off the ticket. On July 8, 2011, Paul Bedard of “Washington Whispers” a blog at U.S. News said it was lamented that President Obama did not pick Wesley Clark, the former NATO Supreme Commander, as a running mate in 2008 or find the retired four-star general a choice cabinet spot: “That has allies suggesting he's angling to be among those Obama might consider if he dumps Vice President Joe Biden or to fill Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's post—or even defense secretary or United Nations ambassador—in a second Obama term. ‘It's a waste of brilliant talent,’ a Clark associate tells our Suzi Parker.”

It is indeed, in a cabinet badly in need of talent. With the romanticized “Arab Spring” now in the grip of soccer thugs Obama foreign policy is surpassing their storied failures on economy here at home. Clark was right about Libya. He was right about Iraq and he opposed invasion of both.

If NY’s 9th district race turns out to be a continuation of conservative trends which rose in the NY 23 race two years ago, the Dems face a landslide in 2012; not only a loss of the Presidency but of the Senate as well. And as one commentator said, Texas’s Governor Rick Perry stock has gone up in the past month like an internet stock in the 1990s. If Perry takes South Carolina, and there is every indication that he will, he will take everything.

It might not hurt the Democrats to have a Southern General on the ticket. One who knows what he is doing.