Amazing. Obama thinks he can call up states and tell people who needs to not run in which races? He is a totalitarian, and will go the Hugo route until he is stopped cold. Probably by his own party, they can see the 2010 disaster looming for them.
He just did this in Colorado too. Political neophyte, Michael Bennet, was appointed to fill the remainder of Ken Salazar's US Senate term. Early this week former dem speaker of the Colorado House, Andrew Romanoff, has announced that he will run against Bennet for the dem nomination for 2010. Two days later, Obama stuck his nose in and endorsed Bennet, because of all of Bennet's experience (6 months of political experience). He has some nerve.
This raises some interesting questions. Does Obama back a primary challenger to Paterson, such as Andrew Cuomo? If he does, will the rest of the New York Democrats line up behind Obama’s pick?
Presidents do things like this all the time, but Obama goofed big time by letting this go public without any plausible deniability, especially since I don’t think he can count on uniform support from New York Democrats. Now he faces the choice of starting an intra-Party fight in one of the most important blue states (and potentially handing the New York governor ship over to a Republican), or backing down and looking weak at a time when there are a lot of questions are emerging about Obama’s influence in his own party.
I wonder if this makes it more likely that Rudy will run. If he does, will Lazio stay in?