Reviving an idea they floated last year, pollsters Patrick Caddell and Douglas Schoen are urging President Obama not to seek a second term and suggesting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton be the Democrats' 2012 nominee.
Obama should "abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative," Caddell and Schoen wrote in an op-ed article in Monday's Wall Street Journal, because "the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern -- not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term." "Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor -- one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy," they wrote of Clinton.
The two pollsters have worked for a number of high-profile Democrats -- Caddell for George McGovern, Jimmy Carter and Joe Biden, and Schoen for President Bill Clinton and for Hillary Clinton in 2008. But they are also known for taking positions that are at odds with the Democratic Party. Most recently, Schoen has worked with a group called Americans Elect to put a third candidate on the ballot in all 50 states. Hillary Clinton has repeatedly said that she has no ambitions to run again for president.
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