"Does Obama Face a 2012 Challenge In His Own Party?"

Rasmussen Reports:

Leading liberals are already thinking the unthinkable: Challenging President Obama for the Democratic nomination in 2012.

According to a report on the left-leaning Huffington Post website, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann and Eugene Robinson, an African-American national columnist for The Washington Post, discussed just such a possibility Thursday night.

Robinson said Obama needs to be careful how he handles the health care reform issue and the continuing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Olbermann said the president has “compromised on everything so far and as self-defeating as it may be, the progressive caucus and progressives would abandon him if necessary, if this was to be the policy of this administration into 2012. If it’s necessary to find somebody to run against him, I think they’d do it, no matter how destructive that may seem.”

But just over a month ago, before the president signaled a willingness to give up on the so-called public option element of his health care reform plan, voters were evenly divided over whether Hillary Rodham Clinton would challenge Obama for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in 2012. Clinton, after all, was a very close second for the party’s nomination last year.

In a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey taken the nights of July 30 and 31, 44% of voters said Clinton was at least somewhat likely to challenge Obama in 2012. Eighteen percent (18%) said she was very likely to do so.

Forty-six percent (46%) thought a Clinton challenge in the next presidential election cycle was unlikely, with 30% saying it was not very likely and 16% viewing it as not at all likely.

Interestingly, the numbers were almost identical among just Democratic voters alone, including 17% who said a Clinton challenge in 2012 was very likely and 16% who said it was not at all likely.

This was before Obama, in the face of substantial national protest, appeared to abandon the idea of a government-run health insurance company to compete with private insurers. But support among Democrats for the president’s health care plan collapses when the public option is removed.

In the late July survey, liberal voters, who are the most outraged by the potential elimination of the public option, also were already evenly divided over the possibility of an Obama-Clinton match-up in 2012.

Forty-eight percent (48%) saw it as a possibility, while 49% did not. Just three percent (3%) had no opinion. But again 16% said it was very likely, and 17% said it was not at all likely.

At that time, 53% of voters had a favorable opinion of Clinton versus 43% who have an unfavorable view of her. Fifty-nine percent (59%) of voters approved of the job she was doing as secretary of State.

Among Democrats, 79% viewed Clinton favorably, including 49% whose view of her was very favorable.
Obama’s approval ratings, by contrast, have been in negative territory for weeks in the Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll.

Should former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin prove to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2012, Clinton beats her for now 51% to 39%.

Howie P.S.: I don't know what is more unthinkable, Palin or Hillary, in 2012.