I’m on the record as believing that President Obama will be reelected in 2012. That’s not a tough call, as I’m a partisan Democrat and he’s an incumbent. Still, if the economy doesn’t improve greatly, it might be a close contest. Another factor in whether it’ll be close is his Republican opponent. They all have flaws, but some are in really bad shape. I don’t think the other party will be silly enough to nominate Trump or Palin or Paul (either of them). If any of those names end up on the ballot, though, Obama wins in a cakewalk. One of the guys I wouldn’t want to see on the Republican ticket because he’s from the saner side of the party is Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana. I think he’s a little too sane and not well-known enough to get the presidential nomination, but he’d probably be a good (for them) VP candidate. Huntsman’s another one I’d put in the “I’ll slightly worried about him as a VP candidate” category.
As this article says, Daniels fits the “if we have to have a Republican, this one seems like he’d be better than the others” mold as far as the opinions of Democrats go. Of course, he may not even be able to be the VP candidate on that side since he doesn’t stand for continuing the wars on social issues. And he might actually consider not just demolishing Medicare in the name of lower taxes for the rich. (BTW, the line I liked most from this article is the last one – “when it comes to red meat, he seems to be a vegetarian.”)
Still, though I can’t speak for my fellow liberals, there’s no chance I’d opt for Daniels over Obama (or any Dem for that matter). After all, as Matthew Yglesias points out, he did back defunding of Planned Parenthood and voucherizing Indiana’s public schools.
