Writing the progressive version of a disastrous Caddell/Schoen “advice” op-ed, Michael Lerner proposes that the key to making Obama adhere to progressive positions is to launch a primary challenge against him from the left. As far as Lerner’s goals are concerned, this is madness, but his op-ed is useful as a corrective for the bizarre notion put forward by Noonan that Obama should capitulate completely on taxes because his relations with the left couldn’t possibly get any worse. As Noonan wrote:

This would further damage his relationship with the more leftward part of his base, but that can hardly be made worse, and a compromise would leave them angry anyway. In time they may become so horrified by the Republican House that they come to see the president more sympathetically.

Lerner’s op-ed is one piece of evidence that this is quite wrong. Obama has alienated progressives on a number of issues, but some of them are making it clear that extending all tax cuts will be one concession too many. Conservatives should understand the frustration progressives are feeling. Noonan is arguing that Obama should do what George H.W. Bush did in the 1990 budget deal: betray a core campaign pledge as part of a deal with the other party. Extending all of the tax cuts may be the right economic policy, but politically it is as perilous for Obama to extend all the tax cuts as it was for George “Read My Lips” Bush to agree to a tax hike.

Lerner’s argument fails in several ways. Its central flaw is the conceit that a primary challenge will “save” Obama rather than weaken him. Lerner writes:

But there is a real way to save the Obama presidency: by challenging him in the 2012 presidential primaries with a candidate who would unambiguously commit to a well-defined progressive agenda and contrast it with the Obama administration’s policies. Such a candidacy would be pooh-poohed by the media, but if it gathered enough popular support – as is likely given the level of alienation among many who were the backbone of Obama’s 2008 success – this campaign would pressure Obama toward much more progressive positions and make him a more viable 2012 candidate. Far from weakening his chances for reelection, this kind of progressive primary challenge could save Obama if he moves in the desired direction. And if he holds firm to his current track, he’s a goner anyway.

It was an appropriate expression of conservative discontent with the incumbent, but Pat Buchanan’s ’92 primary challenge against Bush did not significantly change how Bush campaigned or governed. Any sitting President that has faced a serious primary challenge has gone on to lose the general election. Bush in ’92, Carter in ’80, and Ford in ’76 were all defeated after heading off significant primary challenges. It is very hard to argue that any of these challenges made the incumbents stronger in the general election than they would have otherwise been.

It is possible that they were all “goners” anyway, and it could be that the primary challenges were just symptoms of existing weakness rather than causes of greater weakness, but what Lerner calls for has never worked and it is difficult to see how it could work. One can reasonably argue for backing a third party as a protest designed to move political debate in a certain direction, or at least as a statement of how unsatisfactory the major parties are, but in doing so one already accepts that this is usually going to harm rather than help the ideologically-closer major party candidate. Primary challenges usually don’t make general election candidates more viable than they already were, and Lerner cannot cite examples of presidential primary challenges that have done this because none of them has.

The second chief problem in Lerner’s argument is that he assumes that Obama would continue to hold and defend progressive positions once the pressure of the primary challenge is over. Based on what happened in 2008 and since, there is not much reason to believe that. If Obama continued his habit of accommodating his opponents, he would attempt to placate progressives with new promises, and then revert back to “centrist” campaigning and governing once re-nomination was secure. Even if Lerner were right that Obama needed to tack left and shore up progressive support to win, a primary challenge might force him to pay lip service to some of the things Lerner mentions, but Obama would then busy himself with appealing to independents and moderates by moving away from the things that he pledged to do during the primaries. The same pattern of unreasonable expectations, disillusionment, and bitterness that we have seen over the last three years would follow.

The most significant practical problem with Lerner’s proposal is that there seems to be no Democratic politician with any ambition of higher office who would run against Obama in 2012. Lerner rattles off a list of names, including a number of recently defeated House and Senate candidates, but it is hard to see why any of them would want the notoriety of being the one to try to impede Obama’s re-election. Anyone who did would face the constant criticism from his colleagues that he was facilitating Republican victory, and the critics would have a point. None of them wants to be responsible for undermining Obama and putting a Republican in the White House. Some progressive politicians dissatisfied with Obama might very well want to let Obama fall on his own, since they could explain his eventual failure as a result of too much compromise and accommodation with Republicans.

There’s only one credible reason to launch a primary challenge against Obama from the left, and that is because progressives have decided that there are not enough significant differences between Obama and his Republican opponents to justify supporting him for another term. Indeed, the only reason for progressives to launch a challenge against Obama is to try to take the nomination and the party from him. No sitting President who has sought re-nomination has been denied it by his party, so the real goal of a primary challenge would be to wound Obama enough to make him less viable and less competitive to express the degree of dissatisfaction with the party’s direction.