OH DEAR, ANOTHER ONE – AT 10:04 A.M. ET:  Do you get the feeling that President Obama is unloved in his own party?  In the last month we've seen him roughed up a bit by the likes of Bill Clinton, and several Dems in the Senate.  We've also read reports that he's been chilly to the Kennedy family, which abandoned its alliance with the Clintons to endorse him in 2008.  Now comes a former Pennsylvania governor and former chairman of the Democratic National Committee.   From NewsMax:

In a comment that may deepen the divide between President Barack Obama and the more centrist faction of his party, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell speculated to Newsmax in an exclusive interview Thursday that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might have made a better president than Barack Obama due to her previous White House experience.

Aside from the Clinton comment, Rendell insisted that President Obama had “done admirably” under very difficult circumstances. He added that the Obama campaign was wrong to think that when centrist Democrats dish out criticism they are being disloyal. We’re not,” he said simply.

Rendell, author of the new book “A Nation of Wusses: How America’s Leaders Lost the Guts to Make Us Great,” has never been one to pull punches. He recently told Buzzfeed he found the tone of the Obama campaign’s attacks on Bain Capital “very disappointing.”

Rendell’s remark that Hillary might have made a better president was part of a Newsmax.TV interview on Thursday, after the president made his speech promoting his economic policies.

“Look,” Rendell said, when asked if he ever regretted Obama’s 2008 victory over Clinton, “I think Barack Obama took the worst set of problems any American president had been given, and has done admirable. Do I think Hillary would have done as well? Sure. But she would have been encumbered with the same set of problems. Might she have done better? She had a little bit more experience.

“Sen. Obama was a legislator all his life. Sen. Clinton had a little bit of experience in the executive branch when she was with her husband. So she might have done things a little differently, but again, with those overwhelming problems, who knows?"

COMMENT:  I suspect there's been major dissatisfaction with Obama among Democrats right from the start of his presidency.  But there is a sensitive factor, the racial factor, that has suppressed criticism.  Who wants to be the Democrat who helps bring down the nation's first black president? 

Now some Dems are more open about their discontent.  And Obama hasn't helped himself with what is reported to be an almost Nixonian distance from humanity.  Tip O'Neill, though an ardent Democrat, once described Ronald Reagan as "a beautiful man."  No such appreciation of beauty has come Barack Obama's way from Democratic pros.  Bill Daley, his former chief of staff, and a member of the Chicago political dynasty, reportedly quit his job in disgust. 

This is when all the little snubs come back to haunt.

Isn't it fun?

June 15, 2012