I’ve got a piece at the Standard about some different cross-trends concerning Obama’s reelection. In it, I mention that there’s a possibility Obama could face a primary challenge, but it would come most probably from his left. Galley Friend P.G., however, makes the following observation:

Go check out last week’s NYT op-ed pages. Guess who has a really good op-ed: Evan Bayh. Guess what else he has: a $10M war chest that he refused to donate to dem candidates even as he was retiring from the Senate. $10M isn’t much in terms of presidential runs, but it’s enough to build an organization for Iowa.

I think it’s wrong to hypothesize about a primary challenge solely from the left. You can’t run on Obama’s left on domestic policy, and if you try to run to his left on the wars, he’ll just say that he tried to end the wars but was blocked by Republicans and the military (and he wouldn’t be lying). However, you can run against the war to Obama’s right, based on the cost of the war and its impact on the deficit.

Maybe there isn’t a difference in saying “We need to end the wars because our soldiers are dying, we’re occupying a foreign country, blah, blah, blah” and “we need to reduce the deficit, as part of my plan I’d like to end the wars because they cost too damn much”. I, however, think there is a huge difference in these two positions. I think one comes across as post-VietNam pacifist nonsense while the other seems fairly reasonable. And I suspect there is a huge portion of middle-class white Dems who would agree.

Wanna know what I secretly think: Evan Bayh, with a Republican Congress and split Senate, would make a helluva Prez. He’s like Clinton without all the Clinton baggage and Clinton attack machine. Kinda like a 2000 McCain, only a little more pro-union and a little less pro-life.

Galley Friend K.A. sees broader openings:

The conventional wisdom is that a primary challenger to Obama couldn’t get traction because of the black vote. But I seem to remember Hillary polling pretty respectably against Obama among blacks. That all disappeared once it was time to get to voting, of course. But primary challengers might be able to believe that they could peel off some significant black support. The point is that Russ Feingold, or Hillary, or a prevailed-upon Howard Dean would only have to think they could beat Obama in order to really shake up the 2012 race. And a wounded Obama will look vulnerable, causing ambitious Democrats to see an opportunity. A primary challenge isn’t unthinkable, and even talk of a primary challenge is itself enormously damaging. Especially if the economy is continuing to doing poorly.

And about that: Americans’ feelings about the economy tend to lag around six to twelve months behind the actual data about how well or badly the economy is doing. People were still feeling pretty happy when the recession first started; they will still feel like they’re hurting long after unemployment has gone back down to 5 or 6 percent. That means that if the economy doesn’t really get moving immediately, people are still going to be really unhappy with the president by the late summer of 2011 — when potential 2012 candidates will be making their am-I-serious-or-not decisions. Prime conditions for a primary challenge!

Howard Dean is the other guy I’ve been thinking could challenge Obama, and he’s even better poised than Feingold. A former DNC chair who led the party during its recent successes times, he’s well liked for being a straight talker; his primary-night howl has now long been forgotten, or at least forgiven; and he’s been very smart about putting a bit of distance between himself and President Obama on healthcare and a few other issues. But I now see that, just in the last few hours, Dean has reportedly said, through a spokesman, “He is absolutely, categorically not running in 2012.” Ah well. Always time to change your mind, Howie!

The other wild card in all of this is Bloomberg, who needs neither the time to build an organization nor any rational evidence that he could win a presidential election.