Two Dem pollsters call for Hillary Clinton to replace Obama

Two veteran presidential campaign strategists are calling for President Obama to bow out in 2012 — and they're both Democrats.

Patrick Caddell, President Carter's pollster, and Douglas Schoen, who advised President Clinton's reelection, penned an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on Monday calling for Obama to be replaced as the party's nominee.

"He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton," the two wrote.

Caddell and Schoen argued that Obama could win reelection, but would be unable to govern effectively both during the remainder of his first term and during his second term.

"It seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance," they said.

The two pollsters wrote that an Obama withdrawal would alter the dynamic of whether he or President George W. Bush is to blame for the nation's economic woes, refocusing the conversation on reconciliation and the type of bipartisanship witnessed during the Clinton administration.

They also called Hillary Clinton more qualified than her husband to occupy the Oval Office, though they acknowledged having no indication that she was entertaining the idea of running. Clinton has said repeatedly that she is out of politics and enjoying her work leading the country's foreign policy.

While unlikely to come to fruition, the push by Caddell and Schoen to see another Democrat at the party's helm could give Republicans fodder to argue that Democrats have lost hope in Obama and can't muster enough excitement to back their own candidate.

This isn't the first time Schoen and Cadell have called for Obama to bow out of a reelection campaign. In November 2010, the two opined that Obama should announce he wouldn't run for reelection, in order to seize the high ground and position himself better to achieve real accomplishments during the final two years of his first term.

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