I expect a resignation in 2013 with Susan Rice becoming Secretary of State.

Pretty standard operating procedure BTW.

While it is almost certainly true that "a Republican would be worse," I cannot tell you how tired I am of being asked to choose between two unacceptable candidates, always being made to believe that the lesser of two evils is the best we can do.  I didn't vote the top of the ticket in 2008, because I decided the integrity of my vote was too important to squander on either Obama or McCain: neither deserved it, the Democratic Party had made a mockery of the entire process and shown that it cared more about money than quality.

Nothing has changed.  Obama has proven himself to be everything I thought he would be - which is a whole lot of nothing - I still do not see quality leadership in the party or much of a desire to advance the goals of much of its base, and I don't know that there has been any progress on avoiding the kind of crass manipulation of the primary process - so why should I have any confidence that things will be any different a year from now?

With a Democratic president, and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, I am still waiting for help on the economy, on health care, on the environment.  I am still waiting for repudiation of the egregious and overreaching Bush policies that Obama has simply decided to rubber-stamp.

Can he turn it around?  I am not hopeful, and I think by the time the mid-terms rudely awaken him to how deep the doo-doo is, it will be too late.  Could he be challenged?  Anything is possible, I guess; I think the sudden interest in Hillary's plans might have something to do with the coming feeding frenzy over how badly the Democrats have handled their lock on all three branches of government.  The media love nothing better than internecine warfare, and the conditions are ripening for it, the benefit accruing to the GOP, of course.

I don't think that's a safe one to make.  BHO came into office with the Bush Depression being the worst economic situation since the last Depression, and the Democratic party largely behind him, and the Democratic base, and strong majorities in both houses of Congress.  BHO came into office with both a campaign based upon change and a mandate for it.  BHO came into office and promptly implemented Village ideas - the same Village ideas which came into full flower during Bush's administration and which ruled in large part during Clinton's, too.  And BHO did so by wielding power against his own base - and only his own base.  

But, seriously, it's quite obvious that the seasons have changed, or a new month has arrived or something, because we are getting the obligatory stir-up-the-CDS-and-Clinton-candidacy story.

The time before that was Hubert Humphrey and Bobby Kennedy.

If you want to count 1984 as new we had Walter Mondale and Gary Hart.