It’s fair to say that from 2007 through 2010, the mere words “Speaker Pelosi” gave many NewsBusters readers the willies. If some lefty activists and enough voters get their way, you’ll have the chance to hear a lot of “Speaker Obama.” On Wednesday, Ben Mathis-Lilley of Slate discussed and endorsed a Change.org petition calling on Barack Obama to run for the House of Representatives in 2018 from Illinois’s 1st congressional district, the idea being that if Obama won the seat and Democrats took control of the lower chamber of Congress, Obama would become Speaker of the House.
Mathis-Lilley noted that Obama’s national favorability rating is 53.5 percent, though he acknowledged that figure “reflects the reality that, as a soon-to-be-ex-president, [Obama is] no longer involved in contentious advocacy for specific policies. He’d likely become less popular the minute he stepped back into the political fray. But the hypothetical Obama for Speaker campaign would still pretty clearly be the Democrats’ best chance at swinging Congress.” – READ MORE
