If Obama Had Run For a Third Term Would Bernie Sanders Have Challenged Him?

When I learned that President Obama had told his former senior adviser David Axelrod in a CNN podcast interview he could have won the 2016 election, my first reaction was characteristic immodesty on the President's part.

It's not that I necessarily disagree with Obama's statement. After all, in the months leading up to the 1988 election, many a commentator said that President Reagan could have been re-elected to a third term, but The Gipper never boasted such a thing. He did tell David Frost in a November 1987 interview that he favored the repeal of the 22nd Amendment which restricted the President to two terms. But Reagan did not make this position a priority during his last year in office.

To be fair to Obama, Bill Clinton also claimed he would have been re-elected to a third term in a December 2000 interview with Rolling Stone. No doubt Trump would say he could be elected to a third, fourth and fifth term (assuming, of course, he doesn't proclaim himself President-for-Life).

However immodest Obama's statement, it is a cut above blaming either James Comey or the Russians for Hillary's defeat. Obama and Democrats are now in the anger stage of grief and turning their attention to Hillary's shortcomings as a presidential candidate as Joe Biden did just before Christmas.

Obama told Axelrod, "(I)f I had run again and articulated it, I could've mobilized a majority of the American people to rally behind it."

Well, I think all of that would depend on Bernie Sanders. Or, more precisely, his supporters. Would they have expressed the same alienation with Obama that they did with Hillary? They certainly thought Obama didn't act quickly enough on LGBT rights and were at odds with him over TPP. But I think it wouldn't have been enough for them to feel the Bern. In which case, I think Obama would have turned back Trump's challenge. The African-American turnout would not have diminished as it did for Hillary and he would have likely held onto Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Of course, all of this is moot. Barack Obama cannot run for a third term and Donald Trump will succeed him in 25 days whether he likes it or not.