Obama announces elections in 2 months, that he is no longer the appropriate leader - he can't end the war as he promised, empty Guantanamo, or stand on the necks of the bankers (even though they are in the offices next to him.) And, though he tried to pack the Supreme Court with traitors, even he can't ignore the Kenyan birth-certificate and passport that the former permafrost coughed up with some Saddam-signed centrifuge tubes somewhere in Alaska.

[One could speculate that perhaps Bush could have been forced to leave if the system were like this, but it is unarguable that the Republicans would have scared people into putting Rumsfeld and Cheney directly in power.]

If Obama were to leave, it would show two things; 1) the vacuum of true leaders that the USians are faced with and, 2) the recipe for vanilla as people triangulate away from saying anything. In a special election, there certainly would be no upswelling of the 'hope for change crowd'-further right/centrist would be the best to be hoped for. The Orange-types might eventually come to a pallid consensus, unfortunately someone who couldn't speak to any issues without alienating some group to apathy.

This would leave the only excited large percentage of voters all those angry people who are pointing at all the wrong sources for their problems (with great accuracy.) Though needless to point out how this comes about <subliminal>demagoguery</subliminal>, there is a problem with continuous discoveries and dissemination of the foolishness and inconsistency in their message. First, "they" don't care. They are the first to tell you that they are not racist, that they only want the country back to the 1950's when everything was perfect.

So, who rises to the fore if Obama were to resign because of: X and Y and especially Z?

Hillary? Jerry Brown? A Senator or Congress person? Newt?