Credits: 

Illustration: Patrick McQuade

The Democratic Party is united.

Ken DeCell is coauthor of the 1992 book The 13 Keys to the Presidency, which predicts elections based on a baker’s dozen of factors, including success in foreign affairs, a major domestic policy achievement and economic growth. Obama has turned most of the keys, DeCell says, including the most important one: There is no significant third-party or independent campaign.

“If the economy is in recession in the first or second quarter of next year, you may hear rumblings of a third party,” DeCell says. But “I don’t think there will be. There’s just nobody that’s emerged.”

Obama is unlikely to face a challenge from the left because he has (finally) satisfied many liberals with actions such as overturning Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. “That’s a clear measure of equality for LGBT voters,” says Bernard Cherkasov, chief executive officer of LGBT advocacy group Equality Illinois. “During his term, he has also accomplished things that were only a dream just four or five or six years ago, such as…the enactment of the Hate Crimes Act.”

Also, liberals learned their lesson about third-party challenges in 2000, when Ralph Nader’s candidacy undermined Al Gore’s campaign. “Republicans fall in line and Democrats fall in love,” says Kevin Lampe, a Chicago political consultant and executive VP of strategic communications firm Kurth Lampe, who coached Obama before his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention. But Democrats will fall in line behind Obama because “if they don’t vote, it’s a tea party vote.”