A Forecast That Obama Could Love (economist predicts 2012 landslide)

[UrbScotty]

So what is there for Mr. Obama and his supporters to cheer about?

Try this: Based on the facts at hand right now, Mr. Obama is likely to win the 2012 election in a landslide. That, at least, is the prediction of Ray C. Fair, a Yale economist and an expert on econometrics and on the relationship of economics and politics.

What’s the basis of this forecast? In a nutshell: “It’s the economy, stupid.”

That’s the smart-alecky slogan that James Carville, the Democratic strategist, used to focus the 1992 presidential election campaign and propel Bill Clinton to victory. But after many years of study, Professor Fair has found that it embodies a certain truth: The state of the economy — which includes the wealth effect produced by rising and falling asset prices — has a dominant influence on national elections.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/business/21stra.html?_r=1&ref=politics

[Hawkowl]

1. Economy won't recover in 23 months

Therefore, Obama will be crushed in a landslide. It won't recover because rich people are hoarding their money and Obama will compromise and give them more. It won't recover because Obama will continue to encourage off shoring of jobs thru "free trade agreements". It won't recover because the confidence in our financial system is shattered because we reward Banksters and refuse to prosecute them.

Obama will be crushed in a landslide because people can't figure out what he stands for and he lets the rethuglican media define him and sweep his minor accomplishments under the rug.

[Phx_Dem]

2. Well, you can wish can't you? n/t

[KingFlorez]

3. Crushed in a landslide by who?

Certainly not any of the candidates the Republicans are thinking about nominating, none of them are really liked.

[Hawkowl]

6. Elections are not about "like"

American elections are won by fear and anger. In America we vote for the lesser of two evils. It will not take much for the rethuglicans to paint Obama as the greater of two evils with a complicit corporate media.

The key is the not so much the "economy". It is the employment rate. Unemployment remains an official 9.6% U3 or 16.5% U6 or a more true 22% http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts. So depending on which happy number you pick, the total number of unemployed (short term U3; midterm U6 or longterm + underemployed + discouraged workers) you get between 14.6 and about 30 million unemployed Americans. So even taking the most happy, sunshiny number of 9.6% equaling 14.6 million, divide it by say 2 to get a respectable unemployment rate of 4.8%. This translates into employing 7.3 million people in 23 months, which equals roughly 317,000 new jobs per month, every month, starting NOW.

But Wait! There's more! The US needs to create roughly 2 million jobs a year (167,000 per month) just to keep up with population growth!

So add 167,000 per month to the 317,000 per month and President Obama needs to create 484,000 jobs per month, every month in order to force the unemployment rate below 5%.

Relying on our insolvent banking system, billionaire tax cuts, and free trade are the proximate causes of our job losses. If Obama can't smash through these barriers, he is finished.

[Clio the Leo]

8. I don't know why YOU voted in 2008 but ...

... but *I* was not motivated by fear.

I voted for the most intelligent, most empathetic and most reasoned politician we will see in our lifetimes.

In 2012 I'll do it again. So will millions of other Americans.

[DeschutesRiver]

36. +1000 on all counts. nt

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

40. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

15. He Doesn't Have To Get Unemployment Under Five Percent To Get Reelected

That's absurd.

Anything under eight percent and he can legitimately say we are on the road to recovery. I am scared/comcerned/sad that is even beyond accomplishing.

My girlfriend and I want jobs.

[young but wise]

4. All I can do is laugh at your post.

:rofl:

[treestar]

5. Wish I could unrec a post

I want it to recover, whether that is good for Obama or not.

[unblock]

7. presidentially speaking, the unemployment rate itself doesn't need to recover

it's the gdp that statistically matters. of course, these are related as sustained high unemployment tends to prevent sustained improvement in gdp.

in any event, lichtman's 13 keys still predict obama will easily win re-election, though not all the facts are in at this stage. this is one of the reasons republicans will try to dredge up a scandal to pin on obama -- that is one of the few keys that is within their control.

[WI_DEM]

10. Really unemployment in 1982 was higher than it is now and Reagan ended up winning in a landslide in

1984. The economy has been picking up steam of late and if it continues any improvement benefits Obama.

[Cosmocat]

11. it has been in sluglike recovery all year ...

had this been an R congress with an R president, they would have trumpeted the saving of the economy and how there is a toe hold of recovery ...

Also, I agree that those with money have been sitting it out, and they started getting into the game a month or so before the election, when their influx of money would not show any measurable gains for BO and the Ds to be given credit for ... They got their beloved Rs into control of the House and they can't afford to not try to grow for two more years ...

It won't be the 90s, it won't be a boom, but we will continue to see a very slow recovery, and measured over three years going into the presidential, it will be too marked to over time to say the world is coming to an end like they have spent the last year doing ...

In theory, but with Rs remain deranged, angry lunatics and the "liberal media" completely compliant to their wishes ...

We also have to hope we duck any more terror attacks in the states ...

[jeff47]

12. It doesn't have to actually recover

Voters only have to think that "things are getting better".

[dionysus]

14. you wishing it won't make it so.

[RBInMaine]

18. Your reply is hyperbolic near-nuttery.

[CakeGrrl]

30. Wishful thinking?

The prevailing attitude at DU is becoming clearer after seeing people massively rec a cartoon depicting Obama revealed to be Bush via x-ray and after seeing the replies in a thread asking "Does Obama still inspire you?"

People are openly hoping he steps aside and are openly saying they're as sickened by seeing and hearing him as they were about Bush.

The mood and the atmosphere is getting uglier here by the day.

[Arkana]

41. Your wishing doesn't make it so, sadly for you.

[Peacetrain]

9. Good ... love that!.. can you imagine Sarah the Clubber in the White House

the thought of it is mind boggling

[DemocratSinceBirth]

13. Duh

You don't need a PhD in Political Science to predict that incumbents are elected in good economic times and defeated in bad economic times. However I am not nearly as sanguine about the economy as the professor.

[Ramulux]

16. I think this is true to a certain extent

I think its likely we will see a continual amount of small growth each month for the next two years and we will be in an arguably better place, but still with really high unemployment.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. I Don't See Any Incumbent President Of Any Party Being Reelected With +9% Unemployment

I just don't see it and until I see it I won't believe it can occur.

I can't imagine the social unrest you're going to have as the jobless have their unemployment insurance expire. What's going to happen to them?

[mikekohr]

19. FDR 1936. FDR 1940,

?

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[DemocratSinceBirth]

24. I Hope You Aren't Banking On That Happening Again

America was a fundamentally different place.

[mikekohr]

28. President Obama Prevented Unemployment from Reaching the Staggering Levels

reached in the Great Depression. The mortifying failure of President Hoover gave an inoculation of sorts to FDR. You are right in recognizing that President Obama does not have that luxury, but I suspect he is more than willing to fore-go this extended honeymoon and was more focused on staving off economic collapse and sparing the American People the long, long climb back from the pit. The climb back from our current Republican gifted Great Recession will be long and painful but in the end President Obama like FDR, Clinton, Carter, and Kennedy before him, will clean up the Republican economic ineptitude he inherited.

9 of the last 10 recessions have started under Republican Leadership:
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com/p/history-of-recessions.html

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[DemocratSinceBirth]

31. Of Couse, History Has Proven Democrats Are Better Stewards Of The Economy

That's not my point. President Obama had the misfortune of inheriting the Great Recession while it was still unwinding. It wasn't his fault but "ownership" of it is much more ambiguous than ownership of the Great Depression. Everybody knew the Republicans and Hoover owned it.

Back to my point. I don't see any incumbent being reelected , regardless of party, when the economy sucks.

[mikekohr]

38. "It's the Economy Stupid"

poster on Clinton campaign headquarters

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[KeyserSoze87]

20. For once, I have found someone in the MSM that I actually agree with.

2012 is going to be for Dems what 1984 was for Republicans. The economy will have a much stronger recovery by 2012, and Obama will destroy the Repigs.

[UrbScotty]

21. I sure hope so! The 1982 midterms were a disaster for the Repubs. (nt)

[KeyserSoze87]

22. It will happen.

Unemployment is exactly the same as it was for that year; hell, Obama even has similar approval ratings! From what I'm seeing now, Obama is the Democrats' version of Ronald Reagan.

[Hawkowl]

25. Unemployment is NOT the same

The unemployment rate was calculated differently under Reagan. If you want to get a more accurate comparison, use the Dept of Labor's current definition of U6, which is 16.8%.

[KeyserSoze87]

26. Actually, it is.

Recently, a nation-wide newspaper (I believe the New York Times) tried to determine what U6 unemployment would have been during the middle of the early 80s recession. And you know what they got? 17.1%, almost identical to what it is now. That's not to say however that the economic downturn of the past two years hasn't been severe--it definitely has been the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

[KeyserSoze87]

27. There is also a graph that shows it.

[mikekohr]

29. We are living today with the legacy of Ronald Reagan; deregulation, massive tax give-a-ways to the

very rich, and run-a-way debt.

President Obama is cleaning up that sordid, steaming pile, one shovel at a time. This is a 30 year pile of elephant shit that President Obama has to clean up. Had it not been for the 8 year span of fiscal sanity that was the Clinton administration we would be in the depths of a Depression instead of one year out of a recession.

mike kohr
Bureau County Democrats
http://bureaucountydems.blogspot.com

[KeyserSoze87]

33. Agreed.

Clinton was one of the smartest presidents ever.

[sweetapogee]

32. I don't share your optimism

As another poster mentioned, this is not FDRs day, we are different. Back then, kids went to grade school and if lucky to high school, today, kids go to college.

President Obama owes much of his support in 2008 to students. Many of those students have large student loans and will be expected to start making payments, hard to do if you don't have a job or if you have one that doesn't pay much money. It is going to be difficult for those supporters to get excited when most of their paycheck is going to pay for an education when the job they have doesn't require any supplemental training or college. So, unemployment will be important but the economy is more than simply unemployment figures.

When the inevitable question is asked "are we better off today than we were four years ago?" then the answer better be a solid yes or we are in trouble. The administration should have one (1) thing on it's mind and that's the economy. If it isn't humming this time next year it will be a real problem. I'm certain the pukes will make it an issue. They will be talking about bank bailouts and deficit spending. The pukes will be on the offense, we will be on the defense, this is a real problem so we must get the economy moving now.

[KeyserSoze87]

34. You're definitely right that the economy has to be the #1 priority.

If Obama wants to get reelected and keep the Repigs out of power, he needs to get the unemployment rate below 9%, and he also needs to reduce the deficit as much as he possibly can.

[opihimoimoi]

23. The Kahuna from Haiku Apuwa'a confirms.... :o)

[KeyserSoze87]

35. :)

:kick:

[geek tragedy]

37. The study is based on severely faulty/downright false assumptions:

"At the root of his conclusion is an economic forecast: he expects a significant improvement in the American economy by 2012 . . . Another important factor in his forecast, he said, is the assumption that “stimulative fiscal and monetary policies will continue.” "

Unemployment will still be above 9% going into 2012, and the Republicans control spending in Congress, so forget about stimulative fiscal policies.