Do you think that the lack of jobs & the economy will cost Obama the election in November?

nods

I hope not. The economy is improving. Slowly, but it is. Since it was the failed policies of the Republican administration that caused the economic meltdown, why would we want to return them to power?

The economy will almost certainly decide the election… exactly what milestones need to be passed for either candidate to win, is somewhat fluid/unknown.

The rule of thumb I heard a few months ago was….. If the economy continues to add 200k or more jobs per month (on average) between now and the election, Obama will easily win re-election, and likely by a large margin…. If the economy adds less than 100k jobs (on average again) per month between now and the election… Mitt Romney will probably win with a pretty comfortable margin.

If it falls somewhere in between, then it’s really a crap shoot. The average for the last 5 months is 166.8k jobs per month.

FWIW, fivethirtyeight.com (which is a very accurate predictor of elections) puts Obama’s current re-election chances at 64.4%. If I’m not mistaken they picked the electoral college vote precisely in 08, as well as getting most of the primaries and general elections for congress correct.

Speaking as an outsider (resident of england town) Obama could take out his cock & hump Hillary during a press conference & he’d still beat Romney, because that guy’s just plain dumb looking.

Only if people believe that Romney can actually right the situation. Otherwise, if folks feel Obama is on the right track, just moving too slow or making bad choices, they’ll stick with him.

And, to be clear, this is how most people I know vote. Based on what they “believe” or “feel” – plus a little of “do I like the way the guy looks?”

Facts play very little part in the process.

Americans are tremendously stupid about the economy and the principles of the different parties. For example, there is absolutely no reason for a person that earns less that a quarter of a million dollars a year to vote for any Republican. Further, the new voter restrictions, and anonymous money spent on advertising has the ability to present falsehood as truth and flood the television channels with those lies and ignore the restrictions.

That being said, there is an excellent chance that the Republicans will again steal an election. This will also mean another 8 years of war, lies, and regression of the middle class. In other words, these are the last days of democracy in the United States.

Unfortunately, I agree with @Ron_C. I am very afraid that the uninformed / misguided voters will vote Romney into the Presidency – even though Mass was much worse off in both its jobs & its economy by the time that Romeny’s term as Gov. was finished. People just do not bother to do their own research & by failing to do their own research – when they vote, they vote as totally uninformed.

No, because a lot of conservatives won’t vote for Romney.

I’m not sure on this one. I still think that even hardcore ‘conservatives’ will choose Romney over Obama. I know that from where I live conservatives basically hate Obama, so it’s more about a hate campaign against Obama and his so-called ‘liberal’ policies rather than the need to like Romney. Most ‘conservatives’ will continue to hate Obama regardless of any accomplishments he may have acheived.

I’m afraid of Americans.

@bookish1:
“As well you should be”
~ George W. Bush

Much depends upon how Europe handles its economic crisis. It will matter little who gets elected if the world (China, India, South America, Europe and America) experiences a financial collapse.

The unemployment situation in my family is so dire, we certainly need some kind of help. I don’t believe any other candidate would be any better, so more of the same for me.

If I have to call it now, Obama will most likely win, not because he deserves to win, but because he deserves to lose less than the Republikans. There is little chance of Obama winning in such a manner that gives him leverage to pass meaningful legislation. Frankly, I would have thought his best move would have been to refuse to run for reelection and come back when conditions might be more favorable to him again, but he wants to stay in power. In a parliamentary democracy, he would have bowed out.

It doesn’t matter much though. Even when the Republikans lose, they win. They can spend another four years dragging everyone down and maybe win next time, and they know that. They know the media PR machine will be favorable to them, and they know the Democrats are too cowardly to fight them on their own vicious terms. Both parties agree that maintaining the current kleptocracy for the baby boomers is the only politically expedient thing to do right now, which means high debt, low taxes, and low investment in future generations. If people don’t catch wind of that, we’ll be reading The Decline and Fall of the USA in another generation or two.

The only promising thing about Obama’s reelection is at least he might get to replace one of the neocon assholes on SCOTUS if the Good Lord would be so kind as to call one of them home.

Yes. The lack of anything productive in the economy has him rattled. We keep thinking he is an excellent campaigner but I don’t see it this time. He has become bitter and testy and he has no optimistic message. Most of his supporters want us to believe the end is near for America and we have to get used to a slow decline. The truth is, if Obama were reelected we’d have to get ready for a fast decline.

We’ve gone through a recession. It’s happened before. All we need to do is release the free enterprise system and we will recover. It is not the end of the world unless we make it so. Get the major obstacle to growth out of the way and we will recover. That obstacle is Obama.

@Jaxk I tend to agree about Obama as a campaigner. He was lifted by a movement in 2008. He gave voice to it, and rode its power to victory. But he let that movement down, and he also failed miserably at messaging when he did things that the movement that elected him wanted done. He’s slowly learning to campaign now, but he is up against a messaging and propaganda machine the likes of which the world has never seen before.

Obama is not the obstacle to recovery, he’s the only ride in town. Romney’s policy platform is George W. Bush on steroids. He plans to replay every mistake Bush made to crash the economy. More huge, unfunded tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, more unfunded wars, and a meager attempt to pay for all that spending and slashing revenues by taking even more money out of the pockets of the consumers that drive the economy. He plans to take us back to the same Wall Street deregulation that precipitated the economic crisis of 2007 under Bush. Only this time we will be much deeper in debt and thus less able to borrow and spend to stimulate out way out of it. This time will be a depression if the US electorate is stupid enough to vote for depression era policies again.

@Bill1939 – It would be easier for us Europeans to better deal with the crisis, if Wall Street’s derivative casinos stopped placing huge bets on the bankruptcies of certain European countries. Making money that way by sending millions of the less fortunate people into misery is despicable to say the least. We need to slow down speculation. As long as Obama and Cameron reject the financial transaction tax, they have no right to tell the euro countries to increase their debt to stimulate their economies. Such a tax would reduce the debt of countries, but as long as there isn’t a global agreement it won’t work.

I agree @mattbrowne, instead of exporting democracy we have exported exploitive capitalism.

@ETpro

Other than repeating the the democratic talking point that Bush Policies caused the recession, I can’t see how you back that up. Bush didn’t invent derivatives, He didn’t cause the housing bubble, He’s not even the one that disemboweled Glass-Steagal. You are right however that this time we are much deeper in debt which makes the beloved stimulus solution a pipe dream. Of course it always was.

Running against Bush worked last time, I just don’t see that strategy working again. But I guess if that’s all you’ve got, go with it.

Um, hate to sound like I’m defending the Demokrats, but Bush policies did in fact help cause the recession, and probably were decisive in making it as painful as it turned out to be. He emphatically refused to regulate the derivatives and housing markets when it could have made a difference, and even coasted on the “success” of refusing to regulate them.

@bolwerk

Not trying to start a fight here but could you be a little more specific. I’m aware of several occasions where Bush tried to regulate Freddie and Fannie, both shut down by the Democrats. I’m not aware of any attempt to regulate derivatives that was shot down by Bush. Let alone coasting on the “success” of refusing to regulate them.

@Jaxk: You don’t take your hands off the steering wheel and then say you aren’t at fault when the car crahses. The Bush Administration was the regulator. If there wasn’t an attempt, they didn’t make it – or, at most, propose it to Congress, if they had to.

As for Freddie and Fannie, they were more victims than causes of the crisis, and they were fairly reasonably regulated.* They weren’t even allowed to make subprime loans. The relatively responsible loans they did back were often on properties that went underwater because of the crisis. If there is a single factor that both parties are responsible complicit with, it’s the encouragement of owning single-occupancy homes at all costs, but the refusal to even examine the mortgage/financial industries was largely the Bush administration’s doing.

* Not to say that they were perfect; they still used the government as a safety net for taking risks, but given that the government bailed them out this had little economic impact by itself.

@bolwerk

I have to disagree with your analysis of Freddie and Fannie. By the time the recession started they were up to thier knickers in subprime loans. They bought them from lenders and used derivatives to hedge their bets. The Bush administration tried to avert this practice but was shouted down by the Democrats. By 2008 Freddie and Fannie owned about half of all mortgages in the country. They were a major source of our problem and the biggest of the bank bailouts.

You may find fault with the Bush administration but to say that the biggest housing lender, with half of all mortgages had nothing to do with this, is completely false. The regulation the Bush administration tried to pass, may not have been enough but it sure as hell would have helped.

@Jaxk: I really have a hard time finding that convincing. Yes, Freddie and Fannie acquired toxic assets on the secondary market. Yes, had they not done so, they might not have needed as much of a bailout. But, you’ll note, they were buying securitized instruments that other investors were demanding. They were big organizations with deep pockets but, for your argument that they’re significantly to blame to make sense, you have to show that nobody else would have bought the same instruments. They were stupid enough to get suckered in, but so were plenty of others. (Hell, I could go out on a limb and argue that maybe it’s better that it was Freddie and Fannie and not foreign entities that would be beyond the U.S.‘s regulatory scope.)

I didn’t say they had nothing at all to do with this, and they did exacerbate an existing problem. Maybe their size and clout drove prices higher than they would have been, sending other investors deeper underwater when the shit it the fan. But in the absence of the wild west world of unregulated subprime lending, I don’t see how this could have been anywhere near as harmful.

As for Bush, I’m aware of him trying to curtail the CRA, but I’m not aware of him pushing legislation that would have curbed subprime lending. He wanted to push legislation that would have taken away Congress’s prerogative to set reserve requirements, a power he wanted for himself, but that doesn’t mean he would have changed the rules so that the regulatory environment made more sense.

@Jaxk While the sub-prime crash was the initial trigger of the real-estate crash; it was not the bulk of the problems that hit Fannie and Freddie. 83% of their defaults were well-healed real estate speculators who were over-leveraged into a house of cards, and that house of cards came down when a gentle breeze called the sub-prime collapsed hit. The Bush Administration had been pushing Fannie and Freddy to make those loans to flippers because without that faux strength, Bush’s jobs record would have been far worse than it was. And it was the worst job creation record since Herbert Hoover even with the real estate bubble.

Furthermore, your own link makes it perfectly clear that the Bush Administration Your link notes, “Between 2005–2007, few of the mortgages acquired were conventional,fixed-interest loans with 20% down. Fannie Mae’s loan acquisitions were:” Again, we are supposed to believe that Obama used his handy time machine to cause this, much like the and Eric Holder use the Time Machine to force the Bush Justice Department to launch Operation Fast and Furious in 2005.

@ETpro

That is the most incredible hogwash I’ve ever heard. Bush did nothing to encourage ‘Flippers’ he only encouraged home ownership the same as every other president since Carter. You seem to like to ‘just make things up’.

Fast and Furious started in 2009. ‘Wide Receiver’, under Bush was a different program. They actually worked with the Mexican officials to try and track the guns. They used aerial surveillance to track the guns. Unfortunately the Mexicans were unable to handle their end and lost track of the guns on the Mexican side. In Fast and Furious, the Mexican officials were never aware of the program and the ATF never even tried to track the guns. To say it was the same programs is grossly uninformed.

What I absolutely hate is when I read, “We don’t like Romney, but we will vote for ANYONE who can beat Obama.” They never say why. It’s like, the guy could say, “I’m going to tear this country down, send it back to the dark ages,” and people will say, “Well, at least we won’t be voting for Obama.” Mostly they’re just rednecks, I think.

@Dutchess_III Well, my dad, a former Republican, who previously voted for mostly Republicans, but would vote for a Democrat now and then, will only, ONLY, vote for Democrats now. I guess it is kind of the same thing? They don’t like Obama, and probably generally won’t vote for Democrats.

I used to be neutral….until the Tea Party came along. I’m embarrassed to be identified with them, in any way, shape or form.

@JLeslie: there are only two options. One happens to be a club of milquetoast, corrupt conservatives, and the other is the Republikans. :-|

The U.S. system just doesn’t offer choice, and everything is reduced to slogans.

@ETpro You’re the Noble winner in Fiction, here. The gun running operation started in 2005 and had precursors back to 2003. Operation Fast and Furious started in 2006; Bush granted executive privileged to his Attorney General on this operation not because the documents Congress was requesting were part of an ongoing investigation and as such illegal for the current Attorney General to release, but because he didn’t want Congress to have ANY oversight of his lawlessness.

When the current Attorney General first heard about this Bush Administration fiasco, he ordered to suspended. This is nothing but an ugly partisan witch hunt fueled by Republican lies. If it isn’t so, why is Chairman Isa refusing Democratic requests to subpoena Michael Mukasey and other relevant Bush era witnesses?

@ETpro

You seem to be willing to go to any lengths to try and pin this on Bush. It won’t work. Project Gunrunner was an umbrella project with many projects beneath it. Including Wide Receiver (under Bush) and Fast and Furious (under Obama). The were separate programs with similar goals. The Fast and Furious program however, Didn’t even try to track anything and specifically told ATF not to inform Mexico or anyone else. Somebody should be held accountable for that.

Nothing in your links says anything different than what I’ve said. Give your Bush bashing a rest.

@Jaxk Spin away, my wound up right wing fan, but Project Fast and Furious was launched as the link above shows in 2006 by the Bush administration. And that renders Chairman Isa’s weekend attempt to turn this into a secret plot by Obama to take away guns from Americans as a piece of absurdity that strains the credulity of all but the most partisan hacks.

Obama used a time machine to go back in time before his election or inauguration, or even his running for office, and he secretly forced Bush to launch Fast and Furious in 2006, and even though neither Obama nor Eric Holder appear to have had any knowledge the operation till it came to Holder’s attention and he ordered it stopped, they did this all so that the 4,000 guns involved would cause so many death and destruction in a cartel with hundreds of thousands of weapons attained elsewhere that Americans would rise up in mass and support gun laws that Obama has never proposed.

This is what passes for “logic” on today’s Tea Party right.

@ETpro

Prject Gunrunner was launched and Wide Receiver was the project launched in 2006. Fast and Furious was launched in 2009 under the same umbrella program (Gunrunner). They were different programs. You can tell because they gave them different names. You must be getting desperate when you have to resort to Steven Colbert for your back up.

The ATF was created in 1972. That doesn’t mean that Fast and Furious started in 1972. You logic is flawed. No surprise there.

@Jaxk Can you read the link and refute what it says, or ware we just going to be treated to a never-ending litany of argument by assertion?

Your last paragraph is an utter non sequitur. No surprise there. You do appear to have a limited grasp of logic and the fallacies that derail it. Argument by assertion and appeals to non sequiturs are two of many worth learning. You an read up here.

@ETpro

I don’t have a problem with your link only your interpretation of it. It says that Gunrunner stated in 2005. Projects Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious were both under Project Gunrunner.
But Wide receiver ran from 2006 to 2007 and Fast and Furious ran from 2009 to 2011. Here’s Another source.

You seem to want to lump them both together and say they all started in 2006. They were separate projects, one worse than the other. And frankly you can shove your assertion and non sequiturs where they deserve to be shoved.

@Jaxk I apologize. You are right, Fast and Furious was launched in 2009 after the Obama Administration had shut down the Bush Administration’s Project Gunrunner and Operation Wide Receiver. The idea that the Phoenix office of ATF would undertake gun walking is puzzling. In Arizona, it is legal for anyone 18 or over to purchase any number of guns they want so long as they can pass a criminal background check and affirm that the guns are for their own use. That law has been interpreted by Arizona prosecutors to mean that if I lug a suitcase of money into a gun shop willing to sell them to me, I can by 100 AK-47 pattern weapons so long as I affirm they are all for me. I can then walk out into the parking lot and sell them to whomever I please, with no record required of the sale. I will not be prosecuted because it’s OK to change my mind about the guns being for my personal use as soon as I own them. Given that laxity of law, gun walking in Arizona had ZERO chance of producing arrests. In fact, the ATF identified a number of US citizens supplying these weapons to Mexican nationals in just this way, and Arizona Prosecutors turned down ever request to prosecute any individuals involved.

@Jaxk I knew there was something wrong in your defense. It took a while to sink in. What is the real problem with Fast & Furious? Was it just a really bad name. If it had been named Slow & Elated would it have been just fine even though Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry got shot with one of the Gun Walking weapons? Mexico says that they have found gun-walking weapons at the scenes of over 150 murders in mexico. Many of those guns were walked under Bush. Is that OK too?

Isn’t it the gun walking in toto that is a problem here, not what the operation was called at any given moment? Or is the name what we really are concerned with?

None of it is okay in my book, @ETpro. I would rather have the openness and honesty we were promised. Wouldn’t you?

@bkcunningham How right you are!

@ETpro

I’m not sure what point you’re trying to make with the name. Here’s the issue from my perspective. They had a program (Wide Receiver) in place and guns walked. They tried to track the guns via tracking devices in the guns, aerial surveillance, and working with the Mexican authorities. It didn’t work, they couldn’t keep track and a few hundred guns walked. So they shut it down. Now we come to Fast and Furious. We already know we couldn’t track the guns when we tried to track them but Fast and Furious, didn’t even try to track them. How the hell, could the same officials do it again with less interest in tracking the guns and not expect a fiasco. Someone was either totally incompetent or doing something illegal. Either way they need to be held accountable and the investigation should do that. No one has been charged or even fired for this and we can’t find out where the authority came from.

The difference between Wide Receiver and Fast and Furious is that we tried to track the guns and worked with Mexico on Wide Receiver. We did neither in Fast and Furious. Also no one died under Wide Receiver while many died as a result of Fast and Furious.

Now we get to the big problem here. Holder lied to congress. First he said that no guns walked. Demonstrably false and it took 9 months for holder to admit it was false. He also told congress that he never heard of Fast and Furious until it was reported in the news. Again demonstrably false. Now he has failed to comply with the subpoena for documents. What the hell is going on at the Justice Department? Why would our chief Law Enforcement Officer be above the law?

You can complain about Bush all you want, he simply does not pertain in this case. Let it go.

With due respect to the above correspondents, the question was about the economy and Obama’s chances if the economy does not improve.

It is a dreadful shame that the right wing is solely focused on denigrating Obama instead of helping the country. It would be a disgrace if this policy actually worked to elect Romney. I am totally disgusted with congress, especially the tea-bagger representatives and their cowardly and corrupt blue-dog democratic supporters.

Just for the fact that the right wing of congress and the senate is actively attacking the middle-class and unions, they need to be voted out and ostracized from politics. The Republican leadership has actively aided the economic collapse and should be impeached, 5/9th of the Supreme court needs to be impeached and thrown out of office for forcing Bush on the country. Our government has completely failed and we need new leadership and a clean sweep of the right wing and ⅔ of the supposedly left. I give the congress a 2% approval rating and the senate 3%. It is time for a complete house cleaning and re-establishment of democracy and re-enforcement of the anti-monopoly laws.

Democracy is lost because of congress and corporate influence.

Well said, @Ron_C !

@Linda_Owl thank you!

@Jaxk One more of your attempts to derail a discussion bites the dust.

Yes.

His obsession with Obamacare has caused him to lose perspective of priorities:

Fix the economy first, take steps to reduce unemployment.

Then go back to trying to shove the square peg of Obamacare through the round hole of reality.

@Crashsequence2012: WTF are you talking about? ACA is pretty much a settled issue at this point, and I have yet to see anyone identify a negative effect it will have on the economy.

One way it can have a negative effect on the economy is by government spending precious effort and days either pushing to get Ocare through or prevent such, depending on ones position.

Jobs, more jobs for those properly cleared to hold a job in the US is the only thing that’s going to impress me.

Obama isn’t doing it. His statements that things are improving can be taken with a grain of salt.

Really, just how stupid does he think we are??

sigh. ^^^^^ Cluelessness and extreme, irrational emotion, always leaves me baffled. Romney leaves me baffled. So do his supporters.

GOOD GOD I HOPE NOT! Under a President Romney (shudder!) Many of the things that we depend on will be slated for removal. I’m on Medicare, because I cannot work and I need insurance. Nothing that my husband can get will take me on the policy due to my “pre-existing condition,” and I’m not the worse off of my friends. Companies will again have the green light to send jobs off shore thanks to his history of doing that same thing in the countries that Bain Capitol. It will, of course, be SOP in the interest of the share holders. Anything that the republican party is proposing is bad for people in this country that are not worth millions, and people that weren’t born with a silver spoon or are incredibly lucky.

@Crashsequence2012 I’ll be the first to admit that the ACA does not go far enough—but you cannot solve that by reducing how far it goes or eliminating it altogether. Republican complaints about it amount to nothing more than a litany of lies. Death Panels: Lie. Government takeover of healthcare: Lie. Adding to the deficit: Lie.

When political parties rely on repetitive lies, and keep spreading them even after they are debunked, you move from a pure political operation to a propaganda effort. There is only one reason policy makers push the Fascist Big Lie strategy, and that is to advance policies that, if explained honestly, would be abhorrent to the electorate.

@ETpro Keeping government from intruding further into my health insurance situation and options will reduce my anxiety: Fact.

I see. You got yours, @Crashsequence2012, so to hell with all the other Americans who, for whatever reason, can’t get coverage. They can’t afford it. They have a “pre-existing condition.” Their insurance company dropped them when they got desperately sick. All the people who just fall through the cracks can just go to hell.

Case in point. A friend of ours has been planning his retirement for 10 years (or more.) He has worked for the same banking company for 40 years. He recently turned 66 recently and was all set to retire in October. Two weeks ago something came up with his wife, who is 58 or so. Looks like it may be cancer. Well, if he retires and goes on Medicaid, she loses insurance coverage. His insurance through work will be gone, and she’s too young for Medicaid. So, looks like he won’t be retiring after all…if it isn’t too late. They’ve already hired someone to take his place and he’s been training him.

But that’s their damn problem. You don’t care ‘cause you got yours and that’s all that matters.

Why doesn’t he just retire as planned and go on his Medicare and let his wife get her own insurance through Obamacare’s preexisting condition pool, @Dutchess_III?

Maybe you know something I don’t know, but it is damn near impossible to pay for a good quality insurance policy out of your own pocket. Probably $1000 a month, at least.

On another thread discussing this very subject, I was called everything but a moo cow for saying pretty much what you said, @Dutchess_III. I was called a liar, made fun of and ridiculed by of numerous people, including moderators. Anyway, if she has a preexisting condition, she will qualify for the Pre-existing Condition Insurance Policy, through Obamacare. See if her state is operating the pool yet.

Ridiculed for saying what? Where is the thread?

WOW @YARNLADY. I can’t find the words!! I’ll get that info to them as soon as possible. I just hate that 6 months thing….but I’ll bet they can make an exception in her case. I hope.

@Dutchess_III Your response to my last comment is based entirely on assumption.

You have no knowledge whatsoever of my health insurance status, current or past.

You are not helping your faction’s cause with such statements.

It’s not the point anyway.

I was speaking about government involvement and it’s possible effect on a citizen’s options.

So, correct my assumptions, @Crashsequence2012. Do you have health insurance? Have you ever had to go for periods of years in your adult life without it because you couldn’t afford it? Do your children, grown or small, have health insurance?

My feelings regarding Obamacare are not defined by my own personal situation.

Nobody else’s should be either.

That’s as much as you will get from me regarding this @Dutchess_III

.
So, you got yours, everyone else can go to hell.

As for the government’s involvement “effect” on the options people have, well hell yeah! That involvement may very well have provided some friends of mine (see above) with an option they wouldn’t have had before the ACA (Thank you again for the info YarnMamma!) So you’re right. The government will give thousands of citizens options they wouldn’t have otherwise.

The really ironical thing is…the wife mentioned above is rabidly anti-Obama! Rabidly against the ACA!

Oh. BTW. I got mine, too.

Oh, and even though I got mine, I’m willing to help those who don’t. (Sorry. I keep thinking of this stuff after my editing window has closed!)

^Sockpuppetry by proxy?

I’m assuming you are talking to me, @Dutchess_III. You are welcome and I hope the information helps them. God bless them. The pool insurance isn’t the greatest, but it is better than nothing in a catostophic situation.

Last time I tried to buy a full-coverage policy through Blue Cross, I was 64 and they wanted $2500 a month for me and my 55 year old wife, both of us in good health and with no preexisting conditions. Buy a policy without pools and with cancer. You’d need to be a multimillionaire.

Thank God that the lack of jobs and the poor economy did not cost Obama the reelection!