Has Obama already lost the 2012 Presidential Election? Pundits say no. But the real answer is yes.
The election chatter among political pundits these days centers on their belief that, come 2012, the White House is Obama’s to lose. These opinions are hardly surprising. Elections with an incumbent running are typically all about the officeholder’s performance. Opponents are often bystanders, their fortunes rising or failing on how voters feel about the state of their lives during the incumbent’s term. So, according to the experts, Republicans in 2012 can run the elephant and hardly anyone will notice because the attention spotlight is focused on Obama.…
Article comments
26 - Cannonshop
Come to think of it...if "Stimulus is good", then the huge amount being spent (and the huge number of people being employed as a result) in the Middle East (Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya) should be a HUGE stimulator of the economy per the amounts Glenn keeps trotting out (which thread had that nifty graph, Glenn?)
I mean, someone's gotta be picking up paycheques for all the boots, uniform items, food, ammunition, guns, trucks, armoured trucks, Humvees, spare parts, tyres, etc. etc. etc. ad Nauseum...
yet...
nada. Just like the wealth-transfer to Wall Street (version 2.0, Bush's plan cranked by Obama to "11"), I'm not seeing it.
27 - Catherine
Clavos -
This is one of the biggest problems in our country that people who are "conservative" think: conservative =good, liberal = bad OR people who are "liberal" think: liberal = good, and conservative = bad.
But most of these issues being debated are not black and white, they are so many different shades of gray. If any person who wanted to actually implement policies that helped the country rather than fulfill some predetermined ideology, well, that person probably wouldn't be very effective in helping anyone.
I would never claim to say that everything Obama, Clinton, or any other Democratic president did was amazing. I don't think anyone would be expecting you to say "Yeah Obama! He's the man!" if you were conservative. But I think it is a bit unrealistic to blame the man for every bad thing going on in America today - that would not only deny the fact that Bush did some truly horrendous things but also that we as Americans bear no responsibility for the state of our economy/society.
Personally, I see no reason to belittle others for their opinions to have an honest debate about serious issues. Or to deny solid facts and statistics.
Also, you can't expect anyone to listen to you blame Obama for the problems of America when in your "answer" to my questions, you so vehemently deny that Bush had anything to do with the housing bubbles and its inevitable pop. Because if you're saying that president's have no effect on the economy in your answer to question 3, then you're saying Obama is not to blame for any of the current economic problems.
28 - Catherine
Oh and I never commented on the article itself.
Obama isn't going to lose for any of the reasons you stated, he's going to win because the Republicans haven't put up any candidate that has a serious chance of beating a Democratic candidate as awful as John Kerry, much less Obama.
29 - Baronius
Catherine - "Solid facts and statistics" is a pretty bold claim. There's still plenty of room to debate them and their meaning. If I recall correctly, the CBPP numbers showed the Bush tax cuts to account for 1/4 of the deficit. But those numbers assume that lower tax rates have no positive effect on the economy. How valid is that assumption? If you set up the chart differently, you could demonstrate that Medicare and Medicaid spending account for about half the deficit. Would that be a fair demonstration?
For another example, when you note that the debt increased under Bush, it's reasonable for Clavos to point out that the debt has increased at three times the rate under Obama. I don't think that Clavos blames every problem on our current president, any more than you blame Bush for everything - but every criticism that each of you made in your "three questions" comments was directed at that particular president. How is it fair to blame Clavos for doing exactly what you did?
30 - Glenn Contrarian
Um, Baronius -
Check out the chart that I linked to - the one based on CBO data that Clavos doesn't like because a liberal organization put the data into chart form - and see who CONTINUES to be the cause of the great majority of our deficit.
It's as if y'all think that any effect of what Bush did stopped suddenly in January 2009...but that's not the case. If you'll look at the chart, it's easy to see that what Bush did still accounts for the great majority of our deficit! Obama tried to fix it by allowing the tax cuts to sunset...but your guys wouldn't let him.
31 - handyguy
Much of the stimulus was limited to one or two fiscal years of spending, so the extremely high deficits of this year will decrease immediately with next year's budget, without doing anything. Furthermore, if the Bush tax cuts are allowed to lapse, the deficit will decrease even more.
So maybe that's the answer: Congress shouldn't even pretend to do anything. Then the deficit will begin to go down.
32 - handyguy
Taxes and stimulus spending are frequently used as the source of quick gotchas, to score points, on this and other Internet shouting-match sites.
Here's my two cents: Moderate tax increases and decreases by themselves have no cause-and-effect correlation with economic growth. You can find counter-examples for every example.
And stimulus spending [I've said this before] is not a 'magic wand' that turns a depressed economy around. It helps the economy to function while the economy heals itself.
In 2009-10, neither individuals nor businesses were spending, so for the government to step in and promote activity by spending made sense.
Most economists [not just 'liberals'] agree that this spending prevented a recession from becoming a depression.
The right-wingers on here won't accept any evidence that doesn't agree with their ideology. Tunnel vision, cast in concrete.
33 - Cannonshop
#32 actually Handy, a change of spelling did that-recession doesn't sound as scary as depression, but the results are largely the SAME.
34 - Clavos
NO, the data, sir, is from the CBO, and analyzed by the CBPP... (emphasis added)
As my stats prof taught us the first day of 101, "Figures don't lie, but liars figure."
And as Mr. Clemens was wont to say,
"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics."
Thank you for making it easy. I rest my case.
35 - Tommy Mack
Sidney and Riley. Sidney Riley, the ace of spies, was a real person. He played a prominent role in what became the British secret service and was killed by the order of Josef Stalin, after the Bolshevik revolution.
Tommy Mack
36 - handyguy
Cannon, if you ever post a comment that actually demonstrates any knowledge whatsoever of what you are bloviating about, I will be the first to congratulate you. In the meantime, please educate yourself at least a little.
37 - Glenn Contrarian
ah - because some liars figure, therefore the CBPP must be lying...regardless of your total lack of proof that they're lying, and the existence of eminently-qualified people who DO accept the CBPP chart. The CBPP is lying because...? Oh - because You Just Know It!
There seems to be a logical disconnect there....
And what happened to that surplus that Clinton handed over to Bush?
38 - Cannonshop
#36 Instead of screeching about my grammar skills, why don't you provide the uncontested, settled-science definitional difference between the terms "Recession" and "Depression".
39 - Tommy Mack
"Recession" has one less letter than "Depression" but occurs more frequently as a market correction. It's in the Five-Year-Plan. There are also treatments for depression.
Tommy
40 - Leroy
Clavos appears to be the type who can make trillion dollar decisions based on flippancies. Why would any serious person pay attention to him?
41 - Glenn Contrarian
Leroy -
The reason I pay attention to Clavos is that he's one of the few BC conservatives here who I believe is truly sincere. He truly doesn't want other people to be miserable - he just wants to be free to believe as he does...never mind that his particular set of beliefs make some of us want to pull our hair out in frustration.
I respect the guy. Sometimes I want to unleash the wealth of insults that I've learned over the years because he's so doggone stubborn (of course I'm not, no, not at all), but I won't. He's a good man. Politically-wrongheaded and too cynical by half, but a good man nonetheless.
42 - handyguy
"Recession" and "depression" were just shorthand: what the economists have said is that stimulus spending prevented worse job losses and GDP slides than we actually experienced. The only Depression most people refer to [the one in the 1930s] had unemployment more than twice as bad as the 2008-09 slump.
The private sector started hiring back 13 months ago. 8 million jobs were lost; nearly 3 million have been restored. We've got a long way to go, but caricaturing and mischaracterizing the situation accomplishes nothing.
I wasn't referring to your grammar, but to your lack of interest in or respect for facts. You prefer blunt rhetoric, however distorted it may be, perhaps because you think that's how political discussions are won and lost on the internet. Ugh.
43 - Cannonshop
#42 That's right, Handy, both terms are shorthand, but the reason the "Great Depression" was so bad, wsa that it WAS so bad-afterward, the term itself carried so many connotations that a new term, "Recession" was invented. The 2006-2010 run was worse than most of the "depressions" that occurred before 1929. The verbal shorthand itself becomes a matter of choice, kind of like how terms like "tolerance" have accrued new meanings in our politically charged world.
I will contest the assertion that the Stimulus packets even buffered a little bit-it is my belief that they EXTENDED the damage and the misery, where allowing the wall-street bankers and their fellow incompetents to actually FAIL might have resulted in more immediate pain, the recovery would have likely been quicker, and far more stable and lasting. The bail-outs did NOT remove the core problems that caused the crisis in the first place, and in my humble, honest opinion, likely rewarded the bad behaviours and bad actors that created the bubble, exploited the bubble, and eventually overloaded and collapsed the bubble-we saw this game before in the nineteen eighties iwth the S&L crisis (caused by CARTER deregulating Savings and Loans. CARTER, not Reagan, REAGAN wasn't in office until January 20, 1981, the deregulation of the S&L's occurred in 1979 amid double-digit interest rates and double-digit inflation rates, a condition known as "Stagflation" where economic growth was stagnant, but inflation was running amok.)
Saying that Bush's Stimulus, and Obama's 30% increase in the National DEBT (not just that year's deficit) softened the blow, you can use the same logic to claim that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan prevented an earlier eruption and also softened the blow.
Which, if you're familiar with history, was the position of several of LBJ's advisors regarding our involvement in Southeast Asia-"Guns and butter economics".
Now, personally, I don't buy that, but I've actually read enough to understand the hypotheticals- go into a war you don't care about the outcome of, you have men employed as soldiers to take them out of the general labor pool of job-seekers, you have people employed making uniforms, guns, bandages, packaging food (and growing/raising it), truck and vehicle companies making vehicles, helicopter plants making helicopters, stevedores, merchant seamen, and civilian aircrew and corporations delivering the goods to the front, plus everyone that relies on those people's business getting money.
in short, a government subsidized industry with little risk of having too many goods lowering the price, since most of the goods produced are disposeable, and since you don't really care about the outcome so long as the war can continue, you don't have to put forth the expensive, low-returns effort to actually win it, either diplomatically, or militarily.
And when this war peters out...well, hey, look-Arab Spring! we can have a whole new one ready to go by the time the existing one is used up!
The model fits with the half-assed version of Keynes that is popular in Dee-Cee among the shallow stuffed shirts we elect to office, as well as the equally shallow crooks THEY appoint in the upper levels of the civil service.
Problem being, of course, it's not a sustainable model, something that appears to be ignored generation after generation.
44 - handyguy
Again, lots of assertions, nothing to back them except more rhetoric.
45 - Cannonshop
#44 Handy, a lot of the 'supporting' evidence from your side relies on unsupportable assumptions-such as the effect the Stimulus had vs. the economic effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both are huge spending items (the Stim and the Wars), but the wars we can identify in rough terms how many people are directly being employed, and how many goods and services are being paid for to support them in the private sector.
Flip side, yeah, eight million jobs went away, and three million APPEAR to be added in the private sector...but how many of those hires come from contracts related to supporting Stimulus items, how many of them would have existed without it, and how many would exist regardless? Your figures can't answer that, so you're just using cherry-picked data to support your own empty rhetoric.
Some of which (Opposition to the wars, while supporting "Stimulus") is mutually contradictory since the logic for the first and the logic of the second conflict.
"Spending bad/Spending good" you need to pick ONE of those, you can't have it both ways.
In short, handy, at least MY rhetoric is consistent.
46 - handyguy
Consistently based on rhetoric and point-scoring, and very unconnected to facts or reasoning. Read more, spout off less. It really does help.
47 - Leroy
45-cannon: your analysis and reasoning are very shallow. Not all spending has the same effects on the economy. You really need to read more and educate yourself. Or take some post-grad coursework.
48 - Heloise
You guys wrote: "Obama's a politician, not a leader. He'd rather take a seat on the sidelines, ridiculing and jeering, than take the initiative in charting a course through hard times. He plays waiting games, baiting others to offer detailed solutions so he can attack them based on the current political wind speed and direction. Rather than facing up to difficult choices, he spews counterproductive rhetoric that divides when unity is sorely needed. Our president simply is not up to the commander-in-chief task."
I just watched "Inside Job" and read up on the meltdown and your comment is quite disingenuous given that those in power (rethugs and the damn dems) gave the damn bloated dollar away to a handful of the now-richest thugs in the world. No one went to jail, except a few Enron folks, who were the tip of the meltdown we know now. No in fact they were the model of what was to come.
I don't want to hear it's a lack of leadership on Obama's part. Not because I am lib or luv BHO but because it is way bigger than any POTUS it is the whole Washingtonian system. I am so sick of the finger pointing and not one of these including some world bankers like DSK not going to jail.
A few of the bastards did suicide but that is not enough. Why blame Obama or point out his idiosyncrecies and foibles and fake-outs before you blame the blasted system of vast corruption?
49 - Heloise
"An Election to Lose" Not, so not true. Just like McCain predicting that Palin will beat Obama...loser-talk.
50 - Clavos
Glenn,
Just saw your #41, even though it's now up two days.
Thanks! I think. :-)
51 - Cannonshop
#47 Leroy, where the money goes does matter-to some extent. But it matters where the money's going, and a road-project that costs a million dollars a mile to handle light traffic may stimulate a local economy for a few months-but when it's done, that stimulation's gone, while social programmes may make us all feel better about ourselves (better as in 'more civilized') but they're a rathole most of the time, the money goes in, and like buying a boat, it just goes in, and in, and in.
Never mind funding groups like ACORN, who don't actually DO ANYTHING that generates jobs.
I grew up in an area that was forced by politicians and activists into a service economy, it sucks, you starve the nine months of the year that the tourists aren't interested in coming down, and you can't eat the scenery, so you'll pardon if I don't believe in the vast cornucopia of benefit from Uncle Sam's Largesse, and you'll pardon if I think paying bankers to screw their customers, or paying off big contributors, or staging a phoney war, are bad ideas for the economy-I tend to think little booms followed by big hangovers are symptomatic of a disease, rather than a good way to run the operation.
52 - Clavos
like buying a boat, it just goes in, and in, and in.
Heh.
"Boat" is an acronym: Break Out Another Thousand.