Friday, January 6, 2012

The Economy Just Might Save Obama After All

According to NY Magazine….”when President Obama took office amid an economic crisis in 2009, the prevailing assumption was that the economy would be recovering by the time he ran for reelection, and that he’d therefore be a strong candidate to win a second term. For the last year or so, though, the economy has stubbornly failed to cooperate, and pundits began to acclimate themselves to the assumption that he’d be highly vulnerable, if not a dead man walking.

But the economy is, step by step, looking stronger.Today's report of 200,000 new jobs in December and 8.5 percent unemployment seems to fit a general trend. Jobless claims have fallen steadily, forecasters expect to see fast growth in the fourth quarter of 2011, and some of the disasters that held back the economy in the last year (the Japanese tsunami, the Libya oil shock, the Republican debt-ceiling hostage crisis) have all receded. With the obvious caveat that predictions are hard, it’s looking more and more like a real recovery may finally be upon us.

Obviously this matters primarily insofar as it alleviates mass immiseration. But the political implications cannot be denied – for all the time we in politics spend scrutinizing political messaging and tactics, the state of the economy matters far more than anything else. Political analysts are continuing to repeat the default assumption that Obama’s reelection will be tough, but it is starting to look like it might be not so tough after all….”

Read more at http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/01/economy-might-save-obama-after-all.html

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