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My prediction..
BHO wins by a nose.

This is not 1979 to 1980. Economic conditions were much worse. Yeah,yeah, I know, they’re cooking the books on unemployment and inflation. Our short term and long term prospects are dismal but it isn’t as bad as it was then yet.

Demographics and the make up of the electorate was different then, also.

With more people than ever on the dole, conservatives would be in a better position when the day of reckoning comes verse just trying to nominate a Republican just to get President Cloward-Piven out of office

This is not 1979 to 1980. Economic conditions were much worse.

Federal Debt to GDP was < 50% in 1980, it's now over 100%, with both being just over $15 trillion.

What this means is that unless the Federal government starts running large annual surpluses and paying down debt then it is basically not going to be able to ever pay back the principal; it's actually just rolling over principal, paying interest only - and even borrowing more principal every day. The key is that it is not rolling over by choice, but because it can't repay principal. There is no way to justify lending to such an entity, as it is only a matter of time until interest payments can't be made. At that time, ALL holders of the debt will see their bonds default and they will lose almost all of their principal. This is what is already happening in Europe.

Federal debt is increasing more than twice as fast (8%) as GDP (2%), so in less than 10 years the ratio would hypothetically reach 150%, an utterly nonsensical level.

And the major Western nations are all in the same boat.

There are not enough buyers of sovereign debt or even enough money in the world to continue to expand the worldwide sovereign debt bubble.

Almost nothing is said on most of the news about this, except some sheepish blabbering.

The combined balance sheet of the largest 3 French banks is 3 times the size of the GDP of France. That would be like the top 3 American banks having combined assets of $45 trillion. That's insane.

The assets of most major banks around the world include far too much worthless sovereign debt - which must be written off at some point - and they in truth are insolvent. It wouldn't actually be as bad to let most major banks simulaneously go bankrupt as it would be to let the bubble continue to grow. But politicians continue expanding the bubble full speed ahead, not wanting a collapse to occur on their watch.

New laws and regulation continue to be created at an ever-increasing pace in the U.S., which is what causes non-consumer businesses to offshore jobs and therefore a US structural unemployment problem. As long as that persists, US GDP growth will be slim to none.

The 1970's economic problems were just the start of a long slide downhill. The computer boom and the Reagan effect of the 1980's created prosperity, but the underlying problems of regulation, outsourcing and big government continued to mount.

We've had a problem since about 1960 but we've continued to march in the wrong direction economically, governmentally and politically. The time is coming to pay the piper but the entire planet is whistling past the graveyard.

If the charade can be extended to November 2012 Obama has some sort of chance, but it IMHO that's unlikely.