Thank you for your post.
It shows how spoiled we’ve become as a nation when we take for granted that we have 4.5% unemployment, great economic growth, and we haven’t been successfully attacked in six years.
And John Kerry wanted to raise our taxes, postpone the elections in Iraq, and pull our troops out!
It will be very interesting to see 1) what the economy looks like next year at this time 2) what the ‘experts’ think about the economy (ranging from actual investors to pundits to media reports about what it actually is and 3) how that factors into an election with 2 non-incumbents challenging. All the usual economic electoral predictors could concievable be dismissed.
Usually, an ‘incumbent’ (pres or VP) is running and the economy is usually one of the top factors as to whether he (no she’s yet) succeeds.
But w/ no incumbent (similar to 1974? as most recent, w/ Ford not really being an incumbent?), we’d have to be almost 40 years distant from that situation (1968).
So how useful would most economic model predictions be for predicting the outcome given the largely changed economic environmet? Declining unions, expanding boomers, service sector vs manufaturing vs outsourcing, demographics, etc.
Unfortunately, given the absence of reliable information (and reliable candidates) the media will likely help skew the information the public receives to favor the dems.
Hey wonder what Kerry's voter approval number would be today. Think it would reach 50+?