Posted on 07/13/2010 6:29:45 AM PDT by madprof98
I get a kick out of all these pronouncements that Barack Obama is doomed to be a one-term president. In fact, Id put his odds of re-election at this point at roughly 2-1 in favor, for several reasons.
One is history.
In the second year of his presidency, Obamas job approval rating is hovering in the high 40s. The most recent Rasmussen numbers have him at 49 percent approval, 50 percent disapproval. Gallups numbers are 47/46. Given the troubled economy, those are actually very strong numbers. For example, compare them to Ronald Reagans numbers in 1982, which was the Gippers second year in the White House at a time of significant if less traumatic economic turmoil.
As Gallup notes:
The publics view of the economy remained sour, and the presidents ratings during 1982 stayed concomitantly low, in the 40% range, ending the year at 41%. The 1982 midterm elections were not good ones for Reagan and for the GOP. The Republicans lost about 25 seats in the House.
Obamas numbers are considerably stronger than those of Reagan at a comparable time in his presidency. In fact, by the beginning of 1983, Reagans job-approval numbers fell to 35 percent, yet as we all know he went on to defeat Walter Mondale in a landslide in 1984, pulling 59 percent of the vote compared to Mondales 41 percent.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.ajc.com ...
Jay, first, in case you hadn’t noticed, your guy’s not Reagan.
Second, George Bush (41) had ratings just slightly lower than God right after the Gulf War in 1991. Remember his second term?
Speaking of which, third, I remember 1992, and it’s not like anybody from the Democrats looked likely to beat Poppy. Especially Bill Clinton. (Heck, Bubba won the nomination because except for Jerry Brown, pretty much nobody else thought it was worth running for that year.) I remember Rush Limbaugh sending one of the staffers downstairs and across the street from his studio at WABC to Madison Square Garden, where the Democrats were having their convention, with pitchers of grape Kool-Aid. The implication being that the Dems were basically committing electoral suicide by nominating Bubba. Again...how’d that work out? This isn’t going to be like ‘92, where nobody wanted to be the lamb on the altar. There are any number of Republican candidates who want into this race like Bubba wants into Lindsay Lohan, who think they can beat your guy like a drum...and some of them just might be right.
And finally...Hillary wants to be president. Hillary would love to be the first female president. She’s probably never in her adult life not wanted it. She wanted it when she was in Arkansas, she wanted it in ‘92, she wanted it in ‘96, she wanted it when she ran for Senate in 2000, and she certainly wanted it in ‘08. She still wants it. She is looking for the next realistic opportunity to make a run at it. Believe this like Billy Graham believes in Jesus: The moment Hillary Clinton thinks she has a realistic shot at beating Barack Obama for the nomination and then winning the general election, it doesn’t matter how much or even if she genuinely enjoys being Secretary of State, she is out of there.
Saul Alinsky's Rule 5 (Ridicule is man's most potent weapon) was in full operation, and people were afraid to bring it up.
Now that we all know about Alinsky and Cloward-Piven, the rules have changed.
True. A Biden Administration would be an affable buffoonery.
In reality, Truman had essentially two terms in office - under the 22nd Amendment he wouldn't have been qualified to run for reelection in 1952, if not for the clause in it which grandfathered him into eligibility.No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this Article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President, when this Article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this Article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term.And in fact Truman did not run in 1952; Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson in that year.
And, in a counterfactual, Kennedy would almost certainly have won reelection in 1964 had he not been shot. Johnson's election could be counted as a second term for Kennedy much as GHWB's election was a "third Reagan election."Those two cases water down your thesis somewhat - but the point remains that since 1950 no Democrat president has been able to defend what it pleases them to call "liberalism" in a presidential election after having modeled it in the White House for four years. And indeed, they inverted the meaning of "liberalism" in the 1920s to make it a euphemism for socialism.
Except for one thing... if the country defaults, well then, there will likely be rioting in the streets, and the sitting prez takes up dictatorial rule... just think of all the possibilities for 0...
Its no wonder the small business citizenry has no confidence in the future to expand, everyone’s afraid all they’ve earned will be absconded from them by the joker.
Remember that the press muppets were telling us this same kind of crap all through 1979-80 when Carter was up for re-election. They tried to buffalo people just like they did in 2008, only then it was all about how dangerous a bumpkin, how much of a Hollywood nobody Ronald Reagan was.
He crushed Carter on Election Night, and I was out-of-my-gourd happy, but I was also amazed. I had had no idea Reagan was as strong as that -- all because of the b.s. job by the media slimes.
Here we go again. Go git 'em, Sarah!!
We’ll see. The Republicans need to get their act together, that’s for sure. I think things will get much worse for 0bama in the future as tax cuts are set to expire, which will further exacerbate the unemployment rate and economic decline. Further, a lot of stupid people thought that voting for 0bama would somehow make up for past racial problems. Now they are finding that having 0bama in office seems to be making these racial tensions much worse, not better.
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