Like many of you I am still disappointed in many of the candidates proposing to run against the Pharaoh in 2012 with perhaps a few, fresh exceptions (Herman Cain, et. al.). But, I'm also beginning to re-think that conditions are right for a political defeat for The ONE. Sure, he has a 60% approval rating (laughable, seeing as this poll was heavily weighted towards Dems) but he can be defeated. He cannot run from a bad economy (that he inherited from W by the way...are we still hearing that excuse?) that his steroidal, Keynesian policies have made far worse.
$4.00 a gallon gas and 9% unemployment...and, now, inflation, the dirty, little secret that the MSM doesn't want to touch. Can you imagine the jeers that the MSM would be throwing at W right now if he were presiding over this current economy?
Anyway, I found this interesting article from CNN Money, written my Nina Easton (she is an editor for
Fortune Magazine and appears on the FoxNews Sunday Power Panel from time-to-time), all emphasis is my own...and I too remember the same gas lines that she's referring to:
Inflation: Poison for Obama in 2012
By Nina Easton, senior editor-at-large @CNNMoney May 9, 2011: 7:22 AM ET
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One of my most vivid memories from 1974 was the gas station at the foot of the hill below my Southern California high school -- car lines snaking out into the street, heralding the failure of the government's price controls and lame ideas such as odd-even rationing.
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We haven't experienced real inflation in more than a generation, so this economic blight is mostly an uncertain stranger to pollsters and political strategists -- as well as to voters under 50. But if inflation warnings are right, this stranger could become the dark horse of the 2012 election and beyond.
We know that inflation distorts economic behavior. In the 1970s a combination of high tax rates and inflation prompted investors to flee production in favor of protection. "Give me shelter," recalls Michael Barone, principal co-author of the annual Almanac of American Politics, referring to not only tax behavior but also investments in assets like real estate to beat inflation rates. But inflation also affects voting behavior -- and could exacerbate already widespread anxiety and uncertainty about a struggling economy and President Obama's reaction to it. With rising prices on everything from big-ticket items like college tuition to food and gas, consumers "feel they don't have any safe ground to stand on," Barone notes.
As both President Carter and the late President Ford could attest, that's not a good place for an incumbent to be. John Huizinga, an economist at the University of Chicago, rightly notes that while unemployment affects some people -- and rattles many more -- "inflation affects everyone."
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Even if system-wide inflation doesn't return in this election cycle, rising gas and food prices will be on the minds of voters. President Obama already faces an unemployment rate that has only recently slipped below 9%, worsened by long-term jobless rates unprecedented since World War II. The Congressional Budget Office now predicts an unemployment rate of 8.2% on Election Day 2012; no President since F.D.R. has been reelected with unemployment over 8%.
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Add inflation to that mix and it could become a poisonous stew for Democrats.
Full commentary:
http://money.cnn.com/2011/05/09/news/economy/obama_inflation_threat.fortune/index.htm
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