At this point, do you really want your guy to win?

[ElvisL1ves]

*Originally posted by pantom *
**You gotta be Machiavellian here, unless you’re one of the two presidential contenders. Points to consider:

1 - The party in the White House always loses seats in the midterm elections. Given the narrowness of the lead the Republicans have, they’re guaranteed to lose control of both houses of Congress in '02 if Bush wins. The Dems, if Gore wins, fall even further behind.

Not the pattern the last 2 times - the GOP LOST House seats. I don’t see any defensible way to say WHAT will happen in 2002.

3 - It’s a slam dunk that the economy is going to suffer some sort of cyclical downturn sometime during the next four years. This will make whoever’s in the White House look bad, and will mean they’ll lose whatever little bit of advantage they might have had from incumbency. By '04, incumbency may even be a liability.

Possible, but certainly no “slam dunk”. The behavior of the economy in the post-deficit years is unpredictable, since we have no recent precedent.

Things could just as easily go in favor of the incumbent as against him. Meanwhile, I want my guy to have the power of incumbency. I don’t want to have to become so pessimistic.