The economy? If not the economy then what?
I’d say Iran is a pretty good possibility.
European debt crisis, unemployment recovery, western states uranium mining, Russian and Cuban environmental concerns from increased drilling activity, domestic pollution concerns from fracking, Arab Spring struggles with democracy, there’s plenty of viable candidates.
Paradoxically, that was what the 2008 election was about.
How could it not be the economy? At this point I don’t think it’s even possible for a turn around that would have the issue off the table in November.
This is going to be a domestic-policy election year, not a foreign-policy election year.
The future never happened.
Citizen’s United means this election cycle will be about lies propagated by mystery money.
That’s every election everywhere.
I’m concerned about Iran. Worried about that recent sentence of death to the American from Arizona, among other things.
Clearly the economy is going to be the biggest issue. After that it’s hard to say. There are a whole set of national security issues of which Iran is probably the most important.
It’s going to be mainly about the economy. But if there is some major foreign policy issue that comes up, then that could easy take second place. If Iraq falls back into civil war, that could be a problem for Obama, even if there isn’t really a good solution. Voters don’t have to be rational.
Certainly not, because if there were such a turnaround, then the turnaround would become the major issue, and whoever was able to claim credit for it (almost certainly Obama) would coast to an easy landslide.
Of course, if we still had the troops there like before, enduring all the same shit as before at the same expense, that could be a problem for Obama in November too. Either way. Like you said, voters don’t have to be rational. And sometimes, a president is faced with a problem that has no solution that does not present another problem.
. . . And that makes an economic turnaround impossible why?
I didn’t say that an economic turnaround was impossible; I said that it was impossible for an economic turnaround to take the economy off the table as the major issue. Either we’ll have a turnaround or we won’t, and either way, the economy will still be the major issue.
If only either Obama or Romney has enough courage like Teddy Roosevelt and say “Hakmati alive or the Ayatollah and Ahmadinejad dead!”.
Great presidents are faced with problems and then find solutions; presidents that are beyond greatness find problems and then find solutions.
If the economy stays on it’s current trajectory, then it’s Iran closing in on Israel’s timeline to take out their nukes. This has major global implications.
Which was followed up by Roosevelt paying Perdicaris’s ransom. And it turned out Perdicaris wasn’t even a US citizen. I prefer Obama stick to not making blustering chest-thumping statements for domestic political consumption and then giving the Iranians money.