No. This country is bright enough to give him four more years. Bush had eight years to make the mess, and it’s going to take that long to clean it up.
Shit. If we’re lucky, maybe only ten to twelve years. And that is assuming the cheerful and complete cooperation of the Republicans!
He would also have to explain how RealClearPolitics no toss ups map has Obama winning 332 to 206, meaning that they think that almost every toss up state will break for Obama.
I’ve been saying this for a long time, but I keep hedging by adding “barring a meteor strike” - a metaphor for an event that wipes out all the previous polls and changes everything. There’s always a nonzero chance of that, although it’s never happened in any real presidential election. The Akin mess in Missouri is the closest thing we’ve seen in years. But a meteor strike wipes out all predictions. You don’t get to say, see, I told you Romney would win.
Although if anyone is a time traveler with foreknowledge of the election, a poster named Klaatu would be the best bet.
They down ticket races are going to be far more interesting on election night than the Presidential race.
I agree with this. A few nail-biters as well.
Longer. The best economist estimates when the smoke cleared in 2008/2009 were at least 12 years for the real estate markets to recover, if then. Yeah, it was that fucking bad.
Oh, I agree! But the Republicans, as Clinton pointed out, are saying “He couldn’t do it it in four years, give it back to us.”
Also, in a fair nod to the other side, ALL the damage didn’t just take place between 2000-2008.
That’s true. Republican obstructionism in 2009 bears some of the blame.
Election goes to the SCOTUS?
Be nice. They are Republicans, for them math is hard. It shows in their economic policy also.
For Romney to win he’d have to turn it around now or really do a great job in the debates. Given that he couldn’t really beat the horde of morons he was debating against in the primaries (they beat themselves mostly) the debate path is not too likely. For the other, the convention is a good indicator of how their campaign is going. They take some of the most valuable time they have and give it to a guy talking to a chair. Now Romney takes one of the first weeks of the real campaign and wastes it on yet another foreign policy gaffe.
QE3 isn’t going to help him either. Maybe the Fed knows they won’t have to deal with Romney in the White House?
Yeah. 
I meant pre-2000. Some of what we have in place was decades in the making.
I was actually just reading a piece that says the debates don’t shift the polls very much anyway, historically. If the race is really tight they might matter, but they generally don’t produce big swings.
Are you kidding me? Before the Republican primary, we had all but lost hope of Obama’s reelection. I didn’t really get optomistic and enthusiastic about his chances until the DNC.
The fed doesn’t (or at least shouldn’t) do politics. I think we are in danger of underestimating Romney on the debates. Obama’s not the only one that heard of the rope-a-dope.
Please speak for yourself.
Vaguely along those lines, I have an amusing anecdote. My parents have friends, Mr and Mrs X, who they have often spent Presidential election nights with and the reason, as Mr X describes it that he likes to spend election night with my parents is that “[jshore’s father] was the only one who on the evening of the 1972 election still thought that McGovern might be able to pull it out.”
Nonsense.
I for one have been saying since January 21, 2009 that Obama’s re-election was in the bag. I’ve never thought otherwise.
Aha, I think I figured out one possible source of all this Republican optimism: this.
That’s adorable.
Pantleg-in-mouth, you mean.