Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktClub for Growth has a chart on S&P Returns for the 3rd year of recent presidents. 1995 under Clinton was awesome! The lesson? We should have elected Hilary Clinton.
I’m not a fan of such selective comparisons (if we compare every 3rd Sunday in a Leap Year and take an average, this president is the worst ever), but was curious if there’s anything meaningful to it.
Historically, incumbency is power. I can see Obama losing handily to a solid conservative Republican, given other externalities. If we had the economy of 1996, Obama would sail to victory. As it is, even without the primary challengers, I see Obama as vulnerable. But losing to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich? Incumbency is still awfully potent.
Still, it could be a very good time for a mediocre candidate to become President (unlike 2008), and natural cycles might make a president Romney look a lot better in 2014 than a president Romney would have looked in 2010. So, you never know.
Filed under: Uncategorized |
All Things in Moderation 
Not gonna happen. Obama will be re-elected, though perhaps not by the margin he would like.And I will iterate that we will see an Obama that is very different in the second term.Although, perhaps not. He strikes me as someone that plays the long-term. Kind of like China and all of their Five Year Plans. They know where they want to go, and they have devised steps by which to achieve it.By its very nature, our politics don't allow that. Business does, though. And guess who the gov't really is around here.I think it was Scott that mentioned it, about bail-outs and gov't, and wishing that the gov't wasn't so intertwined with business.Me, too, man. Me too.
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Taroya:I think it was Scott that mentioned it, about bail-outs and gov't, and wishing that the gov't wasn't so intertwined with business. Me, too, man. Me too.I'm pretty sure we don't want quite the same thing when we each say that we wish gov't wasn't so entangled with business.
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It means something.It means we have suffered through the worse recession of the post WW2 period.It doesn't have much to do with the outcome of the election, apparently – look at Bush 41's number.Brent is convinced this meltdown had a "but for" cause: the Fed's EZ money policy rebubbling after the dot.com bubble burst.I have been a proponent of the "perfect storm" theory: Fed EZ money; foreign sovereign funds buying up our debt like it was an addictive controlled substance; liar loans; unregulated and worse, densely invisible, tertiary derivatives; and bets on them posing falsely as insurance hedging;the repeated unreliability of the ratings' agencies; the risktaking that unified banks could justify; the FanFred politics – maybe the "but for" cause was all that foreign money looking for a home, but I am satisfied that Fed policy had a lot to do with it even if it might not have been the "but for" cause.I do not think this has been fixed in any real way. I do think government has a role in fixing it. Mortgage bankers are still unregulated. Ratings agencies get much more wrong and upside down then they should. The Fed is definitely loose with money.Financial catastrophes lead to longer term recessions, we are told, then business cycle glitches.Considering that the boom+bust of 2003-08 came with both EZ monetary and deficit fiscal policy, I am not cheered by D talk of "fiscal stimulus". However, I think reordering spending might prove worthwhile, especially if deferred maintenance of the public infrastructure were featured.All of the above was to say that the number means something but not for electoral politics, necessarily. And as we were warned as young prosecutors, "where there is smoke there is fire; it just may not be the fire you want to see."
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Scott, scott.. I am so disappointed.
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"where there is smoke there is fire; it just may not be the fire you want to see." I will have to rememer that one! I like that!
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Making a bit of a drive by here. I thumbed through this article while my wife was getting blood draw a few days after we all returned home and I thought it was an interesting perspective on Obama. http://www.esquire.com/features/people-who-matter-2010/barack-obama-father-0210-3
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Let's re-order those from highest to lowest.1995 – Re-elected1991 – Defeated2003 – Re-elected1983 – Re-elected1979 – Defeated1971 – Re-electedThe short answer to Kevin's question: No. It would be interesting to add in 1975, 1987, and 1999 in which the incumbent veep or president ran, but not in the third year.BB
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