Unemployment

[Kevin Seitzer]

I couldn't help but think of Wonderboy when I read the beginning of Nate Silver's column this morning:

Make no mistake: The higher the unemployment rate in November 2012, the less likely President Obama is to win a second term.

But we should be careful about asserting that there is any particular threshold at which Mr. Obama would go from favorite to underdog, or any magic number at which his re-election would either become impossible or a fait accompli. Historically, the relationship between the unemployment rate and a president’s performance at the next election is complicated and tenuous.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/02/on-the-maddeningly-inexact-relationship-between-unemployment-and-re-election/

[Moonlight J]

back up to 9.1 this morning as new job #'s were far off projections

[Wonderboy]

My guess is that he is a lock if unemployment gets down to or near or around or approximately 8% or thereabouts. And housing picks up. And they release the video of him killing bin Laden with his bare hands. Also he has to cure cancer.

At that point, I think his polling among Republicans goes up to about 26%.

[Kevin Seitzer]

At that point, I think his polling among Republicans goes up to about 26%.

Actually, his polling has gone up quite a bit recently among the Republican elderly. Which is why the Republicans are pushing so hard to get rid of Medicare quickly so that all those old people can be dead before they can vote for Obama in 2012.

[Wonderboy]

Actually, his polling has gone up quite a bit recently among the Republican elderly. Which is why the Republicans are pushing so hard to get rid of Medicare quickly so that all those old people can be dead before they can vote for Obama in 2012.

Those guys think of everything!

[cardboardbox]

good read and surprisingly many of the comments are thoughtful. I've been thinking for a while that dems are hoping 2012 ends up looking a lot like 1984 and this comment expands on that:

The point made WRT Reagan is a trifle misleading. Yes, he inherited a 7.5% unemployment rate from Carter, and won re-election when the rate was "only" 7.2%. But what Nate didn't mention was that unemeployment peaked half-way thorugh Reagan's first term -- literally in November of '82, right in time for the midterms -- to the highest level since the Great Depression: 10.8%

That the rate dropped over 3.5 points in the space of two years I think made a very real difference in the electoral outcome.

It wasn't the ONLY thing that made a difference, but it certainly added some weight to the economic turnaround that The Prez could claim as his own (whether or not he actually had anything to do with it, kinda like gas prices today).

If Obama could see a 3-point drop from the 9.6% rate of Nov2010, I think his luck at the polls would mirror Reagan's very well, don't you?

at 6.6% we can just cancel the election and go home.

[GTAXI]

We can only imagine how much worse the rate would be if Obama didn't "focus like a laser" on jobs.

[Moonlight J]

We can only imagine how much worse the rate would be if Obama didn't "focus like a laser" on jobs.

or if the GOP-House hadn't cut off the stimulus funds

[cardboardbox]

or if the GOP-House hadn't cut off the stimulus funds

which would put us closer to bankruptcy

[Kevin Seitzer]

which would put us closer to bankruptcy

We're pretty freaking far away from bankruptcy, but it's true that there's a tradeoff there. You can't really blame Obama for deficit spending and then at the same time for unemployment. The main lever the federal government has against unemployment is deficit spending.

[Moonlight J]

which would put us closer to bankruptcy

thanks to all of those lovely tax cuts

[cardboardbox]

thanks to all of those lovely tax cuts

If it were up to me I'd rarely give out tax cuts without a spending cut.

[Moonlight J]

If it were up to me I'd rarely give out tax cuts without a spending cut.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-09-13/rich-americans-save-money-from-tax-cuts-instead-of-spending-moody-s-says.html

I wouldn't be cutting taxes, period, right now.

[cardboardbox]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-0...dy-s-says.html

I wouldn't be cutting taxes, period, right now.

yes I know, tax and spend, tax and spend with an ample soaking of the rich in there for good measure.

[Wonderboy]

We're pretty freaking far away from bankruptcy, but it's true that there's a tradeoff there. You can't really blame Obama for deficit spending and then at the same time for unemployment. The main lever the federal government has against unemployment is deficit spending.

You know, it's amazing that you just summed up in plain English his entire position. And about 100 times better than he ever has. This is the link he needs to make more clear. Yes, deficit spending is bad, but so is 15% unemployment and a depression. He needs to say that we'd have been worse off with millions more unemployed but a balanced budget. And he needs to make clear that that is what the GOP would have done.

It was a choice of the lesser of two evils, and imo he made the correct choice.