Monday, August 8, 2011

Predictions regarding the 2012 Elections

1. Obama will win the election if gasoline prices in most of the US are less than $3 a gallon. He will lose if they are $4 a gallon or more. Between those two price points, victory will be largely a matter of who the Republicans put forward after the primary.
The exception to this is if the gasoline price drops because the economy has utterly tanked. By this I mean a significant further reduction of the Labor Force Participation rate, which is currently at a low not seen since 1984.
I base this prediction on the fact that the press will be totally in the tank for Obama, as will the other organs of the culture. With a neutral press he'd be totally toast, but we don't have such a press.
2. The House will likely stay approximately the same, probably shifting only slightly. The Senate will probably become somewhat more Republican.
3. Whoever wins the election will regret it, and will almost certainly find their party on the outs in 2016. The economic headwinds are strong, and actually solving our fiscal problems would incite so much rage that it would kill the party associated with a bona fide solution (most of our spending is entitlements and defense, both of which have powerful bases of support).

But for a reactionary, all these things are not bad things. We are, after all, long volatility.

1 comment:

TJIC said...

I agree with these predictions, especially #3.

I hope that Obama wins, because we're not going to see a real recovery in the next presidential term, and I want his party to be tarred with the inevitable mess.

...not that the Republicans are MUCH better, but they are just a TAD better.