Your best guess for Obama's probability of re-election

[Anonymous]

The Republicans best chance is Mitt, and there's no way he could beat Obama.

1) He's Mormon
2) He invented Obamacare

[Anonymous]

Intrade has Obama at 51%

[Anonymous]

if the economy shows any sign of life leading up to next year 60%

[takoma]

Huntsman is more consistently conservative than Romney, Mormon but not as into it as Romney, and more willing than Romney to openly accept science; I can almost see myself voting for him. Obviously he hasn't a chance at getting the nomination.

I think it's at least 50% for Obama. But I thought Reagan didn't have a chance, so you'd be nuts to take my prediction seriously.

[Anonymous]

takoma wrote:Huntsman is more consistently conservative than Romney, Mormon but not as into it as Romney, and more willing than Romney to openly accept science; I can almost see myself voting for him. Obviously he hasn't a chance at getting the nomination.

I think it's at least 50% for Obama. But I thought Reagan didn't have a chance, so you'd be nuts to take my prediction seriously.

Conservative here, Huntsman is my preference, too, but he's not really running this year. He's positioning himself for 2016, is how it seems to me.

[Anonymous]

Obama will be here for 4 more years and THANK YOU GOD.

...and the Nanny State will reign. That would be the final downfall of America.

[Anonymous]

Yes, America is obviously on the brink of downfall.

/sarcasm

[Anonymous]

Just as long as we don't have anyone else from Texas.

[Anonymous]

We need the democrats to clean up the mess the republicans made. Just like Clinton did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, America is obviously on the brink of downfall.

/sarcasm

downgraded bond ratings for the first time in history, record debts and deficits, historic unemployment rates, rising threat from China, India and Brazil, fleeing one war and losing another, education system in shambles. Yeah, I'd say so.

[takoma]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, America is obviously on the brink of downfall.

/sarcasm

downgraded bond ratings for the first time in history, record debts and deficits, historic unemployment rates, rising threat from China, India and Brazil, fleeing one war and losing another, education system in shambles. Yeah, I'd say so.

I thought I recalled a higher point years back, but the correlations escaped me until I looked at the graph. It looks like it went up over 8% toward the end of Nixon/Ford in '76, dropped under Carter down to about 6%, rose to over 10% around this time in Reagan's first term, but dropped to around 7.5% around the time he was re-elected, and continued dropping until halfway through Bush 1, when it rose again to 7.5%, which apparently helped elect Clinton, under whom it dropped to around 4%, and then bounced around a bit under Bush 2, until at the end of his term when it began the spike back up to around 10% early in Obama's term.

So not only is this rate not unprecedented, it is outdone by none other than Saint Ronald, and appears to generally rise under Republicans and fall under Democrats.

Or perhaps I am reading the graph incorrectly????

[Anonymous]

takoma wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes, America is obviously on the brink of downfall.

/sarcasm

downgraded bond ratings for the first time in history, record debts and deficits, historic unemployment rates, rising threat from China, India and Brazil, fleeing one war and losing another, education system in shambles. Yeah, I'd say so.

I thought I recalled a higher point years back, but the correlations escaped me until I looked at the graph. It looks like it went up over 8% toward the end of Nixon/Ford in '76, dropped under Carter down to about 6%, rose to over 10% around this time in Reagan's first term, but dropped to around 7.5% around the time he was re-elected, and continued dropping until halfway through Bush 1, when it rose again to 7.5%, which apparently helped elect Clinton, under whom it dropped to around 4%, and then bounced around a bit under Bush 2, until at the end of his term when it began the spike back up to around 10% early in Obama's term.

So not only is this rate not unprecedented, it is outdone by none other than Saint Ronald, and appears to generally rise under Republicans and fall under Democrats.

Or perhaps I am reading the graph incorrectly????

hasn't been this high this long since the Great Depression. And yeah, things were pretty miserable in the early 80s too. That was 30 years ago, and we didn't have the debt (percentage to GDP) we have now and we didn't have the demographics we have now. This is much much worse, and you know that.

[TheManWithAUsername]

Anonymous wrote:And yeah, things were pretty miserable in the early 80s too. That was 30 years ago, and we didn't have the debt (percentage to GDP) we have now and we didn't have the demographics we have now. This is much much worse, and you know that.

I assume you know that Rep administrations have been much, much worse for the debt:GDP ratio, so why are you so worried about another Dem administration?

[Anonymous]

TheManWithAUsername wrote:

Anonymous wrote:And yeah, things were pretty miserable in the early 80s too. That was 30 years ago, and we didn't have the debt (percentage to GDP) we have now and we didn't have the demographics we have now. This is much much worse, and you know that.

I assume you know that Rep administrations have been much, much worse for the debt:GDP ratio, so why are you so worried about another Dem administration?

what are you talking about? The question was whether these were bad times for the USA. The answer is yes. There have been other bad times as well, clearly. As for debt to GDP, I don't care who is president and who controls Congress as long as the debt gets under control. Right now it is clear that Obama is not the man to control the debt as he will have the four largest annual deficits in history after the end of his first term.

[takoma]

I notice the graph I posted earlier has disappeared, perhaps because it was a temporary graphic I called up, rather than a permanent URL. In case anyone wants to check back to it, I'll give it another stab: