Topic: Decline of the West
Democrats and progressives—but I repeat myself—keep insisting to one another and to the rest of us that Barack Obama is on course for reelection. The man is a superstar! He simply can’t be beat! This chorus of reassurance reverberates in shrill counterpoint to the month-by-month deterioration of the US economy that Martin Feldstein outlines in this op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal.
The Democrats’ rather forced optimism does, however, have some basis in reality. In Barack Obama they have a true, certain and undoubted 2012 candidate: a known quality with an impressive 2008 victory on his resume. The Republicans have a large and rather disorderly field of presidential hopefuls. So if the election were held today…
Ah, but the election’s in November 2012, and by then Barry will be facing just one GOP candidate. Maybe he’ll catch a break and that candidate will turn out to be Donald Trump. If I were him, however, I wouldn’t count on it. And if I were a Democrat I’d be very nervous indeed about Team Obama’s developing strategy: to deflect people’s attention from the President’s spotty record by running against “Republican extremism.” To that, the GOP candidate will have a powerful counterblast in the form of this simple question to voters: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?”
