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Presidential Election

Running for president in 2008, Barack Obama campaigned on change. But in the 2012 presidential elections, voters could be looking for a different kind of change. The Obama administration has scored several landmark achievements, the 2009 stimulus package, the healthcare overhaul, and financial reform bills for example. But the nation’s high unemployment and increasing federal debt may still have voters worried about the future. If so, Obama could face a tough reelection bid. With his approval ratings sinking to the low 40s, beltway buzz is already building for potential 2012 Republican candidates. Those mentioned include South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune, who made headlines in 2004 by defeating incumbent and then-Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle. Thune is up for reelection in 2010 but doesn’t have a challenger, though he has still raised over $11.5 million. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich has already said he is considering a presidential run and will make a decision early in 2011.

There are also several sitting and former governors in the mix. Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty will leave the governor’s mansion when his term ends this year and could be eyeing the presidency. He was rumored to be on John McCain’s short list of running mates in 2008. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal may also be eyeing the spot. He’s benefited from national name recognition due to his leadership during Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill, as has Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels appeals to many as a budget cutter uninterested in social issues. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who both ran for the Republican nomination in 2008, are expected to contend again in 2012. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is also mentioned regularly. And former Alaska governor turned Fox News pundit Sarah Palin can’t be ruled out as a potential 2012 contender. She’s become the darling of the Tea Party movement that has gained momentum this year. But with plenty of time until 2012, other presidential candidates still have some time to come out of the woodwork.

 

http://www.reuters.com/people/barack-obama

President Barack Obama is the incumbent candidate. Obama’s 2012 re-election hopes hinge on his ability to lower unemployment and soothe Americans’ worries over the state of the nation’s finances. On his watch, Americans witnessed the first ever credit downgrade of U.S. government bonds in early August. That followed a months-long battle between Democrats and Republicans over the U.S. budget, where the White House failed to win its proposed “grand bargain” of budget cuts and revenue raising.

During his first year, Obama scored major legislative wins like sweeping reform of healthcare laws and a massive overhaul of financial regulation. But the tides turned against the Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections, when they suffered their biggest loss in Congress since 1938 as voters punished them for the country’s continued high unemployment.



In foreign policy, Obama withdrew some troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and ordered the mission that killed Osama Bin Laden.

He entered politics in 1996, first serving in the Illinois State Senate and then in the U.S. Senate in 2004. After a well-received speech at the Democratic Party convention in Boston that year, Obama caught the party’s attention as a serious contender to unseat the Republican Party from office.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100107980/us-elections-2012-why-barack-obama-appears-to-be-heading-for-a-heavy-defeat/

US elections 2012: why Barack Obama could be heading for a heavy defeat

Last week Gallup released a series of surveys that underscored the scale of the challenge faced by Barack Obama as he seeks re-election in November 2012, including a poll showing a rejection of his big-government agenda. As I noted in an earlier piece, Obama could well end up becoming America’s last big-government president. For the White House, the Gallup figures are the stuff of nightmares: reading through them in their entirety it is hard not to draw the conclusion that Obama is heading towards a one-term presidency on the back of a record of failure. He will need a miracle to avoid a heavy defeat and remain in the Oval office.

Gallup’s findings reveal a disillusioned nation that has lost faith in the president’s leadership, or lack of it, with historic levels of public dissatisfaction. According to Gallup,

Americans' satisfaction with the way things are going in the United States remains at 11% in September as it was in August, the lowest readings on this measure since December 2008 – and among the worst on record in a trend that dates to 1979… 56% say they are "very dissatisfied." This is the highest level Gallup has ever found on this trend, which extends over a decade and a half. Just 1% of Americans say they are "very satisfied."

As Gallup notes, the current state of affairs looks ominous for Obama in 2012:

Americans' low level of satisfaction, coupled with their historically high levels of negativity about the U.S. government at this point, a little more than a year before the November 2012 presidential election, do not bode well for President Obama's current re-election chances and perhaps for the fate of incumbent congressmen and congresswomen in Washington. Republicans are particularly upset about the state of the nation, which may drive them to the polls in November 2012.

While the election remains a long way off, economic conditions (which are related to satisfaction) including the unemployment situation would need to make a significant turnaround for Americans' attitudes to improve. On that front, Americans are not hopeful that the economy will be any better a year from now.

Unsurprisingly, only 3 per cent of Republicans are satisfied with the direction America is taking under Obama. But the negative figures among Independents and Democrats are devastating for the president, just 13 months before the country goes to the polls. In Gallup polling, only 9 per cent of Independents and just 20 per cent of Democrats are satisfied with the course America is taking under Obama, the lowest levels of his presidency. Most other major polls paint a similar overall picture, with the latest RealClear Politics average showing a mere 21.4 per cent of Americans agreeing the country is moving in “the right direction.”

The White House will be especially concerned about the dramatic erosion of enthusiasm among the president’s strongest supporters. Gallup finds that Democrats are strikingly dispirited about voting in 2012, compared to their Republican opponents, with the lowest levels of relative enthusiasm among Democrats in a decade:

In thinking about the 2012 presidential election, 45% of Democrats and independents who lean Democratic say they are more enthusiastic about voting than usual, while nearly as many, 44%, are less enthusiastic. This is in sharp contrast to 2008 and, to a lesser extent, 2004, when the great majority of Democrats expressed heightened enthusiasm about voting.

Democrats' muted response to voting in 2012 also contrasts with Republicans' eagerness. Nearly 6 in 10 Republicans, 58%, describe themselves as more enthusiastic about voting. That is nearly identical to Republicans' average level of enthusiasm in 2004 (59%) and higher than it was at most points in 2008.

Democrats' net enthusiasm (+1) now trails Republicans' net enthusiasm (+28) by 27 percentage points. By contrast, Democrats held the advantage on net enthusiasm throughout 2008 — on several occasions, by better than 40-point margins. Democrats occasionally trailed Republicans in net enthusiasm in 2004, but never by as much as is seen today. The current balance of enthusiasm among Republicans and Democrats is similar to what Gallup found in the first few months of 2000.

Gallup's initial – and early – reading on Republicans' and Democrats' enthusiasm for 2012 indicates the emotional climate surrounding that election could be quite different from the climate in 2008, when Democrat Barack Obama won, partly owing to supermajority support from several groups. Democrats' current enthusiasm about voting is not only lower than it was in 2008, but lower than in 2004, when Republican George W. Bush won re-election.

Nothing short of a dramatic turnaround in the fortunes of the US economy is likely to save Obama next year. But there are no signs of an economic miracle on the horizon, and most Americans still feel as though the country is mired in a recession, with 14 million out of work, poor consumer confidence, falling house prices, and tumbling stock markets. As Gallup finds:

Three in four Americans assess the U.S. economy as no better than a year ago, with 35% saying it is about the same and 42% saying it is worse. Looking ahead to a year from now, Americans remain largely pessimistic, with 61% expecting economic conditions to be similar to now, or worse… Although the last U.S. recession officially ended in 2009, the poll finds 80% of Americans believing the economy is currently in a recession, similar to what Gallup measured in each of the previous three years.

Gallup’s polling in recent months has consistently demonstrated a pervasive gloom when it comes to voter perceptions of the US economy, and there is little confidence among the public that the administration’s big-government approach is going to succeed in creating jobs and getting the economy back on its feet. And the presidential race will undoubtedly be decided by the economy.

For the hope and change presidency the omens certainly don’t look good. Obama himself referred to his party's 2010 midterm defeat as a “shellacking.” 2012 however will probably be even worse for the White House, for this is a presidency in crisis, lacking leadership, wedded to the wrong policies, and presently heading for defeat in 2012. Barack Obama is facing the same fate as Jimmy Carter.

 

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/29/karl-rove-barack-obama-2012-election_n_1118531.html

Karl Rove: Barack Obama Preparing Vicious 2012 Election Battle Against GOP Candidate

Karl Rove predicted the 2012 presidential race would be vicious, claiming the Republican candidate will face a harsh election battle thanks to President Barack Obama's "hard-nosed Chicago pols."

The former White House deputy chief of staff for George W. Bush said Obama has "walked out on his daytime job" to focus exclusively on reelection and is ready to subject the GOP nominee "to the worst beating of their life, every day for roughly 11 months" in an interview with Newsmax. Rove said that while Obama is "very smart," he's "not a mere mortal, in his mind."

Discussing the deficit reduction efforts, Rove said Obama "made a fundamental mistake" by not getting more involved. Rove said he believes Obama chose not to do more to help with the debt crisis because "there was no upside for him to be involved."

"If he had gotten involved and achieved $1.2 trillion in real savings, it would have fired up the markets, given confidence that America is tackling its economic challenges and particularly its entitlement challenges, and would have put him in a better place for his reelection," Rove said.

Rove -- who has offered up advice to Obama before -- said that Obama has a chance at being reelected because "he's willing to say and do anything in order to get reelected."

"I'd say it's 55 percent that he doesn't get reelected, 45 percent that he might, and it's going to be a very close-run thing," Rove said.

Rove said he wasn't sure which candidate would earn the Republican nomination, but predicted a frontrunner would emerge sometime before the Iowa caucuses in January.

"We don't know," Rove said. "That's what we have these elections about, and I suspect in the next 30 some-odd days left before the vote in Iowa we're going to learn a lot about the capacity of these people to run a strong, effective campaign."

Obama wasn't the only target of Rove's criticism during the interview. The influential Republican also had harsh words for the Occupy Wall Street protesters, calling them "a group of nuts and lunatics."

 

 


Date: 2015-12-18; view: 764


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