It’s unlikely that same-sex marriage is going to push the economy out of the dominant role in this election. Indeed, short of a major international incident, it is unlikely that any other issue will displace the economic ones. But gay marriage was the most discussed issue last week.
One way to explain Sen. Richard Lugar’s loss to state Treasurer Richard Mourdock in this week’s Indiana Republican primary is to attribute it to a tea party takeover of the GOP. A second explanation is that a venerable public servant overstayed his welcome and ran for reelection one time too many.
If the presidential race were a football game, we would be at halftime. Admittedly, that metaphor comes up short. Having avoided a nomination challenge, President Obama’s team effectively got a bye and goes straight to the finals starting in September.
One distinct possibility in this election year has always been that a major international incident, very possibly in the Middle East, could push a close presidential election decisively in one direction or the other.
When speaking with me about politics, one of my good friends will sometimes follow up with the question, “OK, now, Charlie, if you are wrong, why are you wrong?” For well over 40 years, this friend has been involved in markets, politics, and policy on Wall Street and inside presidential administrations.
Regular readers of this column know that in analyzing the 2012 presidential race, I have been preoccupied—some would say obsessed—with the state and direction of the U.S. economy. Presidential elections have many moving parts and can turn on many things, but rarely is a single factor more important than the economy when an incumbent is up for reelection.
The Republican presidential nomination is essentially settled. A wave of polls, focus groups, and other survey research is taking the temperature of the race, with certain clear themes emerging.
For the past year or so, we’ve seen television ads for a prescription drug designed to help men with something called “Low T,” which turns out to mean low testosterone levels (who knew?). As I waded through tons of polling data and focus-group findings this week, it hit me.
The pace of the exceedingly fragile economic recovery over the 204 days between now and the Nov. 6 election is a lot more important than anything that either President Obama or Mitt Romney says over the course of the campaign.
Presidential elections have a lot of moving parts. They rarely turn on any single factor or issue. Take, for example, the tensions over Tehran’s nuclear aspirations and the possibility of an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities by either Israel or the United States. In five minutes, the tone and direction of this election could completely change.
With the election less than seven months away one outcome is likely: whichever party ends up controlling the House will have a smaller majority than the 242-193 one Republicans enjoy now (just under 56 percent); and the Senate's will be closer than Democrats' 53-47.
Rick Santorum has every right to continue his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, just as Edward Kennedy did when he carried his fight against President Carter to the Democratic convention in 1980, and just as Hillary Rodham Clinton did through the last of the primaries four years ago.
When you look back at Barack Obama’s 7-point victory over John McCain in 2008, think of a four-legged stool. Obama needed each leg to support his candidacy. One leg was independent voters (29 percent of the vote); they chose Obama over McCain by 8 percentage points, 52 percent to 44 percent.
Count me among the few who don’t believe that this week’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka “Obamacare,” and whatever ruling the justices announce, will be pivotal in determining President Obama’s fate in November.
Ever since former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s candidacy fizzled after August’s Iowa Republican straw poll, I’ve been pretty convinced that Mitt Romney would end up winning the GOP’s 2012 presidential nomination. I had moments of doubt, such as after his crushing loss to Newt Gingrich in South Carolina. If Romney had fallen short in the next event, in Florida, he might have been toast.
There are plenty of good reasons why Rep. Jean Schmidt’s Republican primary loss last week in Ohio’s 2nd District to Brad Wenstrup, a tea-partying podiatric surgeon and an Iraq war veteran, should not be extrapolated to other congressional districts. For one thing, Schmidt has chronically underperformed in GOP primaries.
When Mark Twain popularized the famous line attributed to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli about lies coming in three varieties, “lies, damned lies, and statistics,” a lot of people probably assumed that they were both thinking about politics and/or economics.
Republicans, who only weeks ago could not imagine how President Obama could be reelected, sure are trying hard to make it happen. Through 11 primaries and caucuses going into Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney had accumulated more delegates than Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul combined.
The results of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released on Monday confirm previous survey data that show the Republican Party has suffered brand damage over the past few months.
Republican strategists and the GOP establishment weren’t breathing that much easier on Wednesday, the day after Mitt Romney’s presidential primary victories in Arizona and Michigan, than they had been the day before. But at least they were breathing. Many had been holding their breath after Rick Santorum’s wins in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri on Feb. 7.
Polls these days show an unusually large degree of volatility. In the nine most recent polls covered by RealClearPolitics.com , President Obama’s job approval ratings have ranged from 44 percent to 53 percent, the highest any national poll has shown since last May, soon after Osama bin Laden was killed.
It’s misleading to say that the state of the economy determines whether a president will win reelection. But it is fair to say that when a White House incumbent is running for a second term, the election is first and foremost a referendum on that president; the single most important factor that voters consider in assessing a president is the state and direction of the economy.
The current spike in gasoline prices and the flap over the Obama administration’s proposed requirement that religiously affiliated institutions provide their employees health insurance covering contraception are useful reminders that economics and politics are both dynamic, not static.
It’s too early to know for sure what the fallout will be from the fight over the Obama administration’s proposed—and, more recently, compromised—requirement for religiously affiliated institutions to provide health insurance that covers contraception. A week ago, before the flap, a string of positive economic news had helped Obama reach a 49 percent Gallup job-approval rating.
