Obama Says His Election Odds are Better in 2012 Than 2008

It's pretty clear now that the Republican field isn't strong enough. Don't give me this Ron Paul crap either. Ron Paul is too intellectual for the masses in a general election. Obama will present a simple, fatherly image to the voters and get re-elected on simplicity, much like Bush did, rather than change. Obama will beat Romney easily, too. With 50% of Americans on the big government dole things don't look good for the workers who pay for them. The MSM and the democrat dependents (43%) will still vote for him. This percentage has not changed since the days of Bill Clinton. In order to defeat Obama, the other 57% has to vote for the other guy. - anonymous

Obama: Election Odds Better in 2012 Than 2008

September 15, 2011

ABC News - At a campaign fundraiser Thursday night in Washington, D.C., President Obama said he believes his chances of being reelected in 2012 are “much higher” than they were in 2008.

“Over the last couple of months there have been Democrats who voiced concerns and nervousness about, well, in this kind of economy, isn’t this just — aren’t these just huge headwinds in terms of your reelection?” Obama said.

“And I just have to remind people that, here’s one thing I know for certain: the odds of me being reelected are much higher than the odds of me being elected in the first place.”

Obama made the remarks before a gathering of 50 donors to his reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee who each paid $35,800 to attend.

The event was held at the Georgetown home of former U.S. ambassador to Portugal Elizabeth Frawley Bagley.

“We remain very confident about our ability to win a contest of ideas in 2012,” Obama said, “as long as we can get the message out.”

Obama's confidence in reelection is eerily similar to that of George W. Bush:

Lousy Economy Won't Sink Obama

June 6, 2011

The Daily Beast - Unemployment has edged up again two months in a row, and economic conditions are bad for most Americans, but the president’s strong personal approval ratings and a roster of weak potential GOP opponents mean he will win a second term, writes Peter Beinart.

For a couple of years now, optimists about Barack Obama’s reelection prospects (myself included) have peddled the Ronald Reagan analogy. Reagan, you may remember, won 49 states in 1984 with the unemployment rate at 7.4 percent. The lesson: a president overseeing a weak economy can still win reelection—easily—if people believe the worst is over and prosperity is about to return.

The recent jobs numbers make that analogy less convincing. In 1982, when Reagan got shellacked in the midterm elections, the unemployment rate was near 11 percent. But it dropped sharply in 1983 and 1984. This March, when unemployment dipped to less than 9 percent (from almost 10 last November), it looked like Obama might benefit from a similar trajectory. But now that unemployment has edged up again for two months in a row, that looks unlikely. The best bet is that when voters go to the polls next fall the economy won’t be in free fall, as it was when Obama took office. But neither will it have turned the corner. For most Americans, it will have been lousy for as long as Barack Obama was president, and there will be no tangible evidence that it will get any better in his second term.

So why do I still think Obama will win in 2012? Because if the Ronald Reagan analogy may not exactly hold, the George W. Bush analogy just might. Unemployment wasn’t particularly high when Bush sought reelection in 2004, but Americans were in a sour mood nonetheless. Throughout the summer and fall of 2004, a clear majority of Americans said the country was on the wrong track. The numbers, in fact, were only marginally better then than they are now. So how did Bush win? For one thing, people’s feelings about him outpaced their feelings about the state of the country. Despite saying the country was on the wrong track, a slight majority of Americans approved of his job performance, and he was reelected by essentially that margin.

One explanation is that some portion of Americans simply liked Bush personally, even though they didn’t think America was faring very well on his watch. For some, it may have been his personal rectitude after Bill Clinton. For others, it was his religiosity. For others, it was the sense that he was a regular guy. Obama enjoys a similar dynamic. Maybe it is intelligence and eloquence. Maybe it is the fact that he, like Bush, seems comfortable in his own skin. Maybe it is his own reputation for rectitude, a reputation buttressed by the lack of scandals in his administration. Maybe it is a lingering pride in what his election says about America. This isn’t true for all presidents. Americans never thought very highly of Bill Clinton as a person even as they acknowledged that the country was thriving under his leadership. But for whatever reason, Americans seem a little softer on Obama than the hard economic realities would suggest.

The second thing that helped Bush was a weak opponent. From the beginning of the race, Bush’s advisers insisted that the 2004 election was a choice between him and his opponent, not a referendum on his presidency. And they succeeded in making John Kerry’s alleged flip-flopping a dominant factor in the race. We don’t know who the Republicans will nominate in 2012, but a strong candidate will need to appear:

1) up to the job,
2) like a person of conviction,
3) able to relate to ordinary Americans and
4) ideologically mainstream.

Right now, Mitt Romney struggles with numbers 2 and 3. Tim Pawlenty struggles with number1. Newt Gingrich struggles with number 3. Sarah Palin, Michelle Bachman and Herman Cain struggle with numbers 1 and 4.

Perhaps one of them will overcome those deficiencies, and perhaps Jon Huntsman will turn out to have none of the weaknesses, but as of now, it looks like a field of substantially flawed candidates. And by 2012, they may look even more flawed. In a party as ideologically charged as today’s GOP, it’s enormously difficult to win over base voters—and bring them to the polls in November—while also appearing ideologically mainstream. Obama will exploit that.

The happier Rush Limbaugh is with the Republican nominee, the easier it will be for Obama to galvanize Democrats to go to the polls.

Yes, liberals are not as passionate about Obama as they once were. But conservatives were not as passionate about Bush either, and he got a larger base turnout in 2004 than 2000, largely because in this hyper-polarized age, it’s not hard to scare your core voters about the other side.

Many things could upend this analysis. It depends on Obama running as good a campaign as he did last time and performing as well in debates. And it depends on the economy merely stagnating, not collapsing. But in this moment of sudden pessimism about Obama’s chances, it’s worth remembering that presidential elections are not exercises in econometrics. Candidates matter, and so far, at least, it looks likely that the better one will be the guy occupying the White House right now.