2 Factors That Will Seriously Influence the 2012 Presidential Election

The Ivory Tower I live in where everything makes much more sense

Unfortunately, whenever it comes to political topics, almost every article or piece of analysis is so tied into someone’s personal political perspective that very little information is ever shared. The 2012 Presidential election is no different. If someone is a diehard Republican, the person probably doesn’t like President Obama and will argue all sorts of things negative about him, his current administration and his future prospects. If someone is a diehard Democrat, chances are pretty good that the person will see only great things about President Obama and horrible things about any conservative, and blinders will lead the conversation that way. Almost always, someone on one side of the fence will see any analysis that favors the other side as biased, and everything that favors his or her side as on the level. Some things rarely change.

I’ll come straight out and say it. I don’t really care who wins the presidency in 2012. If Obama wins, great. If a random Republican wins, I’m fine with it. If Zippy the Wonder Clown wins, I’ll dust off my clown shoes and laugh right alongside him. Again, I don’t have a stake in this race.

What I do have is a perspective that is seeing where things are starting to come out right now. And two factors will make the biggest difference for 2010. Not really anything else, aside from some cataclysmic event or great deal of fortune that no one has anticipated. Those sorts of things always make a difference, and as I can’t predict those sors of things, I’ll just leave it at that. So, let’s talk about the two factors.

1. The Economy and Jobs. Right now, this is probably the one factor that will make or break a reelection for President Obama. And unfortunately, most economists don’t seem to have a clue on this one, so I’ve stopped listening to them because most of them are myopic tunnel breathers who are so stuck in their own thoughts that they haven’t come up for air to realize what’s really going on. First off, the economy is not the stock market, or even the housing market. It’s not the banks. It’s not the future of Google, Best Buy, IBM, Microsoft, GM, Ford or Texaco. What really matters right now is the perception of jobs. And I don’t mean Steve Jobs. People are out of work, and the job outcome is getting worse, not better. Just as the Bush Administration tried to lie its ass off and pretend that it was creating new jobs, the Obama Administration is doing the same thing. And like before, people don’t buy hype and crap for long. When people are out of work, see other people losing their jobs, hear nothing but horrific stories of the job market, a Wall Street economist talking about how great the job market is means very little.

Just today, the Navy announced it was going to be letting sailors go and not approving as many for continuing their careers. The Air Force is about to do the same thing. The Army is about to move into a wind-down with its conflicts, and the obvious next step is going to be the same kind of layoffs there as well. Government has decided the military is no longer off limits for cuts, so cutting is exactly what’s going to happen. More people are going to lose jobs and be tossed out of the military when their tours are complete. This means a whole bunch of young people are going to be pushed out into an already depressed job market. More people are going to be competing for the same soft labor jobs that have been so scarce already.

What exactly does that mean? Well, let me ask you this. Do you really want thousands of people who just came back from war put into no-win labor markets where they trade stability for dispair and uncertainty? I’m not sure I do. But then no one really asks me these things. I’m not exactly sure I feel all that comfortable with discouraged, out of work, young men who have been carrying around guns for the last few years with people who hated them shooting at them as their former career. I don’t see a lot of good things coming out of that mix.

But the point is: If Obama doesn’t find himself in a situation where jobs are being created left and right, his reelection chances are pretty slim. All other factors are irrelevant. Much as the first Clinton election proved, it really is all about the economy. The economy took a previously popular war president and made him unemployed. Without something changing quickly, Obama doesn’t look like he has a great chance at a sure-fire reelection.

2. The Republican Candidate. Now that I said Obama needs to turn around the economy before the election, there is one factor that might make the economy somewhat irrelevant. If the Republicans don’t come up with someone they can rally behind, then a bunch of ghosts yelling profanities at the president aren’t going to lead to an election that pushes the incumbent out if there’s no one there to replace him. Right now, the Republican front runners are horrifically lacking in any merit. None of them have any real charisma. None of them have a futuristic vision, aside from “Obama sucks”, and none of them have any ideas that sound any different than “stop Democrats from taxing us” and “cut spending”. Neither of those ideas are worthy of rallying a group of people towards a positive election.

As long as the Republicans continue to run around with no head and spend their energy taking pot shots from behind the barn, Obama may just win by default, even with the worst economy in recent history, even with no jobs created, and even with defaulting the government because the president is incapable of providing enough leadership to cause an actual brokered deal. There’s only so much, “the Republicans are evil” that the public will take. But again, if the Republicans (evil or not) can’t come up with a solid hitter to back for the election, none of it makes a difference.

Which leaves us with a very dismal election that might end up being the lowest turnout in many decades because people may just give up on the whole enterprise. The 2008 election caused people to become invigorated with the idea of changing government for the better, but because it hasn’t really changed, other than a new group of incompetent leaders replaced a group of previously incompetent leaders, that wave of energy may just sit out the whole next election. And that would be a horrible result, because the one thing I hate more than incompetence, corruption and narcissistic leaders is a country of people who don’t care because they don’t feel their input really matters and that things are going to suck no matter who they put into office.

Now, the funny part of this article is that if it gets any review at all, it will probably be massively negative because neither side will come away from the reading thinking I was on its side, and therefore, they will disapprove. That’s somewhat ironic because that’s the problem our country is going through right now. And no matter how much I try to point it out and push us to a better place, you can’t make a horse drink even after leading it to water. Sometimes, you have to get a new horse and let the old one starve.