Over at the Weekly Standard blog Jay Cost has a blogpost responding to Jonathan Chait’s New York Magazine blogpost arguing, after the December jobs numbers came in, that the economy will “save Obama” in 2012. Not so fast, says Cost, and points out that December-style job growth is not likely to produce the kind of obviously buoyant economy that we enjoyed in 1964, 1972 and 1984, when incumbent presidents were reelected with between 59% and 61% of the vote. His conclusion:
“If we get growth better than the paltry 2.2 percent that the experts are expecting, and we see some real improvement in incomes and employment, then Chait may ultimately turn out to be correct. But we have not seen that so far, three years into Obama’s tenure, and the experts do not expect that for the fourth year, either.”
That strikes me as right. But I don’t think you need Cost’s economic and political metrics to get there. Just ask yourself this question: would a “Morning in America” TV spot be effective? If and when it is, the economy will be working for the Obama campaign. If not, if it would backfire and be a source of ridicule, as it surely would today, the economy is working against, not for him.
