Obama re-election strategy

I read something earlier today about the troubles Obama was going to have as president.  It struck me as BS.  The way I see it he has it rather easy.  The economy is *feces* right now - and people erroneously believe the Executive Branch controls this.  So... all he has to do it let the economy recover... don't mess with it.  That and get out of Iraq in three years or less.

Then come 2011, he gets all the credit in the world for an economic recovery that was going to happen anyway, and for getting us out of Iraq (which will take actual effort, and will deserve due credit).  That gets him 4 more years - easy.  I see nothing too difficult about this - a molehill for a mountain climber so to speak.

Because the last one didn't *fudge* it up.  Too many are mistaking their political views as economic understanding - just taint true.  Free market economies have cycles, *feces* happens.  The only way to prevent or limit downturns is to prevent or limit upturns.

No ideology can escape a role in the current problems.  Sub-prime loans were made possible (regulated) by liberal attempts to make housing more affordable.  Conservative attempts to free the markets (de-regulation) in the underwriting* of the loans allowed the creation of a greed mentality.  If anyone believes one 'side' are more responsible for the problem than the other - you're blind to the reality of the situation.  Blinded by politics when economics is the issue.  It takes two to make the perfect storm.  Bad loans were made possible by liberal ideology, the extra (overextended) money tossed into them by conservative ideology.  The bubble popped and presto - an ugly little crisis.



* - underwriting may not be the right term, I just cannot think of the one used - but its essentially underwriting, or guaranteeing the loans.

While for once I actually agree with most* of what hobbit says, the current Pres had a major impact on the economy by putting us in a $1T+ of additional debt, which has vastly influenced the actions of the Fed, which have a major roll in the economic downturn.

Unless I'm reading the papers wrong, we're leaving Iraq at the request of the democratically gubment of Iraq by the end of 2011, and that was true no matter who was elected.

Not much effort required there....

Then let us get back to defining our disagreements 

I disagree with the Lou Dobb's of the world that make people believe that federal debt of our size and serviceability has a negative impact on the economy.  It simply does not hold historical water.  Great economic expansions can, and have, happened under sizable debt loads.

That being said, I do agree that the Iraq endeavor and resulting additions to deficit spending were completely asinine.  But that does not make for economic disaster.  Its a bit of a red herring argument by some talking heads that do actually believe it.

Then you must also believe that Reagan gets a lot more credit than he deserves. The neocons fall over themselves to suck the cock of old Ronald's legacy, but it seems to me, if the Soviet economic system was so flawed, the USSR would have fallen with or without Reagan as POTUS.

I'd take minor exception to this part.  Democratic legislation (CRA) did encourage banks to lend to less safe borrowers.  But I've read from two different cources (and of course, can't find either right now) that the percentage of their total lending that any particular entity had to hit to get a good CRA rating was only 5%.  Yet lending institutions were pumping out subprimes as far more than merely 5% of their total lending.  I believe banks went wild on subprime lending because it was a huge profit center.


As for getting free credit for things that are going to happen anyway: there are still lots of ways to get in the way of things, and there will certainly be obstructive efforts by disgruntled Republicans and/or far-far-left Democrats unhappy that the trifecta of power isn't being used to force-feed a far-far-left agenda.

On another note a saw a snippet of Oprah getting over excited about Obama's win. 

I'm sorry but it made almost vomit