Charles Krauthammer isn’t as reliably and consistently wrong as Bill Kristol, but he’s also determined to see the sun shining for Republicans. Thus:
The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African-American president.
November ’08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November ’09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm — and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.
Now this may be true. But one may also say that with unemployment climbing to more than 10% of the population no incumbent party can expect to escape a backlash. GDP may have grown at 3.5% last quarter and the job-loss rate slowed, but these are still pretty bleak times for the American economy. Just as I didn’t think it was George W Bush’s “fault” in 2008 so I decline to blame the current President for these more recent grim numbers.
So, if unemployment remains so frighteningly high and confidence hasn’t returned by next summer then, yes, the Democrats will take an even greater hammering at the mid-terms than is customarily the case for the incumbent party. (2002 was an obvious, largely 9/11-related exception to this otherwise iron rule).
But that doesn’t mean that the GOP is then favourite to triumph in 2012. Apart from anything else, all Krauthammer has really proved is that Obama is more popular than his party. But, guess what? Obama will be on the ballot – like, you know, in person and for real – in 2012. He wasn’t this week and nor, despite the temptation to believe otherwise, will he be on the ballot next year.
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