Bad News Bears

So my rosy predictions for the Fall are crumbling because the economy has taken a "pause" of sorts. The economic recovery has stalled and as the optimism of early Spring's job growth fades, so too have the President's numbers. For the first time in his presidency, his negatives outpace his positive ratings by a significant amount. Popularity ratings stuck around 45%. A look at the grahps and data shows that the president's popularity had approached 50/50 during the depths of the Health Care debate but had begun to climb back into positive territory before May. Then the oil spill in the gulf hit, with the perception of mishandling (note to president: next time, send the entire fifth fleet into the gulf and get accused of overreacting, not underreacting) and then the recovery stalled. You may recall that the unemployment rate actually climbed slightly in April because so many new people jumped into the workforce because they were optimistic about their chances. The unemployment rate has fallen back to 9.5% while the economy has shed a few jobs because people are leaving the workforce.

So this means bad news for the elections. Unless there are signs of economic recovery returning in the August reports out around Labor Day, the Fall will look grim for Democrats. Expect it to get uglier and uglier as the Dems realize they can only win by demonizing the Tea Party. And the Republicans will exacerbate this effort by running further to the right rather than to the
center. I still think that the loss of either house is unlikely, in part because the GOP was much more unpopular in 2006 and 2008 and it took two serious elections to swing the tide this far in favor of the Dems. That's a lot of ground to make up. It requires, for the GOP, taking senate seats in CA and Illinois, which seems very unlikely. But big gains, yes, that is looming.