PIGASUS FOR PRESIDENT

Does it really matter who wins? Could it get any worse? HOW PATHETIC! You can hold your nose to keep the stench out of voting for the lesser of two evils, but the stench nevertheless will cling to your clothing. Time to stop wallowing in the sewer

Yes, the Republicans are blowing it. We would be in trouble if Jeb Bush was in, or jumped in, but I hear that he is staying out. And the President still has some ideas on how to turn things around--and the economy is looking better too. And there are some ingenious ways to deal with the partisanship too--options that the president has and may deploy.

With the international banking system in a state of insolvency do you think people are going to want to elect an investment banker like Romney to run the country?
Pray hard that Obama will be re elected and work harder to help make it happen. The United States will be in very deep trouble otherwise and the destruction may not be reparable in our lifetimes

It does not matter. My bet is that the Republicans win it all because the Democrats have folded like chairs, gone down like the $3 whores that they are.

With their mid-20% of voters "win" based on their opponents' forfeit, the Republicans will try to implement libertarian capitalism as if they had a mandate.

And they will end up as the reverse of Chile 1973, where Allende won with a plurality and tried to implement socialism and got slapped down hard.

In this case, America is not a libertarian capitalist society, and any efforts to further double down on stupid economics just because there was no electoral opposition will be Occupied by a public that will have no more of it.

I really liked Candidate Obama, but President Obama is an entirely different guy, who somehow thinks the Constitution lets him start wars and assassinate people on his own authority and hasn't closed the unconstitutional prison at Gitmo. (I'm not counting the economy's problems - I didn't think he had the superpowers it would take to fix the Bush Administration's economic catastrophe this fast.)

Marcos is right about how the Democrats have caved in to just about everything the Republicans wanted, though I hope he's wrong predicting they'll win in 2012.

But he's entirely wrong about the Republicans wanting "libertarian capitalism" - there's nothing libertarian about them, even though they pretend there is when they're making speeches. Not only have they not stopped the Drug Wars and the Invading-Other-Countries Wars and Warrantless Wiretapping and imprisonment without due process, so they're not social-freedom libertarians, they're not even economic libertarians. They like spending money on military pork-barrel projects, and won't consider cutting those, and like big powerful intrusive government agencies (like Homeland Security) even though they make speeches about smaller government, and they don't want any public or Congressional oversight of their pet agencies. They pretend to dislike taxes, but Bush tripled the Federal Debt by increasing military spending, and debt is just taxes that somebody else will have to pay later; Republicans like it when they're in office because they know they can blame Democrats for it later. Lots of the Republicans don't like free trade, and they don't like the freedom of migration for workers that's part of it.

Basically, the Republicans are a bunch of scammers who made the country and the world a much worse place when they were in power, and it's not hard to blame Obama for things that they did wrong because he hasn't fixed them.
I'm voting for real Libertarians when I can, but I'll vote for Greens or Peace&Freedom or Crazy Cat Ladies before voting Democrat, and I'm not voting for Republicans until they clean up the corruption in their party, which will probably take a couple of decades.

obama has repeatedly shown that he a prez without IDEAS and SAVVY..That alone should he be ousted..The potus is not for the 'fainthearted,observer style gover.confused and without the full sentiment and backing of the American ppl...he has destroyed the 'vote of confidence miserably!!..Stop this inept,reckless and greedy prez from ruining the country!

Not the same as saying that I *want* him to win, but as a prediction only, I think he'll win.

The Republicans will put up their strongest candidate. The others would go down in flames. Unfortunately their strongest candidate is Mitt Romney, and Romney has several big problems.

1. He's Mormon, and his radical base won't be too excited about that. I know a few conservative evangelicals. They don't even think Mormons are Christians. They may not vote for the black guy, but a chunk of them may well stay home.

2. He has no principles whatsoever. Neither does Obama, but in Romney's case, his reputation as a "flip-flopper" is more glaringly evident, and thus easy to exploit by the Obama campaign.

3. And this is something that we're finding out just now... he is absolutely incapable of hiding the fact that he's the candidate of Wall Street. He's on record saying that he likes to fire people, that corporations are people too, and that income inequality should only be talked about in quiet rooms. So just when the country is waking up to income inequality and the rape of the 99% by the 1%, the Republicans nominate a candidate who is so obviously a creature of Wall Street and the 1%. While he has a year to learn not to make these gaffes in the debates, he also has a whole year to make a few more, and you can bet that the Obama campaign will studiously collect these gaffes and then regurgitate them in campaign commercials, all the while painting Obama as a champion of the middle class. Whether he is or not is immaterial. The point is that he (Obama) will have a much easier time convincing the public.

Obama, OTOH, has a few things going for him. I do believe the employment situation will improve. We're at the "official" rate of 8.5% now, and the immediate trajectory is downwards. Whether or not you believe that neoliberal capitalism is a sustainable system in the long run (I don't), official unemployment looks to be in the 7's by October 2012. Obama will credibly be able to make the argument that it's "morning in America."

And... whether you like him or not, you have to admit that the man has some mad political skills, and those skills will serve him well for re-election, just like they served him well to come from behind to defeat the Clinton juggernaut.

incumbency is huge. Only one incumbent has lost and failed to get a second term since Jimmy Carter. So I expect Obama to win, although probably quite narrowly.

The more interesting race is the Senate. If that goes to the GOP, which looks likely, then Obama will be a lame duck. Not what we really want or need in an economic crisis. Still, he has shown some ability to compromise, and he'll need to do a lot more of that.

obama isnt a bad president but honestly the economy is already down the shit, so even four years of presidency couldnt really bring us back up like that, doesnt matter who wins presidensy, obama, santourum , we're all swimming in shit and its already too late honestly, its going to take a good amount of presidency and long years before our nation is out of the toliet