Opinion

Why Bam’s losing

I hinted at it in June, and now I’m saying it outright in July: President Obama is going to lose this election if something doesn’t change in a significant way.

How can I possibly assert such a thing if election-prediction savant Nate Silver of The New York Times currently gives Obama a 66 percent chance of winning? Well, Silver has a fancy-shmancy mysterious data machine full of yummy variables.

I’m applying common sense.

Less than four months until the election, the Real Clear Politics average of all national surveys has Obama at 46.2 percent, vs. 45 percent for Mitt Romney.

That’s not a good number for an incumbent. If there is one politician in America everybody knows and has heard and has an opinion of, it’s the president, Barack Obama. The general rule of thumb for someone seeking re-election is that he is in some trouble if he’s under 50 percent.

Granted, the RCP average had George W. Bush at 42.7 percent at this point in 2004 and he went on to win. So why is 2012 different?

Here’s why: In 2004, the central issues facing the country were a net negative for Bush in July. By November, those issues had become a net positive for him, and Bush won.

It’s hard to see how the central issue facing the country in 2012 is going to become a net positive for Obama.

The key to 2004 wasn’t Bush’s head-to-head numbers against John Kerry but rather the public’s approval or disapproval of the war in Iraq and his handling of the War on Terror.

In July, the CBS News poll showed that 45 percent of the public thought Iraq was the right thing to do. That was when Bush was at 42.7 percent against Kerry.

By September, after Bush’s successful convention address and a speech on the third anniversary of 9/11, that number had risen to 54 percent in the CBS poll (a few points lower in ABC’s poll).

By choosing anti-war war hero John Kerry as their nominee, the Democrats had made sure the election was going to turn on Iraq — and it did. A majority supported the war on Election Day. On that day, 51 percent voted for Bush.

If Bush hadn’t rallied the country around Iraq and reminded them of his stewardship in the War on Terror beginning in late August, it’s likely he would have lost.

Let’s return to the present. The issue today is the economy. Not to mention the economy. Also, the economy. In every poll, more than 50 percent say the economy is the No. 1 issue; health care comes in second, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent.

How is Obama faring on economic questions? Terribly. Much worse than his head-to-head numbers. In this week’s New York Times poll, 39 percent of the public rates him favorably on his handling of the economy, vs. 55 percent who disapprove. It’s pretty much the same in other polls.

This is even worse for him than it looks because the poll sample itself — the registered voters interviewed by the pollsters — is tilted in the president’s favor. Of those interviewed, 32 percent said they were Democrats, 25 percent Republicans and 37 percent independents.

That 7-point Democratic advantage was the spread on Election Day 2008 — after the collapse in George W. Bush’s support, the Republican scandals of 2006, the financial meltdown and the Obama surge. Does anyone seriously believe that, in 2012, Democrats will have anywhere near that advantage?

If you follow the 2004 model, Obama needs to have something to bring the country to his side — affirmatively — before the election. And given the dominance of the economy as an issue, it would have to be the economy.

How’s that looking for him? This week’s jobless claims are up far more than anticipated. After horrible retail-sales numbers, most economic forecasters downgraded their expectations for overall growth somewhere around 1.5 percent annualized for the second quarter.

James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute notes that the only two presidents to face re-election with the consumer-confidence numbers Obama has to show for himself were Jimmy Carter and the first George Bush — both one-termers.

In 2004, the election was a referendum on the incumbent, and the incumbent convinced Americans he had done the right things.

In 2012, what is the incumbent going to do — talk about somebody else’s tax returns for the next 109 days?