{"id":5241,"date":"2011-12-21T09:49:57","date_gmt":"2011-12-21T14:49:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=5241"},"modified":"2011-12-27T09:36:44","modified_gmt":"2011-12-27T14:36:44","slug":"is-team-obama-getting-lucky-for-once","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2011\/12\/21\/is-team-obama-getting-lucky-for-once\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Team Obama getting lucky for once?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Love him or hate him, few pundits would describe President Barack Obama as lucky.<\/p>\n

His administration inherited a massive economic slump and also ran smack into a powerful, energized tea party movement.<\/p>\n

His first term has also been snared in huge foreign policy challenges, ranging from political transformation in the Middle East to the slow wind-down of two major wars.<\/p>\n

Even the President’s signature accomplishments — healthcare reform and changes to the rules governing Wall Street – were won by razor-thin margins, earning him more critics than fans.<\/p>\n

But as we prepare to crack open the 2012 election year, there are signs that the White House’s bum luck may be turning.<\/p>\n

First, there is growing evidence that the Republican Party could blow an opportunity to limit Mr. Obama to a single turn.<\/p>\n

It’s not a done deal yet, but this GOP primary is shaping up to be the worst political warm-up lap for any party since the Democrats crashed and burned in 1968.<\/p>\n

The other big development, of course, is jobs.\u00a0 Three months ago, economists were worried that unemployment could be permanently stuck in the 9% range.<\/p>\n

Then through the fall, that number dropped to 8.6% and the latest numbers for November showed more significant improvement in the jobs picture in 43 states<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There is obviously still a lot that can go wrong and Mr. Obama’s approval ratings remain, to be kind, fragile.<\/p>\n

But the latest CNN survey showed that more Americans approve of the President’s performance (49%) than disapprove (48%).\u00a0 That’s a huge swing from his dismal numbers last summer.<\/p>\n

And there are signs that the current battle over payroll taxes could be benefiting the administration far more than the Republicans in congress.<\/p>\n

It may seem a little unfair to credit these developments to luck.<\/p>\n

So I’ll note in passing that there’s a reasonable debate to be had over how much Mr. Obama’s efforts have actually helped the economy, or improved the Democratic Party’s appeal.<\/p>\n

But it is, undeniably, darned lucky timing.<\/p>\n

The President’s political fortunes could rest on the fact that these employment gains are happening now, with the potential to sap the GOP’s chief attack narrative in 2012.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Love him or hate him, few pundits would describe President Barack Obama as lucky. His […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6548,6550,20],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}