Dim Outlook for Obama 2.0

Small wonder that a good 50 percent of Americans reject Obama’s economic policies.

Up to now, the U.S. elections — if one may refer to them as such in view of the difficulty Republicans are having just in finding an attractive primary candidate — have run in favor of Barack Obama. He has been able to style himself as a determined terrorist hunter, exploited his advantage as incumbent and swung many older voters to the Democrats with his healthcare reforms. Most recently, a traditionally Republican congressional seat in New York state fell to the Democrats.

For now, there doesn’t appear to be many obstacles to Obama’s re-election in 2012. Potentially, the most perilous is America’s poor economy. Growth was a paltry 1.8 percent for the first quarter of 2011, unemployment hovers around the nine percent mark and the deficit, meanwhile, continues to skyrocket, gasoline prices are higher than ever and the housing market is slow to revive. I’s no wonder that a good 50 percent of Americans reject his economic policies.

Obama’s problem is that he isn’t the only maker of economic policies. They’re also made by individual states, many governed by Republicans who reject billions of federal dollars for infrastructure repair and improvement as just happened in Florida. Just as Bill Clinton’s “It’s the economy, stupid!” was a winner during bad economic times, this time it may prevent an Obama 2.0 from happening.