I think it will probably be McDonnell.

Where do you think the economy needs to be, for either Romney or Obama to win? I remember thinking a few months ago, that 8.3% unemployment on election day 2012 was kind of a dream. It's at 8.2% in April. Who knows where it'll be in October/November.

People see what they want to see. I think Obama is Reagan by way of Bill Clinton.

1984 by way of 1996.

I don't think he's boring, but he's not really exciting either. He's just average.

I've said this before; I'm not confident Romney can win, unless there's a doubledip. Although, He's slick, he's not really exciting in any way.

McDonnell makes the most sense.

Obama is beatable, but I;m not certain Romney can win, unless  there's a doubledip. He's slick, but he's not exciting in any way. He's sort of like a Republican John Kerry.

Reagan and Clinton were both more charismatic/exciting than Carter and H.W. Bush.

The fact that Obama was an easy shoo-in for the "Charisma" key in 2008 and isn't seen as charismatic at all by 2012 goes to show how 3 years of presiding over a country that's collapsing at the seams will make anyone seem uncharismatic.

Maybe he gets half a key? He's more charismatic than any of the gop candidates.

I don't know why people are comparing this election to 1980. Obama isn't nearly as bad as Carter and he's much more charismatic. Plus, Romney/Perry aren't anywhere near as ikeable or exciting as Reagan.

All that, and landslides just don't happen anymore

[TL;DR version:]

Everyone in this thread is wrong and is too partisan hack undergrad PoSci educated to understand how elections are won in America.  Mainly, how swing voters and moderates are swayed.  

In America today, the Democratic candidates gets 45%, the Republican candidate gets 45%.  Those are where you find the results of all the numbers know-it-all nitwits like Dick Morris enjoy throwing out to predict things.  They do not effect elections as they will always exist.  It's a 45-45 that does not change its mind (although it used to be 40-40 up until the 90s) and always turns out because its always enthused.  It's a 45% who always (if out of power) thinks all the numbers look bad.

Everything after that is REAL politics and REAL politics is an emotional, sometimes manipulative human experience.

First off, Naso's wrong assumption is wrong, there was not a meaningful amount of people who didn't like Clinton that voted voted for Clinton.  They voted for Perot.  In fact, the strong Perot influence made 1992 a strange year with factors not present in any election in U.S. history and should not be used to prove anything in any direction.

Second, unemployment numbers don't dramatically effect things.  It's all noise. Think about them as people for a second and not numbers.  You are liberal and unemployed, do you really consider the conservative option to be the answer--ever?  No, you don't think the government is left enough.  You are conservative and unemployed, you are voting Republican.  Likewise, people who follow unemployment numbers like those in this thread already have their minds made up 14 months ahead of the election.  

Here's what matters to the final 10%: trust, trust, and trust.  Trust is not built on economic conditions or even pure honesty.  Trust is built on charisma and overall likability.   "Trusting a candidate and putting your faith in them."  You've likely heard that talk before, too.  But you've never stopped to think what it means.  Faith is blind to any "facts," faith is just a gut feeling.

Now, that probably makes swing voters sound like idiots.  Perhaps some are.  I believe most are people like myself: we believe the President is a figure head whose second responsibility is to do good, but is first is to not do wrong.  His main job is to simply look like a President.  To look good for America.  Barack Obama has not done a good job, but he has not done wrong.  

The Republicans most certainly can win--if they nominated Mitt Romney.  Yes, Mitt Romney.  Republican hacks think Romney sucks.  Truth is, he's the best candidate the Republicans could possibly choose.  He's a candidate who could actually win the final 10%, even if it's a close 5.5 to 4.5.  Rick Perry won't and Chris Christie won't either.  Bachmann, Perry, Christie, etc., etc., do not look good on the postcard for America.  No economic conditions or issue could lead the final 10% to think those people are the right person for job.  Paul Ryan might, but he's not running.

Romney isn't always honest and ideologically consistent, sure.  Leave that to the 45-45 to bitch and make fun of as they vote 45% Romney, 45% Obama.  More importantly, he is a very nice, very grounded, and very safe human being.  He's also good looking.  

With a good campaign, the final 10% will come to trust him and see him as President.  Slick Rick and Big Chris do not have what it takes for that opportunity.

TL;DR version: No amount of Obama failure could make a majority of Americans vote for just anybody.

I agree that the ecomony usually isn't the deciding factor. I think Clinton won because he excited people, and brought back the Reagan democrats.

Dsspite the recession, Bush would've been reelected, if Clinton wren't the nominee. Clinton was the only one who could've defeated Bush in '92.

As for 2012, I'm not sold on Romney winning, unless there's a doubledip. He can win without a doubledip recession, but a doubledip is the only way I can for certain see him winning. Because he's not exciting, kind of bland. and doesn't really stand for anything.

None of the gop candidates are close to being as likeable/exciting as Reagan, and Obama isn't as bad as Carter. Obama can lose, but this is not 1980.

1992 wan't a re-alignment? Or at least some kind of modern change? The map has been similar since, whoever wins.

Romney: Bob McDonnell
Perry: Susana Martinez

Secondly, you democrats are being absolute hacks. I was just watching the news and saw a Democrat woman who was asked a legitimate question, "In your opinion, which of the main three (Romney, Perry, Bachmann) would the President probably be most concerned about running against?" Instead of giving an abstract answer, she says, "Oh well I'm sure the President is okay running against any of them, blah blah blah".

I can understand your skepticism on her answer but she may have a point, although indirectly.

It's really something to say that Romney is the most formidable of all the serious candidates. In 08, he polled by far the worst. And, all three of them come with pretty damning baggage. It won't be too hard to pick on The Queen of Rage, a mormon with a healthcare plan glaringly similar to Obamas, or another born again evangelist who may very well have Kinky Friedman to thank for retaining the governor's mansion in 06. If the Republicans could come up with a decent candidate I might worry if I'm Obama. That crop? Not at all. Obama will be his worst enemy on the campaign trail, not any of them.

I agree, but the economy has to have a "getting better" trend through-out the summer/fall. Otherwise, he'll probably lose to Romney.

I put this up and then took it back down, because I didn't think it would do any good.  Well, it probably doesn't do any good, but screw it--I'll put it back up and leave it anyway.

semocrat08,

Only a small part of the beginning of this post is a reply to what you wrote above.  Most of what follows is just a summery of my general feelings regarding the very loud and increasingly less satisfied complaints about Obama that are coming from the left.  It's not a problem unique to liberals, since conservatives suffer from the same thing, though, in my view, to a somewhat lesser degree.  It's very easy for all of us to be really hard on politicians, and it's certainly the case that they often deserve it.  But I also feel like, just as often, we don't appreciate how hard governing actually is and consequently expect far too much from the people we elect, and not because of what they "promised" us, but because of how we are.

I'm sure what I'm about to write is going to piss every liberal on the forum off, but I can't help it; I'm going to write it anyway.

Giving speeches is one part of governing for presidents.  It is one way of drumming up public support for a legislative agenda.  If the public supports something on the president's agenda, legislators feel more pressure to reach a deal.  The better speechmaker a president is, the more pressure the legislators feel.

That doesn't mean, of course, that legislators just give up and the let the president have whatever he wants.  They have their own party support which helps them run counter-ads, they have local constituencies, moneyed supporters and lobbies which might push them the other way, in the case of opposition, or might motivate them to get more from the president than he is willing to give.  And here is where negotiations start, and it's at the negotiations end of it where I think liberals unsatisfied with Obama are getting both the legislative process and him wrong.

When the president faces opposition to his legislative agenda, he can't just have the Secret Service slam the opposition up against the wall, and he can rarely ask his own party to threaten to pull rank on an ally who wants more and mobilize a primary challenge, because if you do it more than once or twice, your own party will, for good reason, turn on you.  So, you try to assuage, you try to do some horse-trading, and you sometimes have to compromise so that you get some of what you want and let the party you're trying to convince have something too.  But D.C. has for a long time been a zero-sum place, and whether one is negotiating with the opposition or with allies, each one of 538 Congresspeople and Senators is trying just as hard as you are to get everything they want, so sometimes you'll get 0% of what you wanted, sometimes 20%, sometimes 60%, but never everything.  And "drawing a line in the sand" on really important legislation is often very perilous for politicians, because if they blow their political capital in one shot on one bill, well, there are three years left in a term, there will be other important bills and issues facing the country in that time, and permanently alienating the people one has to work with in these circumstances only makes governing harder, not easier, because you're endangering possible goodwill that you may easily and even desperately need down the road.

So, sometimes, when I read these constant complaints from the left that Obama is "spineless," "has no balls," "won't take a stand" and so on, I get really impatient.  These are very easy things to say for people like us who are in the cheap seats and just want sh*t our own way, according to our own vision, and done the day before yesterday.  When we don't get it, we just become the professional bitching brigade and stomp our feet, not realizing that one of the very things that weakens the president is our own incurable deciduousness.  I mean, obviously, Obama's presidency has been far from perfect and the provisions of the legislation that have been produced have not hit all the marks from a liberal perspective.  But, taking stock, Obama has gotten the Lilly Ledbetter Act, a food safety bill, health care legislation (which Clinton and every other Democrat in history failed to get done), a 9/11 first responders bill, an NLRB bill and the repeal of DADT passed, in addition to which he passed the single largest stimulus package in the history of the country and bowed to a lot of liberal Christmas-card list requests on the Financial Regulation bill (despite the fact that a lot of it really wasn't a good idea). Now, I'm certainly not going to argue that a lot in this legislation wasn't flawed, because I believe a lot of it was, and maybe even more than most liberals would even say was flawed.   But still, after all of this and more, liberals bitch: "oh, Obama didn't do this, Obama didn't do that, Obama never delivers, Obama always caves" blah blah blah blah.  I mean, it's perfectly ok to continually and loudly advocate for things one wants, that's everyone's right.  But being perpetual crybaby ingrates, not appreciating any damned thing about how difficult the legislative process and governing are, even among party allies, or thinking that any of the above legislation will even survive under a one or two-term Republican president who has a Republican Congress, really reveals why the liberal movement in the United States has grown so ineffective and unpersuasive, and hasn't convinced the whole country to elect a president since 1964, when the political landscape in Washington was very, very different than it is today.  With friends like the American liberal movement, Democratic presidents don't need opposition, their "friends" can undermine them just fine all by themselves.  At least one of the reasons that Republicans are politically stronger in this country, even though they too have different internal agendas, is they are a hell of a lot more loyal to their leaders than Democrats tend to be.  Judge that loyalty however you like, but it's politically effective; it gives their leaders more juice.

Now, lest anyone think that I'm just bashing liberals, all I can say is that a lot of my political and social ideals make me much more comfortable in the environments of other countries with mixed economies and universal, non-profit health care than I am in the U.S.  The fact that I've accepted that such ideals are not possible in the U.S. only reflects my acknowledgment that this is the U.S. and not some other place, not some uncertainty about what my ideals are.  And, what's more, lest  any of this be taken as shilling for Obama, I happen to think that his leadership style does indeed leave much to be desired, though  I have different reasons for believing this than are articulated in the liberal media.  And I would even go further; if the labor market is still in the tank and he doesn't get anything significant accomplished in the next year and a half, he may very well deserve to lose next year.  But the fickle political loyalties of the left nonetheless sometimes really irritate me.  Like I said, it's ok to want more, but, at least from my point of view, it's not ok to just discount things one has gotten and write off the guy who helped get them.

Ok, I'm done with my rant.  Carry one wishing Hillary runs.      

I agree with this. Some  people talk about how great Bill Clinton was compared to Obama, but Clinton didn't do much of anything.

If there' no doubledip, and the economy gets somewhat better, around 8.3%-8.5%, and he runs a great campaign, he can maybe win against anyone in the gop field.

Unless, there's a huge doubledip, it's hard to see Romney winning. He's the most presidential-like of the gop field, but he's not exciting, he's pretty much a republican John Kerry.

I don't think Romney can win Massachusetts. Has anyone ever been elected president, without winning his home state? Al Gore amost did.

Unemployment around 8.3% vs. Romney: Obama runs a great campaign and wins: 279-259

You hear so much about canidates losing, and running bad campaigns. But has there ever been a losing presidential candidate, who actually ran a good campaign?

Obama is not Carter, no matter how much people may not like him. The economy was quite good under Carter, until 1980. I think the economy wasn't the main reason Carter lost, but it was part of it. He just was so weak in so many ways.

I don't know. The GOP field doesn't have that one really exciting candidate. Obama is pretty exciting, and a great campaigner. If unemployment is somewhere around 8.3%, he could spin it as "It's high, but we're on the right track". Plus, the whole "Worst recession since the great depression" thing.

Looking bbck at Clinton's first term, he's was kind of a mess, but the economy and I guess Bob Dole heped him get re-elected. Obama's first term seems stronger than Cinton's, except for the economy.

Romney is the most presidential-like gop nominee, in my opinion.