Will the Economy Help Obama? A Closer Look.

Byron Wien is also fond of making predictions like yours truly (H/T Mark Perry). Here's one of his:

4. The recovering economy and the declining unemployment rate help President Obama convince the voters that he didn't do such a bad job in his first term after all. He is viewed as a good speaker but a poor leader who is running against Mitt Romney, viewed as uninspired and whose positions on many issues are unclear. Democrats take back the House of Representatives but lose the Senate in an anti-incumbent wave.

It's plausible but I would go the other way. The economy is recovering but not enough and in such a way that it won't help Obama. The jobs picture may improve but it will still be pretty bad for reasons that I have discussed at length, but here is the nub:

The economy is recovering but not fast enough to add the number of jobs needed to help Obama politically. Jobs creators are justifiably cautious and the only shift has been in Obama's rhetoric; the nasty, job-killing stuff he has foisted on the economy is still fully operational down in the inner workings of the economy. Even if unemployment moderates a bit, it is a virtual certainty that it will be higher than when he took office. Not good.

Also, while the numbers may start to look better, the economy will still feel crappy, and that matters come election time. If voters don't feel times are better, they won't vote like it regardless of what the numbers say. Ask George Herbert Walker Bush about that one.

Finally, and most importantly, there is the little matter of what happened in November 2010. Republicans can make a plausible case that to whatever extent the economy is doing better, it is because Americans rose up on November 3, 2010 and effectively stopped the Obama agenda dead in its tracks, at least legislatively. Remember what we were staring down the barrel of during the first two years of the Obama administration: 1) ObamaCare, 2) Card Check 3) Cap & Trade. This represented a triple-barrel threat to the economy. We got ObamaCare (and businesses are nearly universally saying that it is a job-killer) but we avoided Card Check and Cap & Trade legislation by virtue of electing a bunch of Republicans to the Congress.

Avoiding the devastation of those two last pillars of the original Obama agenda caused a huge sigh of relief in the business world and the economy surely benefited knowing these ideas were dead in the water. Republicans can and will make this very plausible argument. Furthermore, economic progress is not uniformly spread around the country. Some states are doing much better than others, and let's not forget that in November 2010 voters put some Republicans into Governor's mansions across the country. Let me ask you, do you think that Michiganders are going to credit the meager economic bright spots solely to Obama or perhaps give Rick Snyder some kudos? Are Pennsylvanians going to give all the credit to Obama or to Tom Corbett, who embraced the fracking boom to PA? Scott Walker sure is polarizing, but does anybody think that Walker can't plausibly be credited for whatever economic progress has been made in Wisconsin? Same with Kasich in Ohio. Florida is perking up under Rick Scott, but Illinois is mired in the dumps under Pat Quinn. How's California faring?

The Obama-as-economic-miracle-worker theme is one damn thin reed. The MSM will go into overdrive to spout it, but Republicans can counter it effectively and my guess is that voters won't be buying it - four years was a long time to get very little out of Obama in terms of the economy.

UPDATE: check this out. UPPDATE: more evidence?