Republican Landslide 2012: What Causes It?

[ag]

When hell freezes over. A landslide is simply not possible against a candidate like Obama. Certainly, it's possible for a Republican to win (if they are able to run as a moderate and they have charisma), but it's simply impossible to do that well against Obama due to his personality and ground game.

Herbert Hoover ring a bell?

Hoover wasn't particularly charismatic, was he?

[ag]

Obama could well loose, but for a landslide this big, I guess, we'd need:

1. Continuing economic crisis. High inflation, high unemployment, depressed real estate prices, lousy times on Wall Street. Things have to be crappy - but not disastrous (if it is truly disastrous, I wouldn't be surprised by a reverse effect, especially if too many people are very dependent on dole/government employment and are afraid to loose those).

2. Clear inefficiency in the government. I am not talking economic efficiency - I am talking bureaucratic and political efficiency. Obama administration hasn't gotten anything of significance through the Congress in a couple of years. The health reform bill is either not passed or else passed in a version that's an obvious bureaucratic nightmare that's already being felt. Crime's up (if there are racial overtones - all the better). A few bad riots

3. A couple of clear foreign policy failures. Continued losses in Afghanistan, a nasty terrorist attack on US forces abroad leads to a hasty retreat from somewhere, etc. Bad turn of events down South: complete disintegration of law and order in Mexico, massive migrant flow streams North and an anti-US gov't comes to power in Mexico in July 2012 elections.

Give me all that and I could see even CA and CT going