Will President Obama be Re-elected in 2012?

UPDATED November 7, 2012- Now that we know President Obama was re-elected, read on to see what I predicted! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

President Obama sees a new poll that shows his disapproval numbers have gone over 50%.  Concerned, he makes a quick call to his pollster. 

“Let me be clear,” President Obama says.  “I, uh, don’t understand these numbers.” 

“It means that over half the country thinks that you’re not doing a good job as president,” the pollster says. 

“I want a second opinion,” the president says. 

“Okay,” the pollster replies.  “Most of the country thinks your tweets suck too.” 

***** 

There are two reasons you’ve never heard this story before; it’s not true, and it’s not funny.  But it is relevant.  And this anecdote leads us to our current Derision 2012 Coverage topic which is… 

WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA WIN RE-ELECTION IN 2012? 

We are not asking if President Obama CAN be re-elected.  Obviously, he could.  We are not asking if he SHOULD be re-elected.  That would mean we would have to provide a bunch of boring numbers and analysis, and it would make a bunch of potential readers mad and they would never come back to our comedy site.  We are simply asking if President Obama WILL be re-elected.

Yeah, nothing can go wrong while talking about politics. 

SPORTS ANALOGIES ARE LAME, BUT LET’S USE ONE ANYWAY 

When football prognosticators talk in August about who will get to the Super Bowl in February, they don’t say, “Can anybody beat the Green Bay Packers?”  Despite being last year’s Super Bowl champion, the Packers have a lot of flaws as a team that others can exploit throughout the regular season and playoffs.  In other words, it will be very difficult for the Packers to repeat as Super Bowl champions.  

Watching a lot of recent election coverage, it seems as though most pundits are asking, ‘Can a Republican defeat Obama in 2012?”  That’s the wrong question.  They should be asking, “Can Obama be re-elected in 2012?”  After all, Obama has a lot of flaws as an incumbent that the Republicans can exploit: a tanking economy, increasing national debt, and a new habit of spamming really lame political tweets. 

GENERIC REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE BEATS OBAMA 

First of all, recent polling shows that Obama loses to a generic Republican candidate.  Luckily for Obama, there’s nobody named Generic Republican Candidate.  If there were, Republicans would run him (or her) just to be guaranteed a win.

For those of you parents who want your child to become president (why do you hate your children?), just change your last name to Candidate, name your child Generic, and then let your child choose his (or her) middle name when he (or she) is old enough to make those kinds of decisions.  Just pray that your child doesn’t choose Communist or Libertarian because they never win presidential elections. 

LIST OF POSSIBLE REPUBLICAN NOMINEES 

One way that President Obama wins re-election is if the Republicans nominate a horrible candidate… or if the Democrats can convince swing voters that the Republicans have nominated a really horrible candidate.  So let’s take a look at possible Republican nominees. 

Michelle Bachmann (congresswoman from Minnesota): She may get migraines, but she also gives migraines to people listening to her speeches.  If she ever says that she feels your pain, she might actually mean it. 

Sarah Palin (former governor of Alaska):  She can’t be blamed for federal problems like the economy or the debt, but she has a soap opera family.  It’s not a good sign when a potential First Family has gone into soap opera mode before they get to the White House. 

Herman Cain:  We said “possible” Republican nominees. 

Mitt Romney (former governor of Massachusetts):  It’s tough for Republicans to vote for anybody from Massachusetts, but they might make an exception if they think Romney can defeat President Obama.  

Rick Perry (governor of Texas):  He’s got great hair and two first names.  That would normally be a tough combination to beat, but he’s a Texas governor, and the country might not quite be ready for another one of those. 

The main problem with these potential nominees is that they are either obnoxious or boring.  Unfortunately, President Obama is both.  He has gotten to be insufferably boring when he speaks, and his Twitter behavior has gotten to be insufferably obnoxious. 

And before Democrat pundits start crowing about how weak this Republican field is, they need to remember that their entire Democratic field is limited to Barack Obama, a president who’s not exactly at the top of the polls right now and is perceived to have made most of former President Bush’s problems worse. 

So basically we have a bunch of Republicans who look like they’re not going to be very good presidents running against a Democrat who (according to polls) already isn’t a very good president. 

FOR HOW LONG CAN OBAMA BLAME BUSH? 

Another way Obama can get re-elected is if he can persuade swing voters that it isn’t his fault that the economy and the debt got worse while he was president.  He probably won’t be able to blame any of the potential Republican nominees because most are governors or former governors and have had no influence on federal issues.  Therefore, Obama has to keep blaming Bush. 

But will that work with swing voters?  Probably not. 

Why not?  Because President Obama took credit for killing Osama Bin Laden. 

Huh?  Please allow us to explain. 

As soon as Obama (and his supporters) took credit for killing Osama Bin Laden, they lost their ability to credibly blame Bush for the bad economy.  Logically, it doesn’t make sense.  Obama could have given Bush credit for Bin Laden’s death and then blamed Bush for the economy, or Obama could have taken the credit for Bin laden and then taken the blame for the economy, but it makes no logical sense to take the credit for Bin Laden and then blame Bush for the economy. 

Maybe it does make sense, but it probably takes a longwinded explanation with lots of numbers, and it would be really boring, and it wouldn’t change anybody’s opinion, so it would be a waste of time. 

WHY YOU SHOULD FEEL SORRY FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN FLORIDA, PENNSYLVANIA, OHIO, and MICHIGAN 

One other way for President Obama to win re-election is by outspending his opponents on advertising to convince voters that the Republican nominee is a horrible candidate.  Even now, Obama is raising money almost as fast as the federal government is spending it (to be fair, it’s two different sets of money).  That (campaign) money is going to fund lots and lots of advertising, and those ads are not going to be spread thinly throughout the entire country. 

Oh no! That money is going to be concentrated on a few key states, and those states are going to be inundated with a flood of ads from Obama supporters and Republican super-PACs.  By the time November of 2012 rolls around, television viewers are going to be begging to see Vince from Slap Chop again. You can pity the people of these states, or you can say they’re getting what they deserve for being so washy-washy that they now live in swing states. 

WILL PRESIDENT OBAMA WIN RE-ELECTION IN 2012? 

Of course, it’s too early to tell.  It depends on who wins the Republican nomination.  It also depends if the economy improves.  However, we at Dysfunctional Literacy don’t just ask the tough questions; we answer them, even if the answer turns out to be wrong later. 

NO, PRESIDENT OBAMA WILL NOT WIN RE-ELECTION IN 2012! 

Here’s Obama’s problem.  He’s an incumbent with a sour personality, and if an incumbent has a sour personality (boring speeches and obnoxious spam tweets don’t help), then his economy better be awesome.  It’s not.  If the economy is tanking, then he needs to be able to blame it on somebody else, preferably his opponent.  He can’t.  If he has a bad economy that he can’t blame on an opponent, then he has to demonize his opponent enough to overshadow his own faults and lack of accomplishments.  That’s going to be tough, even with his campaign coffers and this current field of Republicans. 

Therefore, we at Dysfunctional Literacy predict that President Barack Obama will not be re-elected in 2012. 

WHERE DYSFUNCTIONAL LITERACY HAS BEEN WRONG BEFORE 

We at Dysfunctional Literacy aren’t that great at this prognostication thing.  Here’s a list of some recent things that we have been wrong about: 

1. We thought President Obama and Congress would come up with a debt deal that would satisfy everybody.
2. We thought FOX News was fair and balanced just because they said they were.
3. We thought if Thaddeus McCotter would take our advice, then he would become a contender in the Republican primary.
4. We thought Two and a Half Men would let Charlie Sheen make a few friendly cameo appearances even after they hired Ashton Kutcher to replace him.
5. We thought Rachel Maddow was originally a… never mind, we’re actually kind of embarrassed by this one.

UPDATE- November, 7, 2012

Okay, my prediction was wrong.  My last two fantasy football teams have sucked too, so I’ve stopped making predictions.  I’ve also stopped refering to myself as “we” on this blog.  That was pretty lame.