Will Obama win a second term?

That is a question I fielded a number of times during these one hundred days in India.  "Or, will the other guy win?" was a typical follow-up question.  The other guy, it always turned out to be Mitt Romney :)

I am all for Obama winning another term, not because I am any fan of his but because there are simply no alternatives: anybody-but-the-other-guy!  John Cassidy reminds me about one of the traits of the then candidate, Senator Obama:

Obama was a moderate young technocrat, whose first instinct was to seek the middle ground. The moment power beckoned, he tilted instinctively toward the establishment, and, in the Democratic Party that Obama had grown up in, the establishment was pro-Wall Street.

I don't care about the pro-Wall Street Democratic Party establishment.  But, in his rhetoric during the primaries, Obama pretended to be against that very establishment that Hillary Clinton represented.  I way preferred Clinton's honest position of being pro-Wall Street, as was Bill Clinton during his presidency.  This was merely one instance of a fakey candidate Obama ...

But, hey, any day Obama was infinitely a better candidate than his GOP rival.  But, this time, the other guy will put up a better fight.  The question remains: will Obama win a second term?  Again, over to Cassidy:

With oil at a hundred and twenty-five dollars a barrel and likely going higher as the sanctions on Iran take hold and the Israelis keep up their bellicose rhetoric, the U.S. economy is effectively facing an election-year tax hike. (The effects of a rise in gas prices and a tax increase are virtually identical.) Although this shock probably won’t be enough to bring about a recession, it could well knock a point or two off G.D.P. growth and cause the unemployment rate to stall above eight per cent, which would give Mitt Romney an opening. (According to some polls, Obama’s approval ratings have already fallen.) But one can’t say for sure. It’s all in the timing.