And that's why I'm pretty confident that the Republicans simply can't win next November. They have yet to field anything like a credible candidate.
Let's take a look at a few of the declared and likely candidates, starting with Newt Gingrich. Granted, Gingrich is a darling of the right, remembered for his hardball takeover of the House in 1994, and his relentless pursuit of Bill Clinton over the Lewinsky affair. But these career highlights are also the self-sown seeds of his own destruction. He's deeply susceptible to being branded a hypocrite for his own infidelity (conducted while he was after Clinton) to his second wife, with the woman who is now the third Mrs G. The Christian right is unlikely to be able to swallow any kind of family values pitch from a guy on his third marriage. And there are few candidates who are more likely to galvanize the Democratic base than this particular nemesis.
Mitt Romney is deeply tainted too. The further he distances himself from his healthcare reform as Governor of Massachusetts, the less appealing he is as a centrist alternative to Obama. Independent voters must already be wondering how many other experiments he might be willing to conduct at the expense of the American people, and then renounce a couple of years later because they hadn't worked.
I was amazed by the amount of ink and airtime was spilled on a possible Donald Trump candidacy. Here's a guy whose businesses have declared bankruptcy not once but several times. Is this the dude we want in charge of our extremely fragile national economy? His persistence in pursuing the issue of Obama's birth has also sullied him in many folks' eyes. To my delight, however, the news broke as I was writing this that he had decided against a run.
There's a raft of others, whose national name recognition is a stumbling block that will hurt them unless and until they become the GOP's nominee, including Tim Pawlenty, Michele Bachmann and Mitch Daniels.
And then there's our pinup for this post, Ms Palin, whose personal popularity did not suffer too badly even after she had Gabrielle Gifford's district in her crosshairs, but who suffers from the fact that fully 67% of those polled at the end of last year thought that she was unqualified to be President.
Plus there are important considerations about the Republicans' opponent. Mr Obama has all the benefits of being an incumbent, plus his own credibility received a real boost after Osama bin Laden was captured and killed on his watch. To be sure, the rose-tinted spectacles with which many viewed his candidacy last time have been replaced for many. But if, as is likely, the economy shows signs of improvement in the next 18 months, he looks relatively secure.
That said, I'm a lousy predictor of which way the American people will jump when it comes to elections. I've been consistently wrong over the 10 years I have lived in the States as to who would win (even when I voted for the winner). Let's see if, for 2012, I can be fourth time lucky. I'm calling it early for Obama, and looking forward to collecting on a bet made shortly after the 2008 election that he would be a two-term President. There's a whole $1 riding on it.
