Here’s What Hope Looked Like In 2008. Are The Obama Voters Disappointed Today? Maybe A Few Sane Ones

Though this is a climate and energy blog, I’ve decided to meander off into pure politics this one time. It’s a slow day.

In 2009 I asked a friend of mine, who I’ll call Norm, to predict where we would be under Obama’s leadership by 2012. Norm is a flaming liberal and ultra-Obama fan. Needless to say Norm thought Obama was going to heal the planet and deliver the world’s population to socialist prosperity. Below are three predictions he made in April 2009, with reality in brackets. Do you see the difference?

Unemployment rate 4.5% [8.3%]
Federal deficit: balanced [about -1.5 trillion$]
Price for a gallon of gas: $4.50  [$3.82]

Now you’d think Norm would be disappointed with Obama’s performance and change his vote this time around. Even gasoline was nowhere near as expensive as he had hoped. But he won’t. Some people live their lives denying reality. The excuse of course is that Obama had inherited a problem that was much greater than any of us could have imagined, but he’ll surely fix it in the next 4 years, if given the chance. No matter what the stats say, we are better off today, they insist.

On Facebook someone posted the following table. Are we really better off today?

If these numbers aren’t enough to convince all the Norms out there, then nothing will. Some people are unable to cope with reality.

 

9 responses to “Here’s What Hope Looked Like In 2008. Are The Obama Voters Disappointed Today? Maybe A Few Sane Ones”

  1. archaeopteryx

    http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2012/09/04/vote-should-solar-and-wind-power-be-subsidized/

    a poll re the wind PTC… “They should be eliminated” (if it is not too late)

  2. DirkH

    James Sexton has a graph for number of current workforce in USA.
    http://suyts.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/some-really-bad-employment-news/#comment-26542

    It was 140 mill in JAN2009. Given the population growth of about 3 % over the last 3.5 years, that number should have grown to 144.2 million IF employment rate of start of 2009 had been constant.

    BUT it’s only 142.5 mill now. So, normalized for population growth, the USA has a lower employment rate than at start of Obama’s presidency. DESPITE spending 6 tn USD Obama didn’t have.

    Even for a Keynesian that’s quite an achievement.

  3. Ulrich Elkmann

    Never mind. 85 per cent of all Germans would vote for Obama
    (http://www.fr-online.de/politik/umfrage-die-welt-wuerde-obama-waehlen,1472596,3226688.html) and will be sorely miffed if the Americans dare to ignore that staunch but alternative-less advice. Please don’t bother to bother them with facts, especially economic ones. If reality chooses to be on the Republican side, the more reason to teach it a lesson…

    1. DirkH

      A twitter response to Lady Gaga’s #IfObamaDontWin hashtag:

      “Jim Treacher @jtLOL

      #IfObamaDontWin Romney will tear down all the schools and kill all the teachers, and then people will say “don’t” when they mean “doesn’t.”

      http://twitchy.com/2012/09/07/conservatives-send-lady-gaga-packing-hijack-ifobamadontwin-hashtag/

    2. DirkH

      Thinking further about the insular mental state of Germans:

      They see what’s happening in USA through two filters in a row: First, MSNBC, CNN, NBC, NYT, WaPo will filter out most of what they don’t want to see, like the closing prayer for the unborn by the archbishop at the DNC.
      ( http://twitchy.com/2012/09/07/nbc-and-other-cut-off-archbishop-dolans-pro-life-prayer-viewers-revolt/ )

      After that, ARD, ZDF, Der Spiegel etc will translate the remainders that this filter lets through, and the opinion pieces that the NYT adds. The translation adds some omissions, misinterpretations and numerical errors.

      Now, the editors of said media will decide how to filter that material and what opinion pieces to add. In Germany, the journalists opinion is usually mixed right into the material, you can only differentiate it from the source material by grammatical nuances, by the tone with which the guy talks.

      So, from that material the Germans form their ideas about the world.

  4. Bergmann
  5. DirkH

    More about the FIRST filter, the American MSM:

    In this video segment from Fox News, Dinesh D’Souza, maker of “2016”, says that for the film he interviewed people in Indonesia and so on who at one time knew Obama. He asked them when was the last time they were interviewed by the NYT or the likes. They all said “Never, you’re the first guy to show up.”

    http://video.foxnews.com/v/1828493287001/dnc-rewind-untold-story-of-the-gm-bailout

    So, the huge success of 2016 is because D’Souza is filling a void that the American MSM have intentionally left blank – they NEVER WANTED TO report about the past of Obama. Wouldn’t that have been an interesting theme to report on?

    The American people think yes and flock to the cinemas.

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