{"id":9112,"date":"2012-08-12T11:20:03","date_gmt":"2012-08-12T10:20:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9112"},"modified":"2012-08-16T11:13:31","modified_gmt":"2012-08-16T10:13:31","slug":"why-obama-needs-to-make-history-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=9112","title":{"rendered":"Why Obama needs to make history &#8211; again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As we run up to the American presidential election consider these two facts.<\/p>\n<p>Fact 1: Since the Second World War, no incumbent president has ever won an election with unemployment higher than 7.2% (Ronald Reagan in 1984 managed to win re-election when unemployment was at that 7.2% figure).<\/p>\n<p>Fact 2:\u00a0The unemployment rate has been above 8% for 42 straight months &#8211; its longest period ever.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;ll find more analysis with a couple of graphs <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/the-fix\/post\/why-president-obama-will-need-to-make-history-again\/2012\/08\/03\/e3cb608e-dd8c-11e1-af1d-753c613ff6d8_blog.html?tid=wp_ipad\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So, to win a second term, Barack Obama \u00a0will have to make history. But then that&#8217;s what he did four years ago by becoming the first African-American president.<\/p>\n<p>Currently Obama and Romney are very close in the national polls, but the election will be determined by the Electoral College vote and here Obama looks stronger as revealed by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/epolls\/2012\/president\/2012_elections_electoral_college_map.html\">Real Clear Politics<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we run up to the American presidential election consider these two facts. Fact 1: Since the Second World War, no incumbent president has ever won an election with unemployment higher than 7.2% (Ronald Reagan in 1984 managed to win re-election when unemployment was at that 7.2% figure). Fact 2:\u00a0The unemployment rate has been above [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9112","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9112"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9195,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9112\/revisions\/9195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9112"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9112"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9112"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}