The White House Predicts Its Own, Failed Reelection Bid?

This morning's Employment Report was just horrible. The job growth for last month was "zero" and you have to go all the way back to 1945 to match that kind of a nearly impossible statistic. Additionally, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.1%.

Even worse than today's horrible report, yesterday, the White House budget office dropped an "unemployment projection" bombshell that hardly bodes well for Obama's reelection bid. In a newly revised projection, the budget office now predicts that the unemployment rate will remain above 9 percent through the end of 2012. Previously, they had predicted an 8.6 percent rate for 2012 (Click here to See "The Hill" Story: "White House downgrades 2012 jobs, economic forecasts; cites 'turbulence'").

To put this into context, no President has won a reelection bid since FDR with an unemployment rate above 8%. One has to wonder why the White House would release this reelection-killing projection right now; just days before the President's jobs speech. Do you think maybe it is a psychological ploy to get Congress to act on Obama's jobs plan. I think so. This President and his team does absolutely nothing without calculating its political impact. Obviously, they're betting that, if they overstate a negative and, then, the economy actually does better, Obama will benefit by saying he beat the estimates.