It's the economy, stupid and Hillary is going to win

[angus]

I have been expounding on a theory with the people I work with and they are so enthralled by it, I thought I would shoot it out here in DU and see if you guys agree.

Recently, a few polls suggested that Hillary had widened her lead on Rudy by 51-48, or something like that. (look it up on cnn.com, it happened last week) Anyway...I noticed that these recent polls have coincided with some of the worst news about our economy in the past few years. From an economist's standpoint, I think that--regardless of political party--we are about to enter a recession and our economy is on the brink of taking a hit.

If you look at my subject line, you will see I referenced James Carville's great soundbite that helped propel Bill Clinton to victory--"It's the economy, stupid." Despite my feelings toward Carville and his DLC leanings--I have to wholeheartedly agree that the man has a point--or should I say had a point and continues to have a point.

Let's look at a recent example. Bush Sr. lost to Clinton just months after having launched a successful and supported invasion which propelled him to an astronomical approval rating. Like him or not, Bush Sr., was indeed somewhat of a moderate. Rove hadn't entered the picture quite yet, so the Delay-esque towing the party line mantra hadn't hit full swing. In other words, a year or so before the 1992 election--Bush Sr. was quite popular...among everybody.

But then the economy started to suck--and I mean really suck.

Clinton wins.

My theory is this: Take your Iraq war, take your gay marriage, take your abortion, civil rights, etc, etc, etc. and they don't sway as many people as we would like to think. All the DU'ers probably live and die by these issues as do their polar opposites on the extreme right; however, nothing really starts to happen significantly until the economy starts to tank--UNTIL THE AVERAGE JOE STARTS TO FEEL THE PINCH IN HIS WALLET. And what happens then? No matter what party they are registered with, the predominant feeling of this powerful middle America that everybody courts is that "we need to throw the current crew out". That's it--no more, no less. When the economy tanks in America, it's time for regime change. So my feeling is, if the economy keeps continuing this way, Hillary is in. She's the frontrunner for the party that's not in the oval office, and middle America is done with the party that's in the oval office.