Dire Economy Boosts Obama in Swing States

There are plenty of reasons the president should be worried

(NEWSER) - Democrats, and many pundits, seem to believe that President Obama is rebounding, and will surely win re-election, but Jim Vandehei of Politico isn't buying it. Here's why he thinks the president should be sweating right now:

• The economy: The recent CBO report not only projected another trillion-dollar deficit, it predicted that unemployment will rise to 8.8% in the third quarter—something Obama's own advisers doubt he could recover from.

And Julianne Moore as Sarah Palin is still pretty scary: reactions

(NEWSER) - If you thought Julianne Moore's Sarah Palin was terrifying in the first Game Change teaser , wait until you see her in the full trailer, where she utters lines such as, "We have to win this thing. I so don’t want to go back to Alaska." Watch below, then read on for some reactions:

• This will clearly be "a Frankenstein-esque story about McCain’s staffers coming to regret the choice they made in bringing a little-known governor into the limelight," writes Jon Bershad at Mediaite . "The full trailer ... gives us even more famous actors getting their turn to stare in horror at the 'monster' they’ve created."

HBO debuts first teaser

(NEWSER) - For all of you who have spent the past nine months wondering how Julianne Moore’s Sarah Palin impersonation will stack up against Tina Fey’s , you finally have your answer. HBO debuted its first teaser trailer for Game Change, the film due in March that's based on the Mark Halperin-John Heilemann book about the 2008 presidential election. Neither Ed Harris as John McCain nor Woody Harrelson as top adviser Steve Schmidt sound much like their real-life counterparts, notes David Jackson in USA Today , but Moore’s Palin is spot-on: Numerous publications including People , New York , the Huffington Post , and Jezebel are fairly impressed. More»

His policies have failed, so he's blaming the rich: Charles Krauthammer

(NEWSER) - President Obama's big speech in Kansas this week makes clear that he's going to resort to class warfare to try to win re-election, writes Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post . With the economy in shambles, Obama is sticking to his simplistic stick-it-to-the-rich theme ("the breathtaking greed of a few," etc.), happily ignoring the fact that his own policies created much of the problem, argues Krauthammer. More»

...Assuming Republicans nominate someone competent

(NEWSER) - Barack Obama could be in trouble. An election model from economic advisory firm IHS Global Insight is predicting a “heavy defeat” for the president, with Obama collecting a measly 43.5% of the vote, MarketWatch reports. Obama still has a shot, the firm noted, if Republicans nominate an “ineffective candidate” who can’t connect with moderate voters, or if the economy rebounds—though they deem the latter unlikely. More»