Nate Silver releases the first of his many dynamic predictions concerning the presidential race:
The first look at the 2012 FiveThirtyEight presidential forecast has Barack Obama as a very slight favorite to win re-election. But his advantage equates to only a two-point lead in the national popular vote, and the edge could easily swing to Mitt Romney on the basis of further bad economic news. Mr. Obama remains slightly ahead of Mr. Romney in most national polls, and he has had a somewhat clearer advantage in polling conducted at the state level. Mr. Obama would be about 80 percent likely to win an election held today, according to the model.
So, five months out, Silver is predicting that Obama will be reelected. I will stick with my prediction, made more than one year ago, that Obama will withdraw from the race for one reason or another.
Former aides to President Bill Clinton are calling for a dramatic shift in their party’s economic message before the November election, warning of an “impossible headwind in November,” if they continue on their current path. The two political operations — Clinton and Obama — have never seen eye-to-eye, and now some of the top voices of the Democratic 1990s have shifted into open criticism of a political operation they cast as overly negative and reactive, and failing to offer a positive set of plans for the economy.
The “dramatic shift” that they are actually calling for is a different candidate.