Obama's Secret Weapon

Mitt Romney and Rick Perry during a Republican presidential debate in Las Vegas on Oct. 18, Chip Somodevilla ; Alex Wong / Getty Images

Nov 7, 2011 4:45 AM EST

With one year to go until the presidential election, Michael Tomasky handicaps the race—and explains why, despite the lackluster economy, the GOP just may get Obama reelected.

Politics is sometimes a science and other times an art. So here we sit, with the election exactly a year away, and the conventional wisdom in the political press is largely driven by the political-science theory of presidential elections and economic determinism: that is, that the results of presidential elections are pretty much strictly a function of economic conditions, and if those are bad (defined by various measures, chiefly the jobless and growth rates), the incumbent will lose.

By that theory, Barack Obama is pretty well doomed. And yet I don’t know a soul who thinks he doesn’t stand a decent chance of winning next year. As a matter of fact, it’s quite clear that his stock has risen a bit over the past couple of weeks. Why? It’s not the Republican candidates. READ MORE