[Hoot Gibson]

Do you realize that there are more jobs now, than when he took office? You keep bringing up people "dropping out of the workforce". Do you take into account all the baby boomers retiring in very large numbers. As the baby boomers retire, of course there will be a lot of people leaving the workforce. They are the biggest class of people leaving the workforce at this point in time.

The population has grown and many of those "jobs" are part time jobs that were created in response to Obamacare. I know that some of the people who have left the workforce are retirees, but many people have retired earlier than they wanted because they could not find jobs comparable to the ones that they lost. I also keep bringing up the transition of full time jobs to part time jobs and you keep ignoring that factor.

The economy is a mess. If it does not begin improving at a much faster pace, Democrats will continue to suffer losses. If the economy does begin picking up steam, then it will be easy for Republicans to claim at least part of the credit because they will be in charge of Congress and will be able to point at the before and after snapshot of the economy.

If Obama does not begin cooperating with Republicans in 2015, individual Democrats who will be running for reelection in 2016 will start peeling away from Obama and Harry Reid. Doing so will give them some credibility when they try to distance themselves from Obama's policies in the 2016 campaigns. Obama will still be in office and if he is still unpopular, which is almost a certainty, then Democratic candidates will not want to see those "voted with Obama 97% of the time" campaign ads.

You are smart enough to understand who will be blamed if Republicans start sending a steady stream of bills to Obama to sign, only to have most of them vetoed. If McConnell has any sense at all, that is exactly what will happen. Republicans will remind voters constantly that they are passing bills that Harry Reid and Obama blocked for up to four years. The pressure on Democrats to vote in favor of some of those Republican bills will be enormous, if they plan to run in 2016.

If Obama hands out 5 million green cards to illegals, it will be one of the biggest political blunders in U.S. history. Democrats best hope is to focus on the economy with Republicans and marginalize Obama for the next two years. He won't like it, but he will not be running for office again.

This is my last post in this thread. We have veered way off topic, especially since we generally agree on the cause of gas price drops quite a few posts ago.