I must resist the temptation to mole a sound response to that. So I'll just put it here:
1.Party Mandate: After the midterm elections, the incumbent party holds more seats in the U.S. House of Representatives than after the previous midterm elections.
false
Kind of arcane, questionable validity since for most of the tested life of the model, Congressional power shifts have been slow, long-term trending affairs, but that may not be the case now, thanks to the wildly-divisive Leftist Obamites and the increased velocity of turnovers under the past three Presidents. Can't dispute this call one way or the other or quantify the possibility of an invalid assumption in the model, so we'll go with their call on this quantitative measure, "False."
2.Contest: There is no serious contest for the incumbent party nomination.
True
Not a normal election cycle, due to racial politics nobody would dare challenge Obama within his party, which would NOT be true for an incumbent White Democrat with his exact performance to date. Should be "Cannot evaluate, unique case."
3.Incumbency: The incumbent party candidate is the sitting president.
True
Yeppers on that one. I'm good with "True."
4.Third party: There is no significant third party or independent campaign.
True
Should be a TBD. A lot depends on how bad he pisses off the commies and tree-huggers in the next six months, filing deadlines for the general election are very far away yet.
5.Short term economy: The economy is not in recession during the election campaign.
TBD
Yeah, TBD. Likely it will not be in
technical recession according to economists, but what the public
perception will be after the unique situation of three years of faux 'Recovery' is another question entirely. This is another one where the facts may have outgrown the assumptions of the model.
6.Long term economy: Real per capita economic growth during the term equals or exceeds mean growth during the previous two terms.
dunno
Really a TBD since there is over a year of economic activity left, but it doesn't look that great for the Obamites.
7.Policy change: The incumbent administration effects major changes in national policy.
True
True, as far as it goes. The fact that the biggest of those changes were contrary to polling, and pulled off through legislative maneuvering in a Congress which has since changed hands is a factor that may exceed the model.
8.Social unrest: There is no sustained social unrest during the term.
True
Probably true, but not a certainty. Unrest in late Summer of 2012 would wipe out 3-1/2 years of people more-or-less getting along, though. We'll go with 'True' for now, but this isn't a lock.
9.Scandal: The incumbent administration is untainted by major scandal.
True
"Yet." I sense that there are people within the Ominsitration that are getting fed up, though, and sooner or later that may blow up. The ATF/DOJ goat-rope over Gunrunner etc. may possibly take down the AG who is an Obama surrogate, this one is not a lock either. I will have to give them a "True, so far" on this one.
10.Foreign/military failure: The incumbent administration suffers no major failure in foreign or military affairs.
True
We'll see. Personally I think extracting forces from Iraq and Afghanistan next year is likely to result in a great deal of misgivings about the Oministration's judgment, and the Arab Spring "Success" (Semi-covert as our involvement was, the Oministration is leaking touts of our role to bolster themselves) there is a great potential for it to devolve into your typical
coup d'etat or theocratic Islamic North African bloodbath before the turn of the year, and certainly even more likely next year before November. I rate this one a TBD.
11.Foreign/military success: The incumbent administration achieves a major success in foreign or military affairs.
True
(How hot is it down there, Osama?)
That's like giving Carter a positive here for the
Mayaguez and overlooking every other screw-up including the disaster at Desert One. It's one nice thing, but very isolated and not enough by itself, and far removed in time from the election. It would be more than neutralized by Taliban resurgence, or 'Arab Spring' mutating into 'Islamofascist Winter' and/or Egyptian withdrawal from the Camp David agreement. I'd have to give this a TBD.
12.Incumbent charisma: The incumbent party candidate is charismatic or a national hero.
True
The bloom is off the rose, only Black voters and the hardcore base would agree on this one. The ubiquitous use of teleprompters and blaming Bush for everything have become cliches and fodder for comedians, and his ability to speak extemporaneously is appalling. His speeches have become a sure signal for "Market sell-off." I expect him to turn in an embarassing performance in the debates against any candidate who can think on his or her feet, because that is exactly what Obama
cannot do. It will be even more embarassing if his comments actually get fact-checked, but that's probably asking too much of our slavishly-adoring MSM, who will no doubt still laud his charisma no matter how little sense any of his speeches actually make. This is more of a "Maybe" at this point; it's only really true for his true base voters and therefore I would say indeterminate, as noted below due to unique factors this may exceed the model's parameters.
13.Challenger charisma: The challenging party candidate is not charismatic or a national hero.
TBD
The mirror of the above, since the challenger is unknown it is indeed TBD. As a mirror though, it means the Black and Donk hardcore base will define ANY challenger as failing here, so the pair of these may be exceeding the limits of the model due to the heavy partisan division.
Tally; 9 true, 1 false, 2 TBD, 1 dunno
1 - Definite True
4 - True so far or conditionally, but with everything depending on events yet to unfold over the next 14 months
5 - TBD
2 - Indeterminate due to unique issue of an incumbent Black Democrat
1 - Definite False
All the evaluations of Obama under this model on DU or by its developer are written as if the election was going to be next week. News flash DU - it's not.