It is the normal business of both parties to sucker the Independents into believing they are what they are not, Doug. ;-) The party that does a better job at it normally wins the election...specially if the public is heartily sick to death of the other party by then...and that will always happen after the other party's been in power awhile, specially when the economy tanks.

That's sort of how it works here in Canada too. And probably everywhere else. Nothing kills a party's popularity like a severe economic downturn. It killed McCain in 2008, and it's killing Obama now. Incumbents always get blamed for a bad economy, whether or not the trouble got started in their own term. They are expected to do magic if they inherit a bad economy from the previous administration. ;-) Of course they can't. So they are usually screwed...unless they can get the USA involved in a new war. A war is a very good way of taking people's mind off a bad economy, not to mention providing defence-related jobs. Or should I say offence-related jobs? But it's got to be timed right. George H. W. Bush's war on Iraq, for instance, didn't last long enough to keep his popularity high very long, and the economy took a nosedive after that war was over.

Now, if Obama could just get a REALLY nasty war with Iran happening....maybe drop a nuke or two...I'm sure that would be sufficient to get people to rally round the administration. It might require some sort of overt attack on America by someone first, though, one that could be blamed on Iran. That would work far better than anything else he could come up with. He is not going to be able to pull a genie out of a bottle and fix this economy.