Celente Picks 2012 Presidential Winner

Press Release: And the next President of the United States will be: teleprompter populist extraordinaire, Barack Obama.

Should the Republicans nominate one of the three current frontrunners – Mitt Romney, Rick Perry or Michelle Bachmann – Barack “Back-on-track” Obama wins (despite polls showing him with just a 41 percent approval rating) by playing the populist card he’s already begun to deal, forecasts Gerald Celente, Trends Journal publisher.

The President is already calling the bluff of his Republican foes, demanding a millionaire’s tax and daring a gridlocked Congress not to pass it.

“Warren Buffet’s secretary shouldn’t pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffet,” Obama moralizes. “It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher, or a nurse, or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than someone pulling in $50 million.”

Obama began rehearsing his self-described role as “warrior for the middle class” some months ago. In the Summer 2011 issue of the Trends Journal, we alerted subscribers to Obama’s populist campaign strategy:

Undaunted by his string of broken promises, in the Summer of 2011, the born-again populist positioned himself to retain his core Democratic base, while wooing swelling legions of the hard-pressed, desperate for a government handout … the out of work and down and out were left with a Hobson’s Choice: either take Obama or be left out in the cold by Republicans.

So, in a classic reversal of his recent stance as “Accommodator in Chief,” Obama now vows not to cut the one program most Republicans want to either eliminate or drastically reconfigure, but which voters hold sacred: Social Security. “Obama Plan Won’t Include Changes to Social Security,” read the Sept. 15 Wall Street Journal headline. As for Medicare, Obama has promised to “fix” it sometime in the future … well after the election.

And who gets hurt if Social Security and Medicare get cut? The 78 million retirement-age baby boomers who need the entitlements most, who can afford the cuts the least – and who vote.

“Their health costs are going up; their investments are going down. They’re deep in debt, most without enough to retire on, and the Republicans want to give them less,” notes Celente incredulously. “It’s a suicidal strategy that’s stranger than fiction. It’s as though the Republican campaign has been devised by insidious Democratic infiltrators.”

This is why the new, tough-talking Obama is painting Republicans as the party that “does everything for corporate America and nothing for middle America,” says Celente.

The Presidential Reality Show

Reflecting back on the debates between Republican candidates, Celente says, “This isn’t politics as an exercise in Democracy in action, it’s politics as show business for ugly people. Anyone who saw the September 12th debate hosted by CNN witnessed an early episode of The Presidential Reality Show. It was a star-spangled, made-for-TV-spectacle appropriating the lowest common denominator elements of the World Wrestling Federation, the Miss America Pageant and American Idol.

“Given that this is what is passed off as political ‘debate’ in America, come Election Day, the American Idol winner (a.k.a. The President of the United States) will be the best performer. And Barack Obama has proven that he can out-perform and out-teleprompt them all – he will tell the teleprompted truth the audience wants to hear.

“Obama will blame Congress for everything that’s wrong with America. He’ll bring back the ghost of George W. Bush and the failed Republican fiscal policies – despite the fact that Democrats were in power for two years. He’ll avoid mentioning his role in keeping the Bush tax cuts in place and that he bailed out the banks, financial institutions and the too-big-too-fails and delivered nothing but empty promises to the foreclosed and unemployed he vowed to rescue.”

By the time the Republicans finally get around to choosing a candidate, Obama will have his “warrior for the middle class” message perfected.

The Leading Presidential Reality Show Contestants

Gerald Celente forecasts that Texas Governor Rick “Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme” Perry will not survive his many gaffes or be able hide his political baggage.

“On the hot button Obamacare issue, Mitt ‘Corporate Raider’ Romney has already out-Obama’d Obama with the Romneycare healthcare plan he pushed through as Governor of Massachusetts. And besides,” says Celente, “polls show that one third of Republicans won’t vote for a Mormon, which cancels out everyone who says they won’t vote for Obama because they think he’s a Muslim.”

As for Michelle Bachmann? In the highly unlikely event of her winning the nomination, she could never survive the heat or the intense personal scrutiny she’ll be subjected to on the campaign trail.

“Getting Elvis’s birthday wrong is surely forgivable, but warning that the rise of the Soviet Union is a great threat to America’s national security is borderline inanity. She makes Sarah Palin (who claimed she could see Russia from her backyard) sound like a sage,” observes Celente.

While Obama’s 41 percent approval rating is dismal, with 13 months before Election Day, it is not an insurmountable statistical gap to close. Ronald Reagan, the ultimate political actor, and Bill “Slick Willie” Clinton – at the same point in their presidencies – had only a 47 and 46 percent approval rating respectively, and they won reelection.

“As the teleprompter populist,” says Celente, “Obama’s every phrase will be carefully crafted. He rarely speaks off-the-cuff and seemingly never from the heart. And on a stage where performance counts more than the heart, fans (a.k.a. the electorate) will vote for the Best Actor. That actor will be the man who commands the stage, Barack Obama.

“If you can sell the American people Jersey Shore,” says Celente, “you can sell them another round of ‘Hope’ and ‘Change You Can Believe In.’”

Trend Forecast: In the Summer 2011 Trends Journal, Celente identified Jon Huntsman as the dark horse favorite, with Ron Paul next in line.

Over the long haul in the run for the nomination, the attacks launched by the three current frontrunners could succeed in discrediting them all. Under such circumstances it is not impossible that one or the other of the dark horses could win the race. Should that be the case, either one would have a better chance of beating Obama than Romney, Perry or Bachmann.