Be careful what you hope for

Hope can quickly turn into hopelessness.

The very act of hope brings with it an expectation that things can and will get better.

Each passing day that hope fails to deliver is one step closer to losing hope.

Can President Obama, with his promise of hope, make things better?

If it was 1982, perhaps. If it was 1992, perhaps. If it was 2002, perhaps.

It isn't. It's 2008 and things can and will only get worse.

Unfortunately, the situation will get worse for precisely the people to whom Barak Obama has offered his special brand of hope: the black, working class.

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Obama's key pledge to the US electorate was to cut taxes for 95% of working Americans.

The key word here is working.

US jobs are currently being lost at a faster rate each month and are likely to continue to fall faster.

The greatest cause of poverty in any economy is not low wages or high taxes but unemployment.

The current environment is particularly severe as those people most at risk of losing their jobs have already lost, or are very likely to, lose their homes too.

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In the coming months what we could see is the type of humanitarian disaster created by Hurricane Katrina but on a national (indeed international) scale.

How bad would an African-American President look if this occured on US soil?

Bad enough to lose the election in 2012.

The only question remaining is which lucky politician will inherit a situation in 2012 similar to that in 1982, 1992 or 2002? That's someone who Barak Obama can only hope to be.

Timing is everything after all...