We start in chronological order with Victor Davis Hansen:

Next year could be a frightening one, in the fashion of 1979–80.

The developing circumstances of our withdrawal from Afghanistan conjure up Vietnam 1975, with all the refugees, reprisals, humiliation, and emboldened enemies on the horizon, though this time there is no coastline for a flotilla of boat people to launch from. The Obama administration is debating no-fly zones over Syria; more likely, it will have the same discussion over Afghanistan soon, once the Taliban drops the diplomatic veneer and comes back into town.

Because of the failure to negotiate a single residual base in Iraq, Iran has appropriated a vast air corridor to the Middle East. John Kerry speaks sonorously to Russia and China, but apparently assumes that diplomacy follows gentlemanly New England yacht protocols, the right of way given to the more sober, judicious, and pontificating.

When Obamacare comes on line full bore, I think the American people could be quite depressed over the strange things they encounter. The economy offers only marginal encouragement, given that unemployment is still high and growth low; printing money at a record pace is not sustainable. Only gas and oil production is encouraging — and that is despite, not because of, administration efforts.

The Snowden extradition affair in and of itself could be small potatoes, but it takes on enormous iconic importance when the Chinese and Russians feel no compunction about publicly snubbing the administration — with North Korea, Iran, and many in the Middle East watching and drawing the conclusion that there are no consequences to getting on the bad side of the United States. Or perhaps they no longer see a bad side at all and consider us complacent neutral observers. Red lines, deadlines, ultimatums, “make no mistake about it,” “let me be perfectly clear,” the Nobel Peace Prize — all that is the stuff of yesteryear, its currency depleted by the years of speaking quite loudly while carrying a tiny stick. …

We are back to the future, with the same old, same old sort of Carteresque engineered malaise.

Happily, the 1980 voters punted Jimmy Carter back to Plains, Ga. Ronald Reagan inherited a bad economy from Carter, as Barack Obama inherited a bad economy from George W. Bush. And there the stories diverge, as Investors Business Daily shows:

On Friday, the Labor Department announced that unemployment stayed at 7.6 percent in June. This is supposed to be good news. It’s not. Among other things, the U6 rate — unemployment plus underemployment — jumped from 13.7 percent to 14.3 percent.

With that unemployment report, Barack Obama became the first president in the history of unemployment measurements to have a national unemployment rate beyond 7.5 percent for 54 consecutive months. As an added bonus, if you want to call it that, only 47 percent of U.S. adults have full-time jobs. If you are an adult, and you have a full-time job, you are in the minority in this country.

The reason for the U6 jump ties not just to our Recovery In Name Only, but to the Obama administration’s announcement last week delaying for one year the employer-mandate provision of ObamaCare. Someone getting a federal paycheck must have noticed that businesses are not hiring — indeed, are cutting back their employees’ hours — because of their legitimate concerns of the negative effects of ObamaCare’s costs on their bottom lines. If the Obama administration thought things were going just fine economically, there would be no reason to delay the mandate; businesses would just have to suck it up.

And what of those providers of jobs? The U.S. Daily Review quotes William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist of the National Federation of Independent Business:

“Small firms are continuing to shrink as small employers in June reported an average gain of negative 0.09 workers per firm-essentially zero. We only have to look to Washington for reasons why our economy can’t seem to maintain steam and is on a painfully slow journey towards job creation. …

“Uncertainty about the health care law continues to have a negative impact on small business. Small employers are still trying to figure out what labor will cost and what firm size will have to comply with which rules. As long as Washington is continues to create rolling disasters- exemptions, special deals, delays, confusion, contradictory regulations, small businesses will not be ready to bet on their future by hiring lots of workers with uncertain cost.”

The other obvious ObamaCare issue is the fact that 2014 is a Congressional election year, and the White House appears to have deluded itself into believing it has a chance, despite history and economic reality, of capturing Democratic control of the House of Representatives. With the economy really in the tank in an election year, how likely is that?

Obama voters should be really, really proud of themselves.