Israeli navy challenges Gaza-bound yacht (Reuters)

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli naval vessels on Tuesday told a French yacht carrying pro-Palestinian activists intending to sail to Gaza, which is under an Israeli naval blockade, to leave the area, the military said.

"A short while ago, initial contact was made between the Israel Navy and the lone vessel Al-Karame," the statement said.

It added that the yacht was told that "it is on a route leading to an area under a maritime security blockade off the coast of Gaza, and (the navy) reminded them any supplies they may have on board may be transferred, legally, through the existing land crossings and the Ashdod Port," it added.

A military spokeswoman declined to say where in the eastern Mediterranean contact was made with the yacht.

The 17-passenger "Dignite-AlKarama" had declared an Egyptian port as its destination when it left Greek waters on Sunday but then said it was redirecting toward the Palestinian enclave and was hoping to arrive by Tuesday afternoon.

Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television reported that its correspondent on the yacht said a communication from an Israeli vessel told the yacht that marines would take control of the boat if it did not heed their instructions.

Israel, whose marines killed nine Turkish activists when they stormed a Gaza-bound flotilla in the Mediterranean last year, has vowed to stop any new attempt to breach a naval blockade it deems necessary to prevent arms from reaching Gaza, which is ruled by the Islamist group Hamas.

Palestinians and their supporters consider the Gaza blockade illegal and say it stunts the economic development of the territory, most of whose 1.5 million residents rely on aid to survive.

(Additional reporting by Nidal al-Mughrabi in Gaza, Writing by Ori Lewis; Editing by Jon Boyle)

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Cote d'Ivoire: Free Health Care Window Highlights Challenges (OneWorld.net)

DAKAR, Jun 10 (IRIN) - The Ivoirian government has extended a special period of free health care to help a population reeling from months of turmoil. But in a country where cost recovery for health services has long been the policy, an abrupt change to free care is posing challenges.

“If we are to provide quality care for the population, we must take a step back, study this and reorganize,” said Fabrice Ble, a doctor at a community health centre in Port-Bouet in the main city Abidjan.

Shortly after Alassane Ouattara took power in April 2011, he announced that public health services would be free until the end of May as a way to help people in the aftermath of widespread unrest and economic stagnation.

On 8 June, after a few days of uncertainty about this policy, the Health Ministry announced free care would be extended “until further notice”.

In recent years some countries in West Africa have made health services free for certain groups like women and under-five children, but Cote d’Ivoire has maintained health user fees; offering free care in public hospitals was for the current exceptional circumstances only. The system is not set up for free health services.

Doctors reported 20-30 times the number of patients after free care was announced. Advocates of free care say the explosion of patients indicates that cost is one of the biggest barriers to access.

But even advocates say a shift to free care is not like flicking a switch. “This is not something that changes overnight,” said Ina Bluemel, senior health coordinator with Save the Children, which is calling for universal health care.

Cote d’Ivoire would have to determine additional staff and supply requirements, reform tax and insurance systems, mobilize additional funding from the national budget and inform the public of the policy change, Save the Children says in a communique.

“Even though the temporary waiving of fees has benefited people across the country, it remains a short-term solution to a much deeper problem.”

Rob Yates, health economist with the UK government’s Department for International Development, says several "supply-side" reforms are necessary when a government removes fees, including increasing health workers' salaries and benefits, ensuring they are paid regularly and improving accountability mechanisms.

It is not clear whether the Ivoirian government is considering waiving fees for good.

Taking stock

Health officials are evaluating how the initial phase went, said Ousmane Aidara, communications officer in the Health Ministry. “We are looking at what worked and what didn’t and the public’s take on this approach. We are studying whether it should be extended again and if so for how long.”

In April, just as the heaviest fighting subsided, several aid agencies provided supplies and support to health facilities, and medicines to the central pharmacy. But emergency aid is not part of a sustainable health system.

Save the Children has welcomed the extension, saying it and other NGOs continue to meet Health Ministry officials to help develop a long-term solution to accessible health care.

Meanwhile, health workers are struggling to absorb the high number of people coming through and navigate in the new no-fee mode. Ble, the doctor in Port-Bouet, said under cost recovery the money patients pay goes into state coffers. “If now the government figures it can offer free health care to the population, fine and good. But health workers then must have all the means at their disposal to offer quality care.”

» ALL THE LATEST HEADLINES FROM ONEWORLD

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Challenges to health care law get appellate hearing Tuesday

WASHINGTON — The legal battle over the federal health care law shifts to a historic Richmond courthouse Tuesday, in the first appellate hearing on the constitutionality of the Obama-sponsored legislation.

President Obama gets applause after signing the health care bill on March 23, 2010, in the White House.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit will consider two cases testing the sweeping law that requires people to buy health insurance by 2014 or face a tax penalty. In one of those two cases, a trial judge declared that mandate, the linchpin provision of the 2010 health-care law, unconstitutional. In the other case, a judge upheld it.

Competing arguments from the Obama administration and its challengers, which have come into focus as lower courts nationwide have reviewed the law extending insurance to 32 million Americans, will now play out before the highest court to date — one that brings the case closer to its likely destination, the U.S. Supreme Court.

"The fact that the court of appeals will now rule is extremely significant," University of Virginia law professor John Jeffries says. "The upshot of repeated district court (rulings) can only be described as confusion. The court of appeals will focus and narrow the issue" for the Supreme Court.

The 4th Circuit has a record of deciding cases fast, often within a few months of a hearing. It also has a distinctive code of courtesy that will be on display Tuesday in the imposing granite courthouse dating to the 1850s. After each set of oral arguments, the judges descend their bench and shake hands with lawyers for both sides.

Of the 4th Circuit's ambiance, Jeffries, who has argued before that court, added, "The fact that the judges come down off the bench and shake hands and say a personal word enhances the dignity of the proceeding. I might add that it also puts you on your best behavior."

Names of the three panel judges hearing the case will not be revealed until Tuesday morning, shortly before the 9:30 a.m. session. That custom of keeping the judges' names secret until the day of oral arguments is used by only two other U.S. appeals courts.

Patricia Connor, clerk of the 4th Circuit, says the practice reinforces the idea that lawyers present their cases to the court as a whole, not to individual judges. (Lawyers such as Jeffries say it also prevents attorneys from scoping out judges ahead of time and pitching their arguments to particular sensibilities.) Connor said judges are randomly assigned through a computer program.

The 14 judges on the 4th Circuit are essentially half Democratic appointees, half Republican appointees. Party affiliations do not divide neatly in some cases. Chief Judge William Traxler, for example, was first named to a federal trial bench by Republican President George H.W. Bush and then elevated to the 4th Circuit by a Democrat, President Clinton.

Indicative of the stakes to the Obama administration, acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal, the government's top lawyer before the Supreme Court, will argue the constitutionality of the health care law Tuesday.

In the lawsuit brought by Virginia officials, Virginia v. Sebelius, state Solicitor General Duncan Getchell will argue. In the separate case brought by a Christian college, Liberty University v. Geitner, Mathew Staver will present the case. Each side in each case will have 20 minutes. The Supreme Court last month rejected a request by Virginia officials to take up the dispute immediately rather than wait for appeals court action.

At the heart of Tuesday's cases, and the others heading to appeals courts in other parts of the country, is a test of Congress' power to regulate interstate commerce and whether a person's decision to forgo insurance falls within that sphere.

Obama administration lawyers argue in their brief that, "Millions of people without health insurance have consumed health care services for which they do not pay. These uncompensated costs — totaling $43 billion in 2008 — are shifted to health care providers regularly engaged in interstate commerce."

Administration lawyers stress that people who get medical care without insurance adversely affect the whole interstate market. They say the individual-insurance mandate is essential to the law's goal of providing medical care to all Americans and preventing insurers from denying coverage or raising premiums because of an individual's medical history.

Virginia officials call being uninsured a "passive status" that cannot be regulated as an economic activity under Congress' commerce power. They also contend "the claimed power to order a citizen to purchase a good or service from another citizen has no principled limit."

Lawyers for Liberty University say separately that the school wants to provide health care to its employees on its own terms, consistent with its Christian values, and not be bound by an insurance mandate. They say that the two individuals who have joined Liberty University's challenge, Michele Waddell and Joanne Merrill, are "Christians who believe in living out their sincerely held religious beliefs in everyday life, including in …the lifestyle choices they make, of which managing their health care privately is but one example." The lawyers say the women have decided not to buy health insurance, and rather to take care of their health needs as they arise.

About 125 spectators will fit into the building's primary mahogany-paneled courtroom, on the second floor, for the morning hearings. Connor says extra visitors will be directed to an overflow fourth floor courtroom where the proceedings will be shown on a large screen.

For the first time in its history, the 4th Circuit (which covers Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia, as well as Virginia) will be providing an audio link of the day's arguments on its website: http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/.

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New book challenges views on sex in the Bible

By Patrick Reddy, AP

The Creation Museum, in Petersburg, KY., which tells the Bible's version of Earth's history doesn't get into the sexy parts of the Bible like the new book, "Unprotected Texts."

EnlargeCloseBy Patrick Reddy, AP

The Creation Museum, in Petersburg, KY., which tells the Bible's version of Earth's history doesn't get into the sexy parts of the Bible like the new book, "Unprotected Texts."

A Boston biblical scholar challenges widely held beliefs about the Bible and sex in her new book, arguing Scripture cannot and should not be a guidebook for sexual morality.

The Bible is a complex compendium of human experience including stories of love, prostitution, extramarital sex and more, Boston University religion professor Jennifer Wright Knust argues in "Unprotected Texts: The Bible's Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire."

Her book goes against most biblical conservatives' view that the Bible specifically prohibits sex outside of marriage and condemns homosexuality. From Genesis to the Gospels, Knust's research turns many traditional interpretations upside down.

She's also unafraid to get a little racy: a full-page ad for her book in the venerable Christian Century magazine asks, "Is it OK to pray for better orgasms?"

Exploring the love poetry of the Song of Songs, for example, she notes the text does not shrink from describing "sexual intimacy and climax." Its vivid and lurid details worried some church thinkers, including the ancient Christian theologian Origen.

Turning the Bible into a sexual rulebook doesn't work, Knust says, because it can be use to support an almost endless set of "interpretive agendas." Too often, she says, the holy book has been used to silence rebels, repress women and minorities, condemn homosexuals and even justify slavery.

Her intent, Knust says, is to move conversations about sex and the Bible past "polemical and shortsighted" claims using passages to support this or that particular viewpoint.

A good example is "the unfortunate history around biblical interpretation around the slavery issue," she says. "Slavery was natural and even believed to be divinely inspired by some" who used the Bible to support their outlook.

"When the abolitionists began to argue that the Bible was against slavery, they really tied themselves up in knots trying to cite certain passages in a certain way that supported their arguments."

The same can be said for arguments over sexuality, she says.

Equally alarming to Knust are present-day situations in which political opponents on either side of an issue use biblical texts to underscore their outlook.

"I hate to see the Bible being employed as kind of a weapon against women, against girls, against lesbian, gay, and transgendered people," she said. "I've seen so many people injured by this kind of biblical interpretation. For example, I was talking with a really wonderful woman recently who was saying she wanted to get a divorce from her husband because he was physically abusive. The message she was getting from her church was that the Bible was against divorce and therefore she had no choice but to stay in the marriage."

As a child, Knust read Bible stories before school most weekday mornings. Seated on her family's big gold couch, she and her mother read from a two-volume illustrated book. Never once did her mother tell her it was "silly or bad" to ask questions about the stories.

Knust grew up to see the Bible as neither a collection of policy statements nor a treatise to enforce a particular point of view. Instead, the Bible offered "an invitation to think abut who God might be and what it means to be human."

Knust is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA, which generally has a more open approach to interpreting Scripture than the more conservative (and larger) Southern Baptist Convention.

As a scholar, Knust is at ease talking about the Bible in both church and academic circles. And as an author, she writes with authority yet keeps the general reader in mind.

Her book demonstrates "the extraordinary range of scriptural attitudes toward the body," says fellow scholar Peter S. Hawkins, Yale University professor of religion and literature. It also shows "the impossibility of using any particular saying as warrant for a monolithic biblical teaching," he says.

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Obama begins 2012 run with challenges, advantages

By Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

President Obama announced his re-election bid for a second presidential term.

EnlargeCloseBy Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

President Obama announced his re-election bid for a second presidential term.

Surprising no one, President Obama made it official early Monday, sending an e-mail to supporters that he will seek re-election in 2012.

DETAILS:Read more, see video"Today, we are filing papers to launch our 2012 campaign," the president wrote in the e-mail.

Obama pledged to focus "on the job you elected me to do."

The papers are to be filed with the Federal Election Commission, launching his bid for the second term.

He starts his re-election campaign in one of the stronger positions of sitting presidents over the past four decades. His job-approval rating at this point in his tenure is higher than that of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, presidents who won second terms, and the nation's jobless rate, now 8.8%, has been slowly declining.

But as he turns 50 this year, Obama must traverse some perilous landscape. The economic recovery is fragile, and the U.S. military now is involved in three controversial military campaigns — in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya — that draw significant opposition from war-weary Americans. What's more, the big legislative achievement of his presidency, an overhaul of the health care system, fails to win majority support in national public opinion polls more than a year after he signed it.

"He'll have a lot of advantages as the incumbent — not challenged for his party's nomination and with an unlimited campaign fund," says Frank Donatelli, a former White House political director for Ronald Reagan and top aide to John McCain in the 2008 campaign. "On the other hand, we're still in very tough economic times, and his approval rating has been below 50% for a year now."

Donatelli puts the odds at Obama's re-election at "slightly better than 50-50," but adds, "The Republican nomination is clearly worth having."

Here's a look at the political landscape as Obama seeks to become the 17th president to win a second term.

Four big strengths History is on Obama's side. For more than a century, a political party that wins back the White House almost always holds it for at least eight years. The only exception was in 1980, when Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid.

Among Obama's strengths:

•The jobless rate is down.

For most of his first two years in office, Obama looked vulnerable on the economy. No matter how much he blamed his predecessor, George W. Bush, for job losses, the economy was Obama's burden.

The stark facts remain negative: The nation has lost about 3 million jobs since Obama came into office. But in the last year, the trend has been reversed, with about 1.4 million jobs created — nearly 500,000 this year alone.

"To the extent that things are getting better, it's going to be difficult for (Republicans) to make a case," says Obama strategist David Axelrod.

Republicans acknowledge the economy is improving at the right time for Obama; a report Friday showed the unemployment rate ticking down. Still, they question whether that will be enough to counter slow growth.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie notes that presidents who have run for re-election with jobless rates above 7.5% — including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — usually have lost.

Democrats are nervous. "Any president going into an election with 8.8% unemployment faces real challenges," says Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

•Fundraising will favor him.

Obama's reason for starting his re-election campaign this early speaks to one of his major advantages: raising money.

He spent nearly $750 million during his primary and general election campaigns in 2007-08, overwhelming his rivals. By starting nine months before the first GOP primary and with a base of 4 million people who contributed to him last time, Obama will have a huge head start.

"In 2012, the Republican candidates are going to be in the same position as they were in 2008: chasing Obama," says Anthony Corrado, an expert on political fundraising at Colby College in Maine. "He has the biggest base of donors at the beginning of a re-election campaign of any president in history."

Obama's campaign recently asked 450 of his top fundraisers to collect $350,000 each by year's end. That would pump more than $157 million into his re-election effort before 2012.

Republicans, however, will have more ability to compete than they did in 2008. Conservative groups such as American Crossroads showed muscular fundraising ability in the 2010 elections. And a Supreme Court ruling has given outside groups, including corporations, the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money up until Election Day.

•Demographics will boost his prospects.

Results from the 2010 Census released last month show a more racially and ethnically diverse nation — and with that a more Democratic electorate. Now, 36.3% of the population is minority, an increase of 5.4 percentage points in a decade.

The fastest-growing ethnic group, Hispanics, now represent about one in six Americans.

"The Census data confirm that the minoritization of America, the diversification of America, has proceeded not only fast but faster than we thought," says political scientist Ruy Teixeira, author of Red, Blue, and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics. "On balance, that helps Obama." Four of five minority voters backed him in 2008.

The nation's changing complexion improves Obama's prospect in what Democratic analyst Simon Rosenberg calls "the Latin belt," including such battleground states as Florida and Arizona.

Still, Obama's standing among white voters has eroded from the 43% who voted for him in 2008. That could put at risk some manufacturing states with a large number of white blue-collar workers — among them Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — that Democrats have come to rely on. "The newfound weakness for Democrats in the Rust Belt is a strategic challenge," Rosenberg says.

•A significant primary challenge is unlikely.

Some liberal Democrats express disappointment about Obama for not fulfilling his promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and for agreeing to a health care law that didn't include a public, government option. "There's been a general de-mobilization of the movement of hope and change," Borosage says, though he adds that Republicans' budget cuts and efforts against public-employee unions could help revive it.

Even so, there are no signs the president will face a significant challenge for the Democratic nomination. In the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, more than eight of 10 Democrats approved of the job he's doing as president. Among African Americans, the most reliable demographic group in the Democratic base, more than nine of 10 approve.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman put the odds of a challenge "somewhere between zero and 1%."

That matters: The last three presidents who faced significant primary challenges — Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and the elder President Bush in 1992 — all won the nomination but then lost the election. The last four presidents who didn't have primary battles all won in November.

"There's no question it makes it easier" for presidents, says Mellman, a strategist for John Kerry in 2004. "You're not draining resources ... and it means you don't have a fractured, divided party."

Four big hurdles For all of Obama's advantages, he faces tough challenges on fiscal and foreign affairs, including some of his own making. He also faces what most incumbents face: an energized opposition.

Among the president's vulnerabilities:

•The health care victory carried a cost.

Obama's overhaul of the health care system remains a potentially dangerous issue for him. Recent polls show little change in support from when the law was passed a year ago. In Gallup's March poll, 46% said they were pleased with the law, while 44% disagreed — down from 49% and 40% a year earlier.

That's disturbing news for the administration, which has labored since September to tout those parts of the law viewed most favorably by the public. They include barring insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, letting young people stay on their parents' insurance up to age 26, and giving some seniors $250 subsidies toward their prescription drug costs.

"There's this sense, particularly among independent voters, that this thing is flawed," says independent health care consultant Robert Laszewski. "But it's not so flawed in their minds that it can't be fixed."

There are wild cards in the debate. Beginning this week in the House of Representatives, Republicans are likely to propose major spending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, creating their own controversy.

And the Supreme Court may rule in the summer of 2012 on the law's constitutionality following a split among lower courts on the question, a decision that could start the debate all over again.

•Wars, new and old, raise qualms.

It was his opposition to the war in Iraq that initially propelled Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.

As president, Obama has continued Bush's plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq, but he also has expanded the deployment in Afghanistan and in recent weeks ordered the military into action in Libya. Some conservatives have criticized his leadership in not acting more decisively, and some liberals are outraged that he acted at all. On Thursday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, stood on the House floor for 40 minutes to denounce Obama's military action in Libya as unconstitutional.

Even if the military operations go as planned, they aren't likely to be a political plus, Teixeira says, at a time Americans are more concerned about jobs and the economy. "But certainly there are scenarios if things go south, it could hurt him," he says.

Republicans and presidential hopefuls from Sarah Palin to Mitt Romney have criticized Obama for acting multilaterally, following the lead of France and Great Britain.

"It's reinforced a perception among voters that he's weak and vacillating," Gillespie says. "They don't like that in a president."

•Big spending is a big issue.

One of the issues that dominated the 2010 mid-term elections — government spending — could come back to bite Obama.

That's because two numbers in the federal budget keep getting worse: The annual deficit, which hurt the first President Bush when it hit $290 billion in 1992, is now about $1.6 trillion. And the accumulated national debt is fast approaching $14.3 trillion.

"If deficits and spending remain an issue to the degree they were in the midterms, he's in trouble," says Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director and McCain's top domestic policy adviser in the 2008 presidential campaign.

The White House says the Bush administration sent the deficit soaring with record tax cuts and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Authorship of the deficits and debt is widely shared. They have a piece of that," Axelrod says.

Now, Obama and Republicans are negotiating spending cuts to resolve the 2011 budget. They'll battle over deficit reduction and the debt ceiling later this year.

On most of those issues, Obama has taken a back seat to Congress. "The lack of leadership is startling," says former senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., whom Obama once nominated for Commerce secretary. "It appears he wants to be re-elected more than he wants to lead."

•The GOP is energized.

In 2008, Bush's approval ratings fell amid an unpopular war in Iraq and worsening economy, and with it the enthusiasm of the GOP in the presidential race.

Obama isn't likely to have such an advantage in 2012. Opposition to his policies has sparked the Tea Party movement and helped Republicans gain control of the House last fall in what Obama described as "a shellacking."

"The 2010 elections have energized the party, and the base Republican rank and file are very engaged and very active," says Donatelli, who oversaw operations at the Republican National Committee for McCain in 2008.

Axelrod cites the president's strength but expresses concern about what can't be forecast: an international financial calamity, say, or a catastrophic oil spill. "The things I worry about are the things we can't control," he says.

"The biggest risk is uncertainty," Mellman says. "Presidential elections are driven by reality, by real events, and nobody has any idea what those real events are going to be. That uncertainty is what makes it a ballgame."

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Obama begins 2012 run with challenges, advantages

By Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

President Obama is poised to launch his re-election bid for a second presidential term.

EnlargeCloseBy Saul Loeb, AFP/Getty Images

President Obama is poised to launch his re-election bid for a second presidential term.

Surprising no one, President Obama is poised to file papers with the Federal Election Commission as early as today, officially launching his bid for a second term.

He starts his re-election campaign in one of the stronger positions of sitting presidents over the past four decades. His job-approval rating at this point in his tenure is higher than that of Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan, presidents who won second terms, and the nation's jobless rate, now 8.8%, has been slowly declining.

But as he turns 50 this year, Obama must traverse some perilous landscape. The economic recovery is fragile, and the U.S. military now is involved in three controversial military campaigns — in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya — that draw significant opposition from war-weary Americans. What's more, the big legislative achievement of his presidency, an overhaul of the health care system, fails to win majority support in national public opinion polls more than a year after he signed it.

"He'll have a lot of advantages as the incumbent — not challenged for his party's nomination and with an unlimited campaign fund," says Frank Donatelli, a former White House political director for Ronald Reagan and top aide to John McCain in the 2008 campaign. "On the other hand, we're still in very tough economic times, and his approval rating has been below 50% for a year now."

Donatelli puts the odds at Obama's re-election at "slightly better than 50-50," but adds, "The Republican nomination is clearly worth having."

Here's a look at the political landscape as Obama seeks to become the 17th president to win a second term.

Four big strengths History is on Obama's side. For more than a century, a political party that wins back the White House almost always holds it for at least eight years. The only exception was in 1980, when Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid.

Among Obama's strengths:

•The jobless rate is down.

For most of his first two years in office, Obama looked vulnerable on the economy. No matter how much he blamed his predecessor, George W. Bush, for job losses, the economy was Obama's burden.

The stark facts remain negative: The nation has lost about 3 million jobs since Obama came into office. But in the last year, the trend has been reversed, with about 1.4 million jobs created — nearly 500,000 this year alone.

"To the extent that things are getting better, it's going to be difficult for (Republicans) to make a case," says Obama strategist David Axelrod.

Republicans acknowledge the economy is improving at the right time for Obama; a report Friday showed the unemployment rate ticking down. Still, they question whether that will be enough to counter slow growth.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Ed Gillespie notes that presidents who have run for re-election with jobless rates above 7.5% — including Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush — usually have lost.

Democrats are nervous. "Any president going into an election with 8.8% unemployment faces real challenges," says Robert Borosage, co-director of the liberal Campaign for America's Future.

•Fundraising will favor him.

Obama's reason for starting his re-election campaign this early speaks to one of his major advantages: raising money.

He spent nearly $750 million during his primary and general election campaigns in 2007-08, overwhelming his rivals. By starting nine months before the first GOP primary and with a base of 4 million people who contributed to him last time, Obama will have a huge head start.

"In 2012, the Republican candidates are going to be in the same position as they were in 2008: chasing Obama," says Anthony Corrado, an expert on political fundraising at Colby College in Maine. "He has the biggest base of donors at the beginning of a re-election campaign of any president in history."

Obama's campaign recently asked 450 of his top fundraisers to collect $350,000 each by year's end. That would pump more than $157 million into his re-election effort before 2012.

Republicans, however, will have more ability to compete than they did in 2008. Conservative groups such as American Crossroads showed muscular fundraising ability in the 2010 elections. And a Supreme Court ruling has given outside groups, including corporations, the ability to spend unlimited amounts of money up until Election Day.

•Demographics will boost his prospects.

Results from the 2010 Census released last month show a more racially and ethnically diverse nation — and with that a more Democratic electorate. Now, 36.3% of the population is minority, an increase of 5.4 percentage points in a decade.

The fastest-growing ethnic group, Hispanics, now represent about one in six Americans.

"The Census data confirm that the minoritization of America, the diversification of America, has proceeded not only fast but faster than we thought," says political scientist Ruy Teixeira, author of Red, Blue, and Purple America: The Future of Election Demographics. "On balance, that helps Obama." Four of five minority voters backed him in 2008.

The nation's changing complexion improves Obama's prospect in what Democratic analyst Simon Rosenberg calls "the Latin belt," including such battleground states as Florida and Arizona.

Still, Obama's standing among white voters has eroded from the 43% who voted for him in 2008. That could put at risk some manufacturing states with a large number of white blue-collar workers — among them Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey — that Democrats have come to rely on. "The newfound weakness for Democrats in the Rust Belt is a strategic challenge," Rosenberg says.

•A significant primary challenge is unlikely.

Some liberal Democrats express disappointment about Obama for not fulfilling his promise to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay and for agreeing to a health care law that didn't include a public, government option. "There's been a general de-mobilization of the movement of hope and change," Borosage says, though he adds that Republicans' budget cuts and efforts against public-employee unions could help revive it.

Even so, there are no signs the president will face a significant challenge for the Democratic nomination. In the most recent USA TODAY/Gallup Poll, more than eight of 10 Democrats approved of the job he's doing as president. Among African Americans, the most reliable demographic group in the Democratic base, more than nine of 10 approve.

Democratic pollster Mark Mellman put the odds of a challenge "somewhere between zero and 1%."

That matters: The last three presidents who faced significant primary challenges — Gerald Ford in 1976, Carter in 1980 and the elder President Bush in 1992 — all won the nomination but then lost the election. The last four presidents who didn't have primary battles all won in November.

"There's no question it makes it easier" for presidents, says Mellman, a strategist for John Kerry in 2004. "You're not draining resources ... and it means you don't have a fractured, divided party."

Four big hurdles For all of Obama's advantages, he faces tough challenges on fiscal and foreign affairs, including some of his own making. He also faces what most incumbents face: an energized opposition.

Among the president's vulnerabilities:

•The health care victory carried a cost.

Obama's overhaul of the health care system remains a potentially dangerous issue for him. Recent polls show little change in support from when the law was passed a year ago. In Gallup's March poll, 46% said they were pleased with the law, while 44% disagreed — down from 49% and 40% a year earlier.

That's disturbing news for the administration, which has labored since September to tout those parts of the law viewed most favorably by the public. They include barring insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, letting young people stay on their parents' insurance up to age 26, and giving some seniors $250 subsidies toward their prescription drug costs.

"There's this sense, particularly among independent voters, that this thing is flawed," says independent health care consultant Robert Laszewski. "But it's not so flawed in their minds that it can't be fixed."

There are wild cards in the debate. Beginning this week in the House of Representatives, Republicans are likely to propose major spending cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, creating their own controversy.

And the Supreme Court may rule in the summer of 2012 on the law's constitutionality following a split among lower courts on the question, a decision that could start the debate all over again.

•Wars, new and old, raise qualms.

It was his opposition to the war in Iraq that initially propelled Obama, a freshman senator from Illinois, against Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.

As president, Obama has continued Bush's plan to withdraw most U.S. combat troops from Iraq, but he also has expanded the deployment in Afghanistan and in recent weeks ordered the military into action in Libya. Some conservatives have criticized his leadership in not acting more decisively, and some liberals are outraged that he acted at all. On Thursday, Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, stood on the House floor for 40 minutes to denounce Obama's military action in Libya as unconstitutional.

Even if the military operations go as planned, they aren't likely to be a political plus, Teixeira says, at a time Americans are more concerned about jobs and the economy. "But certainly there are scenarios if things go south, it could hurt him," he says.

Republicans and presidential hopefuls from Sarah Palin to Mitt Romney have criticized Obama for acting multilaterally, following the lead of France and Great Britain.

"It's reinforced a perception among voters that he's weak and vacillating," Gillespie says. "They don't like that in a president."

•Big spending is a big issue.

One of the issues that dominated the 2010 mid-term elections — government spending — could come back to bite Obama.

That's because two numbers in the federal budget keep getting worse: The annual deficit, which hurt the first President Bush when it hit $290 billion in 1992, is now about $1.6 trillion. And the accumulated national debt is fast approaching $14.3 trillion.

"If deficits and spending remain an issue to the degree they were in the midterms, he's in trouble," says Doug Holtz-Eakin, former Congressional Budget Office director and McCain's top domestic policy adviser in the 2008 presidential campaign.

The White House says the Bush administration sent the deficit soaring with record tax cuts and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Authorship of the deficits and debt is widely shared. They have a piece of that," Axelrod says.

Now, Obama and Republicans are negotiating spending cuts to resolve the 2011 budget. They'll battle over deficit reduction and the debt ceiling later this year.

On most of those issues, Obama has taken a back seat to Congress. "The lack of leadership is startling," says former senator Judd Gregg, R-N.H., whom Obama once nominated for Commerce secretary. "It appears he wants to be re-elected more than he wants to lead."

•The GOP is energized.

In 2008, Bush's approval ratings fell amid an unpopular war in Iraq and worsening economy, and with it the enthusiasm of the GOP in the presidential race.

Obama isn't likely to have such an advantage in 2012. Opposition to his policies has sparked the Tea Party movement and helped Republicans gain control of the House last fall in what Obama described as "a shellacking."

"The 2010 elections have energized the party, and the base Republican rank and file are very engaged and very active," says Donatelli, who oversaw operations at the Republican National Committee for McCain in 2008.

Axelrod cites the president's strength but expresses concern about what can't be forecast: an international financial calamity, say, or a catastrophic oil spill. "The things I worry about are the things we can't control," he says.

"The biggest risk is uncertainty," Mellman says. "Presidential elections are driven by reality, by real events, and nobody has any idea what those real events are going to be. That uncertainty is what makes it a ballgame."

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