Gasoline and the Upcoming Election

Most seem to expect that the price of gasoline will rise on the order of 60 cents by this summer, putting the price right around $4 a gallon for most Americans.  That is also right around the price that I think would doom Obama under most circumstances. 

In addition to this, we see that gasoline consumption is way down year over year
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-why-gasoline-consumption-tanking

This would tend to imply that economically things are a lot worse than we are led to believe.  I have a suspicion that Obama will call for a release of oil from the SPR to attempt to keep gas prices below the psychological value of $4 a gallon.  I'm not sure whether it'll work.  There has been since 2008 a lot of demand destruction in the US for gasoline and oil in general---we're importing a lot less than then--much more so than can be accounted for by increased fuel production inside the US.