Sen. Jeanne Shaheen has dusted off what was a winning issue for her in 2008 and hopes to help President Obama win New Hampshire by using it again this year. Yes, she has begun attacking oil speculators again.

“Excessive oil speculation distorts the supply and demand forces that should be governing the price of oil,” Shaheen said in a Wednesday statement. “This unregulated speculation does nothing to help our economy. It just raises the price of oil and gas...”

Like everything else Shaheen says, this was not her idea. It is part of the Obama reelection campaign. In conjunction with attacking “the rich” and “Wall Street” and “unfairness,” the administration seeks further divisions of America by stoking fear of oil speculators. Shaheen is only too happy to follow her marching orders.

It would be useful if Shaheen and Obama were more familiar with futures markets. Traders speculate in oil, but also in many other commodities, such as natural gas, the price of which has been going down for years. If speculators are to blame for the high price of oil, can we give them credit for the low price of natural gas?

By the way, Exxon-Mobil, often blamed for the high price of oil and gasoline, also is the nation's largest dealer of natural gas, the price of which is near historic lows. Greedy devils.

Only last month, academics from the University of Oxford and the University of Michigan reviewed multiple studies of speculation and oil prices. “We find that the existing evidence is not supportive of an important role of speculation in driving the spot price of oil after 2003. Instead, there is strong evidence that the comovement between spot and futures prices reflects common economic fundamentals rather than the financialization of oil futures markets.”

But Shaheen and Obama care nothing for the facts when there are voters who will be frightened by bogeymen.