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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » 2016 should be the Republicans’ year for the White House
Hillary Clinton will be the Democrats’ candidate for the presidency next year, short of falling under a bus. Sanders is far too left-wing to be electable and offers nothing beyond his base, Biden has announced he won’t run, and no-one else is on the same lap, never mind in the frame. All she has to do is turn up, smile and not have a TalkTalk account.
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The article just highlights the poor choices facing the US electorate, and the dire state of US politics.
Oh, and first.
As an aside, Carly Fiorina is adjudged to have won two debates yet has twice seen her poll boost dissipate.
Anyway, off to the cricket for hopefully a full day there today. England in with a good chance of overhauling the Pakistan total, but the pitch will probably start to turn towards the bowlers as the day progresses. Should be a good contest if we don't lose early wickets.
To become a Republican member of Congress or to win the governorship of a Red state you generally have to tack right. That creates a record that makes winning the presidency a whole lot harder as more moderates turn out to vote. In the age of the Tea Party can the old right left routine still work for Republican nominees who have previously held office?
On topic, it isn't looking like a very strong field, but as SO points out, we say this every time (it was of course said in 1960, when the Democrats put up some random womanising lightweight that nobody had ever heard of whom Nixon was widely expected to beat by a huge margin).
Ever since the Republican hegemony collapsed in 1932, however, they seem to have struggled to win in their own strength unless the Democrats have made a truly imposingly awful mess of running the country (1968) or the Republicans have a very strong outsider candidate who appeals beyond just the party base (1952, 1980). The Bushes were exceptions, but both got in by fairly narrow margins (and HW remains one of only two elected US presidents since 1932 to be defeated in his re-election bid). By contrast, the Democrats actually have a fairly good record it seems to me of winning by default in fairly evenly matched fields: 1948 and 1992 to an extent, 1960, 1976, 2008.
From that point of view, Trump might be the logical choice for the Republicans - the gamble on the outsider. The fact that he is barking mad, however, unlike Reagan, and has had a less than brilliantly successful career, unlike Eisenhower, should be warning enough that he's not the answer. As DH says, that realistically leaves Rubio - if the Republicans will pick him. The question, I think, is whether they want power badly enough to pick someone to appeal to swing voters, or they will choose a True Believer so they can feel good about themselves and just carp about the stupidity of the electorate, a la Corbyn. That's where I don't know enough about the American electorate, especially the Republican electorate, to speculate.
PS - I hope @Sandpit is enjoying his day at the cricket. England are seemingly having fun in the sun this morning. Even Bairstow is scoring runs.
Hillary Clinton might be the one Democrat who can maintain black turnout, given her husband was 'the first black president' and all.
Also good to see a decent crowd slowly turning up, the 'home' team are outnumbered in the stands at the moment!
Seems a bit unfair to me (and she won't)
Edit. Or does he...? Saved by the replay.
Mr. Sandpit, saw your post on the previous thread. Might be more tempted to have bets on Toro Rosso and maybe Alonso [I'd say Button, but the Spaniard has the apparently souped-up Honda engine whereas the Briton does not].
Vettel's handy in the wet as well, although earlier this year Rosberg was the best by miles in wet conditions, only to come in for his pit stop a lap later than the canny Hamilton and Vettel, which cost him the win [I forget where this was].
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/formula1/34622959
Edited extra bit: Mr. Sandpit, no. The closest would be the 2011 Canadian Grand Prix, which had a two hour rain interval and prompted a new total time limit of four hours (stupidly, as the race was an absolute classic with Button winning on the final lap having been 21/21 halfway into the race), and the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix, during which a monsoon fell and the race was stopped halfway through.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34609114
Thought it would enlighten, but rather too brief, though Dave Nellist gets a mention. Vox pops all very well, but the thinness of the analysis is breathtaking.
Edit: a very very long day. At least the bat's open. Eng 223/8
EDIT - I think that last one was always a matter of time. Now let's see if Broad can play a few shots.
five wickets for 17 runs
changes radio station.
Did I say the bat was open, maybe I meant to say the bar is open!
The only thing I'd add is that even sophisticated observers see people as non-Presidential until they get within a shout of winning, when suddenly they look plausible. David cites Kennedy, I'd also point to Reagan, who in his own terms was hugely successful but the pundits always struggled to take seriously even after he'd won. So although I don't rate Carson either (he's a bright surgeon who has mistakenly strayed into politics), I think it's a mistake to rule him out. People get used to unusual characters.
Is too late for a fresh challenger? Probably. The organisation and potential funding has to be largely in place by now. It's just about viable to have donors who say they'll only donate big time if you win New Hampshire, but if you don't have an embryonic national network now, you've missed the bus. But all the Republicans except Trump are just one bad debating mistake away from meltdown, so plumping heavily for anyone looks risky - the strategy of laying the favourite du jour but betting on a GOP victory may be the best for the time being.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2015/10/labour-mps-are-worried-about-momentum-should-they-be
“We didn’t expect to win,” admitted campaign aide Jon Lansman, on Left Futures, the increasingly influential Corbynite website of which he is the editor. Most campaign staff had been on secondment from supportive trade unions, while others were on unpaid leave. Trade union officials were “greeted like conquering heroes” on their return to work on the Monday after special conference...."
Wood b Younus b Yasir 1 (Eng 233-9)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-34615972
Apart from the arrest for High Treason of anyone who's ever voted Labour or Green, of course.
Its Deputy CE is Carolyn Hughes who "joined the Electoral Commission in May 2007.
Her last role was as Director of Finance at Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust. "
http://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/our-work/who-we-are/executive-and-management-team
"Hinchingbrooke Health Care NHS Trust which had long standing financial problems. It was obliged to borrow £27.3 million in Public Dividend Capital in 2006-7"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinchingbrooke_Hospital
The famous Japanese grand prix which was the title decider between Hunt and Lauda in 1976 was extremely wet. Although Lauda had his own reasons for complaining. ISTR there was also an extremely wet race in 1981 or 82, and there is the also-famous Monaco win in the mid-80s where Senna was 'robbed' of his first win, at least according to some.
Although rain can make races exciting, it can be a little too exciting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmOhDtgsPjc
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/politics/article4595057.ece
If so, Corbyn's Labour are Donald Ducked.
Oh well. To all those waking up in the UK expecting to watch England bat...
We're all set for the familiar Spurs/England double in a day defeat...
2 x 1
3 x 4
#webatdeep
Eng lose last seven wickets for 36 runs.
#blameCorbyn
I finished my second Patrick Gale book (The Facts of Life) this week and remain a fan, though I understand him a bit better now after reading the afterword. He's gay, and indeed this book is partly about the AIDS epidemic before the treatments got on top of the disease in the West. But it's characteristic that I've read two books by him without really noticing. Gale is a bit more explicit about the occasional gay sex scene than usual, but he covers all kinds of relationships, and where he really scores is acuity of vision and an unsentimental empathy for his characters, even the less apparently likeable ones. Here he is writing about a girl playing on the beach:
"Her mother drew together some largish pebbles for her to play with. Miriam grasped one with both hands, laughed, dropped it, grasped another, laughed, dropped that. She seemed to be weighing them, divining against some mysterious scale which was the best, which was most quintessentially pebble."
This is a very minor character at this stage of the book, but one sees the scene and recognises the kind of child behaviour, and when he does the same sort of thing with his major characters it's charming and engrossing, despite a relative paucity of constant drama - big things happen to his characters at about the same speed as for most people in real life, i.e. just now and then.The lack of thrilling grip makes the books a bit harder to pick up than, say, Michael Crichton, but they're also hard to put down. And he's written a dozen more... Why isn't he better known?
The government has brought forward a plan to switch voters from "household" to "individual" registration.
Labour says this will mean a disproportionately high number of its supporters will end up being left off the new rolls.
The Cabinet Office said the new deadline was simply to ensure voting was as fraud free as possible.
However, Labour said the move was a "cynical attempt to rig the system"."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34621004
For Times readers - interesting realpolitik article about Cameron's Chinese deals http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/columnists/article4594729.ece If it looks like Militant, and acts like Militant... It's going to take a long time for the moderate Blairites to get their party back.
Or - if I want to be political about it - another almighty Scottish police balls up with ten people killed.
https://www.gov.uk/aaib-reports/aircraft-accident-report-aar-3-2015-g-spao-29-november-2013
What it looks like, which might in some ways be more worrying for centrists, is a left-wing shift in the membership - not by means of a small core of dedicated activists spinning out meetings till the moderates go home, but many of the moderates themselves feeling that Labour needs to be more left-wing to have any point to it.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/georgeosborne/11942192/Actually-voters-like-welfare-cuts-much-more-than-politicians-and-journalists-think.html
'In reality, the significant changes in Labour will not be brought about by machinations from either side of “the Sino-Soviet split” in Corbyn’s team, but because the left’s opponents (in this metaphor, the West) remain discredited, defeated and lacking in real leadership. And, just as the People’s Republic and the USSR were able to see off the West for 30 years, the smart money must now be on the ability of Corbyn and the Left to remain in control of the party for the foreseeable future.'
A very dangerous parallel to draw, for three reasons:
1) The Soviets and Chinese did not 'see off the West for 30 years.' They were able to largely keep its influence at bay within their closed social groups, but at appalling cost to themselves and by severely limiting their ability to influence world events. Khrushchev had to import grain from America and Australia in 1962-63. Had he been willing to open dialogue with the West's scientists, who were making improvements in crop growing technique, albeit with mixed results, he would have been able to feed his population and maybe export more grain to buy more influence in the Third World. Brezhnev was even more close-minded. China continued to be run by steam engines and bicycles because of its unwillingness to import oil until the 1980s. At the same time, the EU's and America's trade links with other countries were gradually enabling it to force more influence on those countries. This could take unexpected forms. It was, for example, the broadcasting of British television, with advertising, in the Soviet Union in the 1980s that revealed just how poor and miserable life in Russia was (it showed the average British dog ate more meat in a week than the average Soviet citizen in a month).
2) The West, when last I checked, was still going, and the Soviet Union was not. Communist China has survived and thrived by abandoning the economic shibboleths of Communism, although there remain severe political problems. Therefore, whatever the Communist governments of those countries achieved was a very Pyrrhic victory - temporary, and disastrous for their people.
3) The resulting trouble between China and the USSR (it is not well-known, but this did include actual fighting on the border with Manchuria) was not fully resolved until the time of Gorbachev, by which time China was modernising under Deng and the USSR was collapsing in an undignified heap.
So if Corbynite Labour is comparable to the Sino-Soviet split we can look forward to the following: thirty years of war between the two wings of Labour; thirty years of desperate pretence that they are superior, while desperately borrowing from their opponents to remain ideologically afloat; rather more than thirty years of Conservative government.
It's very worrying that none of that seems totally implausible.
The "hard working" recipient was, we were told, going to be £312 a year worse off.
£6 a week. They then advised that her tax credits were £247 a week.
My other half focused on the £247 a week rather than the cut. She's voted Labour all her life, except 2015 when she abstained.
And with that, I am off out for a long drive to enjoy the first day of half term. Have a good weekend everyone.
Mr. Chestnut, such claims will likely increase support for the cut.
If it doesn't happen, the Conservatives may well bang on about Labour and the Lib Dems costing X billion a year and translate that (unfairly but predictably) into Y more doctors and Z more teachers.
She doesn't have the speechmaking capability of her husband or Obama but frankly, as Obama has shown the ability to make a brilliant speech is not a sufficient or even one of the more important characteristics of a President.
The Republican side is more problematic. Trump is a joke but he is distorting the field. I think Rubio is a strong candidate and if he makes it to the nomination Hillary will have her work cut out although being potentially the first female President, Obama style, should see her home.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34625487
1. The pilot was properly licensed and qualified to conduct the flight, and was well rested.
2. The helicopter was certified, equipped and maintained in accordance with existing regulations and approved procedures.
If the pilot was qualified, licensed and rested, and the equipment was fine, I'm not sure it can be put down to an error that the force could have foreseen or prevented.
As it's a tax 'credit' she must be paying alot of tax.
It's war on the high seas ! Probably not long to wait for civil wars to erupt on the european mainland.
https://twitter.com/ECentauri/status/657837985501696000
Like Bill, he's also supposed to have a zipper problem, so that takes away one of Hillary's liabilities.
"soon we will see people huddled outside pubs in the rain passing around sausages"
TBH ...... I thought that was a normal British bar b que in summer.....
'If people can avoid it, they should': Now cancer expert warns Britons to cut out processed meat altogether amid fears bacon and sausages are as dangerous as cigarettes
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3287174/If-people-avoid-should.html#ixzz3pTXnDlbv
So from a disinterested bystander Trump looks good value and can't lose in the short run.
I do wonder if someone's going to point out we do need this 'food' business to live.
And we're going to die from something someday. Very few people just pass away in their sleep from old age.
If Hillary is such a strong candidate, why are her ratings negative and why have they been heading down in the medium term?
Likewise, if Trump is a joke, why has he led the Republican field for three months now? Isn't that long enough for one of the multitude of his opponents to score a wounding hit?
The puritans will get a slap if they try and take my sausage away.
And how does one go about getting a good agent?
Help!