Can Clinton Do It?
March 7th, 2008Hillary has a plan; win the popular vote and persuade the super-delegates that she is not just the better candidate but has a moral claim to the nomination. Should the gap in pledged delegates be less than 100, then this might just work.
The only problem she has is that the maths is hard; very hard. Excluding Florida, Hillary needs to pull back 410,000 votes between now and the final primary. (And she’ll be hard pressed to include Puerto Rico voters, who cannot vote in the Presidential election, in her tally.) It doesn’t help that turnout has tended to be highest in the States Obama has won by big margins: in Vermont an astonishing 24% of the population voted in the primaries, in Wisconsin it was 20% and in DC 19%.
Lets run the figures. If we assume 15% turnout in the remaining primaries and caucuses (above the 12-13% across the contest so far), and give Hillary the benefit of the doubt (and some pretty large margins), where does this leave us?
Even with pretty generous assumptions, Hillary is struggling. Can she achieve it? Yes, but it will take a fundamental shift in turnout levels, and/or some pretty significant wins. Her chance of assuming the nomination (assuming no scandals, etc.): perhaps 20%
Robert Smithson is Mike’s son and is the person who four years ago suggested that a blog on political betting might be a good idea. He has also managed and developed the site’s technical infrastructure. His wife, Lucille, has played a big part in the deisgn.
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sorry to go off thread and re-post, but it took some knowledge of our local community to do this, coupled with some good news from our host;
Congrat grandaddy Mike.
Who will our little pbeemer grow into- a Roger, brimming with self confidence, self assurance and a deftness of touch; the egocentric seanT tyring to stake his claim on the world carrying the baggage of colossus, the mystical, mythical, magiacal jack W; the serene, gentlemen Peter the Punter, the ideolgical, entrenched sean fear; the equilibrium of Nick Palmer; the jovial happy stodge and his partner in crime socrates; the stalwart that has become coldstone, the cocky new comers- sea shantsy with his lyrics, shadsy the insider, the punters, peter from putney, aaron, or the towering jan from norway; perhaps the steadfastness of benedict white, the loopiness of colin w, the eccentricty of herbert proper, herbert prober junior and the niece to boot; the sense spoken from henry g, david herdson, the split personality ukPaul, the huge intelligence of RodCrosby (undoubtedly the highest IQ on pbCOM), the middle of the roaders sbs, yellow peril, the political wannabees- Marcus Wood, the solid Labour boys- redflump and jonothan, the labour newcomers piechucker, and stonch’s beer when he is working, or the traditional toryness of posters like casino, chrisd, the off the tory radar like bolted horse, rikw, harry, GIN et al- Of a different era all of em
or maybe you have a grandaughter, the zeal of snowflake, the passion of cuddles, pj, test/ commentator,
or perhaps your granchild grows up into something altogether much more normal like me, TYSON.
by Tyson March 7th, 2008 at 10:01 pm
I think this is a very helpful piece of analysis, nicely laid out!
This si certainly one of the options available to her. If she can narrow the popular vote or win it she has the perfect weapon to beat Obama with who claims he’s been chosen by the people. Added to the fact that he wins caucuses which are attended largely by activists this is a good message.
The other strategy is to say she won in all the swing states and thus the superdelegates should choose her.
I think both stategies complement each other quite well but it’ll be an uphill battle to pull them both off. 20-25% is probably a good estimate of her chances.
well done Dwain chambers- up yours to the tory reactionaries, and lefty holier than thous- shame it wasn’t gold.
Hillary can and will do it. I am already well up on my Hillary bets, and will carry on backing her
1 Clever
but you should have read back on threads - newest PeeBee is not a boy
Why is it that an interest in statistics is always enough to qualify someone as an enormous intelligence?
Yes don’t write Hillary off - She may still lose but the odds feel wrong!
4 Ted- am afraid I would have to place you in the middle of the roaders with sbs, and yellow- I know you are a Tory, but a very middling one;
at least girls hold much better prospects to avoid being political geekies- why they are so outnumbered here!
Mike ….. I think you’ve been wetting the babies head for too long ….. or perhaps the baby has wetted on your head !!
5- it is not just Rod’s love of data, he is a quick as a whippet, and mad as a box of frogs. What more evidence does one need to prove that he is pbCOM’s most intelligent poster!
Of course Andrea is the saddest one- a Milanese student with a bizarre fascination in UK’s constituency politics. Just how sad is that?
5th March M Smithson - ‘At current prices, Betfair has as I write 2.9/1 on Hillary for the nomination, it’s worth getting something on.’
7th March M.Smithson - ‘Her chance of assuming the nomination (assuming no scandals, etc.): perhaps 20%’ (4/1)
What’s changed?
Mike, you wouldn’t know the meaning of value if it came up in the street and said ‘Smithson my name is value’
I don’t fancy Clinton’s chances. Obama has had a pretty bad week; result, a very marginal Clinton win in terms of delegates. Even Clinton’s backers know this was really about image - winning the big states, setting the narrative, etc.
Well, now what? She can carry on hitting Obama, but the backlash against that tactic is brewing. Samantha Powers has suicide bombed her with the ‘monster’ tag; we haven’t heard her called that for the last time (this is a primary use of surrogates - they can say things that the candidate never could, because they’re expendable).
I see Clinton trying to play both sides, here. If Obama has the glass jaw that her strategy assumes he does, then she can outmaneuver him into the candidacy. If he doesn’t, she thinks she can make herself an irresistable
Oops.
She thinks she can make herself an irresistible VP pick. She might be right - all the weaknesses she’s trying to pin on Obama are accepted automatically by the media as her strengths.
232 - Yep, I’m a life-long teetotaller. Just faddy - don’t like the taste (or more often, the smell). Helped me get the gig to travel to plenty of dry countries, though, which has been a fantastic upside. Downside - perpetual “designated driver” status, waiting around for very pissed people to get themselves orgainsed….
11- the psychology of this thing though is fascinating- for Hillary an all or nothing, a one shot at the big prize, a take no prisoners, what the heckers go for it;
well Obama has plenty left in the tank if he fails now- perhaps 4 more campaigns- in my mind Obama will be president at some point- his only obstacle now a Clinton, after Clinton- well who knows?
Umm, this is a ROBERT Smithson post, not a Mike Smithson one!
7. O/T - I was reading this week that in the mid C18th, women were at least as politically involved as men (though of course they couldn’t vote). When Walpole’s excise bill was defeated in 1734, middle-class women put on special tea parties to celebrate with their friends, complete with tablecloths embroidered with political themes. (Jack W will presumably remember this.)
So political geekiness hasn’t always been a male preserve!
11 Obama may have had a “bad week”, but he has still pulled ahead of Hillary, thanks to the delegate wins in Texas and Vermont and the newly declaring Super-D’s (19:3 to Obama in the past week).
that was to Tony
11 “Samantha Powers has suicide bombed her with the ‘monster’ tag; … (this is a primary use of surrogates - they can say things that the candidate never could, because they’re expendable).”
I think the problem for Obama is that this kind of activity doesn’t chime well with the message of hope, optimimism and a new way of doing things that he wants to project. (I personally doubt Obama sanctioned it, but his more partisan supporters have clearly gone over the top — on pb and elsewhere).
7.Tyson, I should be in the girlie list not between Casino and Bolted Horse.
Barack Obama’s going to win. This week’s Hillary Clinton “victories” should be seen as the “spin” that they really are. He is still ahead and will stay ahead.
Firstly, congratulations to the family Smithson on their new addition and good luck to all concerned.
On topic, surely the way to look at the Super Delegates is as the final ’state’ and the largest and most valuable caucus. There has been much talk that the SD’s will do this or that, or can’t do one thing or another. All these assertions miss the point: the SD’s are not a homogenous whole and will do lots of different things which will produce a collective narrative and result.
If the race for the nomination does go the distance - as is looking increasingly likely - the SDs will split, some for Hillary and some for Obama; I don’t think the idea that they will swing behind one or the other is likely, any more than the voters in a state caucus will swing greatly behind one or the other. The question for Camp Clinton is what can she do to win something which she needs to win big and where the numbers are going the wrong way.
The biggest factor in her favour is time. It’s a long way to the convention: we’re only a little over two months since Iowa; there are more than five and a half to decision day. True, that time could work for Obama too, but it adds uncertainty in terms of ‘events’. And events are what could give Clinton her chance to gain SDs, if something comes up that the voters in the state primaries and caucuses were unaware of, that would excuse delegates to shift from the one to the other. There are only really two things that might do that: a scandal and head-to-head figures favouring Hillary.
Of these two, neither seems particularly likely. The head-to-heads favour Obama and there seems little reason why that might change. Perhaps the rhetoric might pall after a while or perhaps Hillary might look a safer pair of hands if things get more difficult economically, but unless Hillary can start making headway into McCain’s figures in a way that Obama can’t, that route looks difficult for her.
The other is a scandal involving Obama. I would be extremely surprised if journalists and investigators haven’t been scouring Obama’s background looking for one such. So far, after a couple of years when he’s been a putative or actual candidate, there is only one which could possibly have legs that we know about. And Hillary has had plenty of questions of her own to answer (though as these have already been aired, the additional damage they could do is questionable). Again, chances are, it’s stoney ground for the Clintons. Additionally, there is a danger to them should the release of any damaging information about Obama be traced back to them, they could become embroiled in a ‘dirty tricks’ row.
So, overall, it looks pretty bleak for Hillary, though not impossible. To me, the biggest winner of the deadlock is still McCain.
Interesting analysis (as is Tyson’s!). The Puerto Rico line is blank - are they included in the totals?
If she does win I don’t think it will be the precise arithmetic, though, but momentum. If she wins a smashing victory in PA and then wins IN, NC and WV on the trot, I think it’ll be hard for the Obama camp to tell the superdelegates that hey, you gotta go for us, we got all those votes back in January. I think we’re all sort of subconsciously assuming that the national race will stay pretty much as it is, but the pendulum has swung a lot in the last week and it’s possible it will just keep going. But I wouldn’t put it higher than a 20-25% chance.
What about Florida and Michigan? If they are re-run, they would need to be added in as well. Presumably Hilary would then have a much better chance of winning the popular vote.
Baroness Thatcher taken to hospital as a precaution.
23. Agreed Nick. Much as I like Obama, it seems like he has to prove himself as a campaigner all over again.
For all the criticism that’s been thrown at the Clinton campaign, she has had three firewalls - New Hampshire; the big Super Tuesday states (New York, Mass., California); and now Ohio and Texas - and they have held. Obama has made inroads into her vote, but on all three occasions (the last, especially, with a big funding advantage) he hasn’t managed to close the deal.
Obama needs to get the media narrative back on his side soon, and that may mean he has to take Clinton’s “experience” credentials apart himself. It will be tricky but it’s a fundamentally honest case, and I think he can do it if he plays his hand right.
25. BBC story http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7284697.stm
1 - Still not quite worked me out have you tyson.
I thought the Obama support might have sealed it but maybe it’ll take a while to sink in……
Mike, I appreciate what you have done, but. In order to make up the deficit, you have Obama winning 4 of the remaining contests, which is way, way below what most pundits are expecting. And you have him losing these by considerable margins. So looking at it all in the way you are, it aint gonna happen.
Aside from disaster-inducing scandals (and Obama has a better, more mystical and transcendent kind of Teflon than Bill Clinton ever had), there are two other plausibles. Firstly, a recent article suggested that as Hillary has won in the states that matter, then the SD’s should think on whether it’s her not him who’ll be able to pull the states which are usually marginal the November beauty contests. IMHO, (a) that’s pretty stupid - Obama has enough going for him to win them anyway come November(so why the heck don’t you get behind him, Hillary, as polls show that half of the USA electorate hates your guts and so you will *never* be President), and (b) what’s a democracy? One where only those votes in the marginal states should be considered?
Secondly, Florida and Michigan. Hillary’s campaign has already done the math. It knows that it will *not* be able to win on total votes unless these are included. Now 18 months or so ago when the states were fiddling around with primary dates, her campaign agreed publicly with what the Democratic Party decided. But, that was when she thought her divine right to be President looked as if it was going to be fulfilled. Hang on though, under rules which she agreed, the situation she now finds herself in is that she probably won’t even get her Party’s nomination. Fair enough, we’ll change the rules.
I heard this morning that someone on Obama’s team (a foreign policy adviser) has been forced to resign, because in an interview with The Scotsman (of all papers) she called Hillary a monster. She also said that Hillary would stop at nothing. How true. Why, just why, would any country want someone like that as its leader? Especially when they have the chance to elect a visionary?
Fortunately, this time, they won’t. Obama was born to be President. People of his stature don’t come along just to be cast aside. Truth will out.
I’m sensing we’re at a tipping point, or will be soon. For many weeks now Obama has rode a wave of optimism, backed up by a string of primary victories. With the press fawning over him Clinton has found it hard to land a punch. However that may be about to change.
First, there’s the ongoing trial into Tony Rezko’s relationship with Obama. The trial will continue. It’s even got its own website, paid for and run by right-wingers: http://rezkorama.com/
Obama walked out of a presser on the subject last week, leaving the press with more questions than answers.
Second comes the resignation of Obama’s foreign policy advisor after she labelled Clinton a ‘monster’. Potentially more damaging is her revelation that Obama’s promise of withdrawal from Iraq within 16 months is a ‘best-case scenario’. McCain & Clinton will be all over that like white on rice.
Third is Nafta-gate. Obama promised voters he would re-negotiate the Nafta agreement, then proceeded to tell the Canadians it was ‘more about political positioning than real policy’… ie I won’t renegotiate Nafta, I’m just saying I will to get a few votes in Texas & Ohio.
Fourth is the dominance of the agenda by Clinton. She’s effectively controlled the race for a couple of weeks now, with Obama left to respond rather meekly to her attacks.
It all adds up to some serious cracks in the Obama campaign. There’s an element also of him switching off at key points in the campaign. He did it before New Hampshire, where he thought he’d sewn it up and chose to do less for fear of slipping up. He may be doing it now, believing he has the maths on his side. Dangerous, very dangerous.
I’ve gone in for a bit more of Clinton tonight.
25 Is she contagious?
So much wrong in post 30 it’s almost pointless responding.
I’ll just mention that NAFTA gate turned out to be based on a lie and leave you to work out the rest yourself.
Has anybody else noticed that Ohio massively outpolled New York in the number of votes cast even though New York is much bigger. Turnout is growing, and will continue to grow as the candidates are able to concentrate on individual states over longer time periods. I think we must assume that the remaining primaries will have large turnouts, especially as there is no longer any point in voting in the Republican contest.
25 - exactly. Confortable but not implausible victories in Pennsylvania, a rerun Florida and overall parity elsewhere including a rerun Michigan will give Clinton a popular vote lead I think. And if she wins Indiana, W. Virginia and Kentucky she will be comfortably ahead in the popular vote.
There is already a potential scandal problem for Obama, the Rezko trial. This week Obama ducked questions on his relationship with Rezko. The worst thing he can do, since they will only be thrown at him again and again. And this trial will be continuing for many weeks yet.
Clinton is not yet the favourite but she is much stronger than she was a week ago. And don’t forget that Florida and Michigan have a total of 54 superdelegates between them. A do over reinstates those delegates automatically. How many of them will go to Clinton rather than Obama given Obama’s opposition to seating Florida and Michigan?
Wake up people!
Robert Smithson has written the lead article, not grandpa Mike.
Congratulations to the Smithson clan on the new baby. Hope all is well with mum and child.
Good article Robert and thanks. Is this your first lead, excluding admin issues? I think your analysis is sound. The maths makes it hard for Hillary. I think she is hoping he takes the equivalent of a pratfall.
O/T. Sorry to hear Francis Pym has died and Maggie has been admitted to hospital. Two more possible Jack W identities ruled out.
29 - The candidates were not asked to approve or even comment on the punishment and all of them prudently did not do so because they did want to upset anybody unnecessarily. Clinton did not therefore approve the punishment. The candidates were simply asked not to campaign, and except for Obama making a mistake and allowing for one of his TV ads to leak over into Florida none of them did so.
The rules were broken but the rules don’t detail the punishment. This was decided by the DNC and can be appealed. However a lot of people are now suggesting that both Florida and Michigan be rerun and this seems to be a real possibility.
33 Not so easy a road for Hillary. All the Obama camp has to do is say fine we’ll agree re-run Florida but you agree to re-run New Hampshire who you told you were in favour of action against Florida trying to usurp them. Don’t think those folks might feel conned do you..
32 ukpaul - NAFTAgate may well have been overplayed but compare Obama with McCain in their responses to a scandal.
McCain stood up and answered the questions, he didn’t cut short the session but took them all and faced down the NYTimes allegations. Obama failed that test, he cut short the session, he upset the press. Hillary has worked hard since New Hampshire to build a new persona with the press, she’s been more approachable, walked down the aisle on the plan, taken questions (which she didn’t until NH). Obama seems to have been working the opposite strategy at times.
I still prefer Obama’s chances and still prefer him to Hillary but he’s lost his lustre, occasionally a less attractive Barack slips through (first seen in NH “you are nice enough Hillary”).
stjohn - tempted to publish my guess at Jack’s identity but scared I might be correct and that would ruin it.
36 - Obama has not expressed any opposition to a rerun. He seems to take the view that it is OK if the DNC say it is within the rules. For him it is probably better than simply allowing the present result to stand, which is still a definite possibility. Without Edwards on the ballot he will hope to do what he has done elsewhere and come from behind.
The big issue seems to be who pays the expense of such a contest.
I am beginning to feel guilty now, but here comes another Clegg clanger with a headline that has unintentionally turned out to be correct. You really could not make it up.
“Cowley Street Press Release : “Clegg Has Bottled It” On Europe”
The first and only poll out of Mississippi shows an unexpectedly close contest. This has been penciled in as a comfortable Obama victory. Voting next Tuesday.
http://www.southernpoliticalreport.com/storylink_37_265.aspx
37. It was actually “you are likable enough, Hillary”, which is even more stinging! The problem with Clinton is that when there’s a lot of time between contests the media goes into analysis rather than news. As analysis is more about personal opinion, and journalists prefer Obama, this hurts Clinton. Clinton has recently played her card that there was media bias towards him, which caused the media to be excessively hard on him to show they weren’t, but that effect won’t last too long.
We should remember that Clinton doesn’t just have to win the popular vote, to give the superdelegates a good moral case to choose her, she has to convince those superdelegates to actually want her above that. And by a big margin, now that some 400 have already declared.
41. Actually two other polls in Mississippi have given him 8 point leads.
38. Ted. No don’t! But I BET you’d be wrong anyway. I just hope I live long enough to find out.
It depends who predeceases the other? Currently I think I’m in an acceptable state of repair. But say the Grim Reaper were to take me unexpectedly and I found myself sat in the departure lounge to “wherever”. Then I find the Information desk clerk is unable to tell me the identity of Jack W, Jack the Ripper or Jack Sprat. Well I am going to be really p*ssed off! Particularly having virtuously eaten my greens all these years!
Fare ye well Jack W.
37 - McCain has been busy shouting at reporters today, I don’t think he’s responding particularly well to criticism.
Have people seen this yet?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7284494.stm
I think he’s just taking the mickey now.
25 Should have been Broadmoor before she was PM
Interesting analysis Robert, but I think there are some flaws. Taking the turnout as a percentage of the total population is a very rough estimate and ignores a number of factors
a) Some states have more registered Democrats as a proportion of the population than others e.g. Oregon vs Wyoming
b) Turnout seems to be as a % of total population rather than electorate. This will overstate impact of states with younger populations and recent immigrant populations
c)You probably should distinguish between states where all voters are eligible vs states where only registered Democrats are eligible
d) Caucus states surely have markedly lower turnout than primary states (although this would only affect Wyoming and Guam and hence prob not make a difference.)
47 - well that’s just uncalled for.
40 Yes it made me laugh - was it really a Cowley Street error or someone having Guido on?
Too good to be true - surely it would have been noticed.
45. Ukpaul. McCain’s temper and his age are his two major weaknesses at this point.
Interestingly temperament is also a major weakness for all 3 uk main party leaders. Brown hopelessly fails to conceal his anger and irritation when tackled by Cameron at PMQs and in response to any personal attacks. Cameron can appear bullying and arrogant and a recent aside by Andrew Neil on This Week suggested there was some substance to this impression. Clegg is very prickly and immature if challenged on any issue.
Voters pick up these nuances quite easily. Of the three, Cameron has so far coped best and has the most to gain in being “likeable enough”.
It’s a delight to have Jack W back. But he has not mentioned Jacobites yet, so I am surprised.
49 Yep, very unpleasant and uncalled for.
OK, so assuming the already unlikely scenario that Hillary wins the popular vote, what proportion of the superdelegates are going to be persuaded by the popular vote, rather than the delegate count? The popular vote is a very strange measure to use in this context, because states that have caucuses obviously have much lower turnouts than states that have primaries, so it makes how much clout states have vary immensely depending on a procedural detail. That may seem fair to superdelegates from states with primaries, but it won’t seem fair to superdelegates from states with caucuses…
Incidentally, Kos has something here about what would happen if superdelegates voted the way their states did:
http://tinyurl.com/378w23
I think the main useful effect of winning the popular vote while losing the pledged delegates is that it neutralizes the argument that the superdelegates need to follow the wishes of the electorate, and reduces the feeling that disobeying it would cause a civil war in the party. But having persuaded the superdelegates that they’re free to vote their consciences, Hillary would still need to persuade a solid majority of them that she was a better candidate than Obama.
Obviously we can’t rule out alive body / dead girl scenario or an Obama implosion, but I’m not sure that Hillary even has a 20% chance of winning the popular vote; Her chances of winning the nomination as well have to be substantially lower - maybe a 5% to 10% chance of pulling the thing off?
I’d add that a lot of the scenarios where she wins the nomination are very divisive and dangerous for the Democrats in the general election. Making Betfair’s 2/9 on Hillary not winning the presidency (or the next president being a man) look like good value.
Quite a bit of new support for Hillary here over the past two days.
Personally I give her next to no chance and have bet accordingly since Tuesday.
I thought her dream ticket reference was a last desparate throw of the dice by her to try to get onto Obama’ ticket - no chance, he clearly dislikes her intensely and I suspect she him.
50.”40 Yes it made me laugh - was it really a Cowley Street error or someone having Guido on?”
Ted, I left a post asking if its a wind up, but I have a horrible feeling its not. IIRC Guido attempted/succeeded in joining the Libdems a while ago, and I think he is a member of the political lobby now so will receive these press release emails from Cowley street.
45 - you mean this little incident?
http://www.politico.com/blogs/michaelcalderone/0308/McCain_clashes_with_NYT_reporter.html
Sorry for long link, but it’s hardly a “clash”
56 IIRC Guido attempted/succeeded in joining the Libdems a while ago, and I think he is a member
Really??? You amaze me - I wouldn’t have thought the LibDems were his bag at all, certainly not as of six months ago when I last read his blog.
Low-income pensioners being told to ‘knit socks’ for warmth in January 1987,a very cold month,was ‘uncalled for’ ;tthe 1990/1 session trying to force elderly people to sell their homes for long term care,well within a half of one pence on income tax was uncalled for-my grandparents poverty in the 1980s during a certain person’s premiership stiffens my resolve that,come her death,I will celebrate as if England had won the World Cup.Is that ‘uncalled for/’ Sorry,I thought the right championed freedom of speech.Seemingly when you like it.When you get your own way like spoiled schooldchildren.Unless you’ve got something good to say,two words,the second of which is ‘OFF’!!!!!!!!!!
58.PfP, there was a mischievous reason, but I can’t remember what. I can’t even remember if he succeeded.
Looking through the political ads on YouTube I saw this one from McCain. Lots of Churchill, a bit of Teddy Roosevelt to associate McCain with leadership.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=J_A53PAxeR8
Someone posted about UK’s position in the world and there was a post in response showing China viewed UK as very significant as a power in world politics. Think this has much to do with two 20th century politicians Churchill and Thatcher (sorry Patrick). World leaders (even Labour PMs it seems) still want to be pictured with Thatcher.
60 Chris - I’ll take another look at his current slant on things - he always seemed good value and uncovered some stories which would otherwise never have seen the light of day - but I found many of the comments on his threads just plain offensive (just, ahem, as I do here sometimes).
59. You are completely clueless about what ‘that woman’, as the mysoginists called her, did for this country. Before Thatcher this country was in decline, the ’sick man of Europe’ and falling rapidly behind all competitors, after Thatcher Britain had the fourth largest economy in the world. Before Thatcher, half of the population of this country were dependent on the state for their living space whereas after Thatcher three quarters of the nation benefited from owning their own home. Before Thatcher the nation was held to ransom by unelected moguls whose greed allowed them to deny children education, the sick healthcare and the old light and heat in their homes, whereas after Thatcher, union members at last had the right NOT to strike if that was their wish.
No one who relies on the current prosperity and wealth Britain now enjoys can reasonably sneer at the very person who brought that about. Socialism brought this country to its knees, ‘that woman’ saved this nation from despondency and humiliation.
62: Agree on both points, PfP…
64 Thanks Nick - I thought you would.
59. “…my resolve that,come her death,I will celebrate as if England had won the World Cup.Is that ‘uncalled for/’…”
Well in reply to that comment I’d say ‘yes it bl**dy well is!!’
I’m sorry but I think to say you’d celebrate her death as if we’d won the World Cup is sick.
62.Agree with you about that PfP. People should not underestimate Guido, I think if he inclined in that direction, there would be more than one newspaper or political party who would employ him.
67.if he *was*, DOH! Time for bed.
1 Tyson - a valliant effort and well done in identifying a number of PBers in whose steps Mike’s grandchild might follow, although probably not on reflection! In all such lists there are bound to be notable omissions and three spring to mind in this case - Firstly, stjohn for his intellect and enquiring mind in all matters relating to betting, not to mention his disturbingly successful St. Jude tendencies. Secondly, our resident site MP, Nick Palmer who, agree with him or not, always argues his case effectively and is unerringly courteous despite some pretty unpleasant stuff being hurled in his direction. Thirdly, Caveman who has provided any number of winning recommendations, including lots of “free money” bets and whose great spots alone make this a “must visit” site.
I for one won’t be shedding any tears nor I guess will the majority of Brits - everyone I know will hold street parties to celebrate the demise of one of the most horrendous divisive and evil people every to hold office in the U.K.
23 Nick
For such a nice man, you do write a load of crap at times. Why don’t you get the chief whip to let you come over here and put your ear to the ground before you open wide again.
H Rodham Clinton is one desperate Senator. She is causing huge hatred amongst large numbers of the party, and whilst some ordinary Americans might fall for her fear tactics many party workers, the ones she will need if she were to be the candidate in Novemeber, are turning their backs on her and walking away. Obama has the workers in large numbers, Clinton has name recognition. Obama has made huge strides in every state that his campaign has visited. The only turn around state that went for Clinton was New Hampshire. I guess that because you are a professional politician you fall for the nonsensical so-called fight back by HRC and her friends.
They are an evil bunch, and the great support that Obama has received is from people who no longer wish to return to the same old shit perpertrated by WJC and his missus.
Come and listen to what is being said over here and take your nose out of the so-called talking heads in the main-stream media.
How is this for a bet? If Clinton is the next POTUS I’ll apply to rejoin the Labour Party [akin to suicide in view]; if not you send ten quid to the charity of your choice.
Start saving now.
Malcolm
63
That woman was an evil old cow and I rejoiced when she left Downing Street. When she dies I will thank God and hope that her kind are never seen again.
Malcolm
Obama will get the nomination but he will lose bigtime in November.
Note Re 10 This article was written by my son Robert and not by me. I believe that this battle is not about numbers but about the narrative and that Hillary can still still pull it off.
The last trade on the Iowa Electronic Market where “political futures are traded” assumes a possibility of 29%. I think that that is about right.
63 Well said .
“Why is it that an interest in statistics is always enough to qualify someone as an enormous intelligence?”
Because… (cough) … the statistics prove it, and even if they don’t, common sense says it’s true…
“Low-income pensioners being told to ‘knit socks’ for warmth in January 1987,a very cold month,was ‘uncalled for’ ”
Sounds like good advice to me.
70/72 Such remarks say a good deal more about you than they do about her.
78
I could not agree more.
If posters had made the same remarks about Harold Wilson, Neil Kinnock or Michael Foot they would still be as offensive.
Goodwill to fellow humans? Evidently sadly lacking.
well if she was human then maybe goodwill be needed !!!!
80, Do you choke when you accuse others of belonging to ‘the nasty party’?
Your remarks say more about you dear fellow, and what they say ain’t healthy.