I wonder
I learned long ago to avoid commenting on US politics on this blog. However I would like to know my good friend Pat Wright’s view on the new situation and on the fact that regardless of that outcome, every on-line bookmaker listed on Oddschecker still had Hillary Clinton as a very short-priced favourite to win the next Presidential election.
I’m interested, Pat, that’s all.
Categories: Politics
Quintin Jardine's blog 
Just back from a cruise… Q I am a Republican but if I were a Dem I wouldn’t vote for Hillary! Her obfuscation on Benghazi echos Obamas continual attempt to shift blame for any failed endeavor to someone else shows a scary inclination that is not to my taste. She has been more to the left on many issues than I can stomach. There is enough “bill” left hanging over her to weigh her downI think. ANY woman for pres just doesn’t cut it for me. I suspect that is the opinion of many !
Hi Pat, thanks for responding. I could never have imagined you voting for Hillary. I suppose the follow-up question is, how you’d feel about Jeb. The feeling over here is that if they cast George jr and Jeb as Dumb and Dumber they’d have trouble allocating the parts, but having read and enjoyed W’s memoir, I don’t quite subscribe to that.
However the heart of my question was, How do you see the next two years playing out? Surely the people in the Senate and the House can’t be too confrontational, for fear of giving Hillary a stick with which to batter their next candidate, whoever it may be. I do not know the ins and outs of this; my only authority on the workings of the Tea Party is Will MacAvoy. (He is also a registered Republican.)
However, the victorious woman who was shown on UK telly yelling ‘We’re going to make them squeal!’ after her victory, isn’t a very good pointer. Who’s going to be squealing? The minorities in both houses, or the large majority of the total electorate, almost two thirds according to the US Elections Project, who didn’t vote for her party?
I’d take Jeb or Marco Rubio but some other stars may rise in the next two years.Q as in the Uk you know the media love the crazies. Most of the Reps have learned some hard lessons (I hope) from the past six years so I prayerfully hope the next Congress will take reasonable and responsible action incrementally on immigration reform and sanely re-consider some of the more egregious actions of their Dem predecessors! But I don’t hold out unreasonable hopes.as Twain put it ” life and limb are not safe when the Legislature is in session” and he didn’t seem to care if it was Rep or Dem controlled!
I like the Twain quote. Pity he used an assumed name; today he’d probably be called @misterslc, or something similar.
Our problem in the (reluctantly) United Kingdom is that they all seem to be crazy at this moment. We have a general election in six months. Throughout my adult life it has always been able to pick the winner, although I did have my fingers crossed in 1992.
Last time was different. I did not expect a hung parliament, but Clegg’s performance in the first-ever leaders TV debates gave us one.
Next time? Cameron has no cojones; he is as we say here ‘all mouth and trousers’. Clegg’s Lib Dems will be decimated. Labour has a leader whose approval rating is currently -55. Cameron’s is -14, Clegg’s -54. (To put this in a US perspective, Obama is currently -20, against a mean across his presidency of -4.)
All that suggests that Cameron will be grudgingly elected with an absolute majority. However there is the complication of the upstart UKIP, whose leader, Farage, currently has an approval figure of +35, and the SNP, which the polls suggest could win half the Scottish Westminster seats at the next election.
The result of all this is mass hysteria on both government and opposition benches, resulting in very bad government. As you say, our printed and on-line media, which can be more vicious than yours (Limbaugh apart), loves it all and is having a field day.
There is a general lack of understanding in the UK of the detail of US politics. For example, most people don’t have the faintest idea who Mitch McConnell is. As for State governors, forget it; I pay more attention than most, but after Chris Christie, Andrew Cuomo and Rick Perry, I’m stuck. Ask a hundred people to name former US presidents and quite a few would say Jeb Bartlett. Our broadcast media has very little time to devote to the subject, after our own and European politics, and the US news channels are scuppered by the time difference. If Will MacAvoy was real, (which I truly wish he was) he’d be broadcasting at 2am GMT.
I need to correct the Twain quote a little-he said ” no mans life or property is safe” a minor correction. Q, has the political benefitted at all from a free press? Sometimes wonder if weighted and inaccurate reporting and commentary sway the public ‘s perspective in scary ways. The media’s failure, and the pollster’s, in this election show a dangerous lack of knowledge re true public thinking! They failed big time!
I don’t know enough about the US media to comment on that. In the UK there has been a dumbing down of the broadsheets and that isn’t good. However I am not sure that the media sway the public; my impression is that mostly they react to their own perception of public taste.
I believe that in a democracy, the populace gets the media it deserves.
I believe also that in a totalitarian state, the populace gets the media it deserves, for different reasons.
As for the polls, in my opinion and experience, very rarely are they badly wrong.