May 29, 2008

I have a new category for my register of interesting things that have happened. This is in the "proof that the revolution is irrevocable" category. Boris Johnson beat Red Ken Livingston in the London mayoralty race. Once upon a time it took someone like Lady Thatcher to go out and beat Ken because he was considered to be a threat to civilization and abiding evidence of the constant communist inevitability. Conventional wisdom said he was hard to beat.
Boris Johnson beat him. While I respect certain things about Boris, one of them is not that he’s a political heavyweight. There’s hope for us all.
Now if we could only get the Europeans to come along at the same time. I’d also like to see the Americans buck their own leftward trend too, but you can’t have it all.
I give McCain a 50% chance of winning the election. It’s still chancy.
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George Stephanopoulos says if all economists are against an economic policy, it should be done. If that was their role, then the Democrats would have to rescind half their platform. I don’t think there is a single economist out there, except for some loony, who would agree with it. The Economist recently called Mr. Obama’s economic platform "disturbing".
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Some thoughts on the Hillary strategy. Since the Federal era, 11 presidents have not gotten their party’s nomination after less than two terms in office. Only one of those lost it, Chester Allen Arthur, an accident president. Every president other than that has left of his own accord, sometimes under the severe pressure.
What does this mean for Hillary? If, as it appears is going to happen, she doesn’t win the nomination and she doesn’t get the vice-presidential ticket there are two things that have to happen besides them surviving for another four years politically and that is either Obama has to turn out to be one of the worse presidents in history (if he wins) and either voluntarily leave or fail to get his nomination. In other words, Hillary will have to take the nomination away from an incumbent president. This hasn’t been done since Ted Kennedy and Ronald Reagan (against Presidents Ford and Carter). It seems almost certain that unless Obama resigns voluntarily that he’s not going to fail to get his party’s nomination after a first term. This is a very unlikely scenario.
I guess this means that the Clinton camp is praying for Obama to lose. That means that McCain is the next president. His presidency would have to be worse that George Bush Sr’s. And his term was pretty good. The US became the sole superpower in the world. The Wall fell. Domestically, it wasn’t so good and he went back on his tax pledge. But his failings were nothing compared to Carter’s.
Bill Clinton beat Bush in 1992 because of Ross Perot splitting the Republican vote. Those who agreed with Perot about Bush but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Perot, voted Clinton. If only one if forty voters did that, Clinton got the margin he needed.
Can Hillary pull it off? It seems very unlikely. She can’t count on accidents or disasters.