Obama out?

clivex said:
I think too many are looking at the presidency through european eyes. Anyone who thinks long odds on should be the right price might care to look at some polls. Some facts perhaps? Americans dont rate him and perhaps rightly so. He's been pretty uninspired to many eyes. The odds are short enough.
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4/5 on betfair at the moment-when his opponent is confirmed there is no way he will be that price.I'd say the first show will be 1/2 & 6/4.
 
People pass up these bets because of the timescale etc. I'm quickly realising that I can beat the bollocks out if these markets. All winning from Meryl Streep winning best actress are being reinvested on Obama.
 
clivex said:
But thats admirable too isnt it Trackside and might not be lost on voters who may well be sick of rather too slick candidates? I dont agree with a lot of Newts views, but you have to take your hat off to him if that is the case. he has an ego the size of the albert hall but the brains to match it would seem.

And hes a formidable debater which wasnt lost on SC by the sounds of it. Didnt Obama duck head to head debates last time around?

The tax thing could kill Romney
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To be honest I don't think a great deal of people outside of political junkies take an interest in internal campaign dynamics. They have a huge impact in determining the outcome of elections, but I doubt they actually impact upon how voters view candidates one way or the other.

Gingrich is certainly a formidable debater alright. The moment that changed the momentum in South Carolina seemed to be the debate on the Monday night, particularly the exchange with Juan Williams (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4c1-22w2G7M). For all that his insistence on calling Obama "the foodstamp president" is grossly misleading as well as having pretty sinister undertones, his defence of it arguably changed the outcome.

Worth mentioning that, much as Obama's favourability ratings remain precarious, Gingrich's are actually a fair deal worse; a CNN poll had him at 28% recently.

Obviously favourability and approval are two different things and two different numbers; Obama's favourables have remained relatively high in comparison to his approval rating (most likely due to the fact that the Tea Party's favourability has been steadily declining). I have a theory that a fall in favourables is potentially a reliably ominous indicator of electoral fortunes; not only do the voters not approve of job performance, but they also have lost sympathy with the constraints on a leader, as well as lossing faith in the leader personally, something that is far harder to recover. Just a theory though.

Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight blog on The New York Times site has some great stuff on the intricacies of polling by the way. Might be worth a look if you haven't come across it already: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/.
 
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trackside528 said:
For all that his insistence on calling Obama "the foodstamp president" is grossly misleading as well as having pretty sinister undertones
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To their credit, a number of prominent members of his church have written a letter urging him (and Santorum) to cease using that particular dog-whistle. I presume their letter asking him to explain how he reconciles his Catholicism with his multiple divorces and adulteries is still in the post.
 
Good post trackside. Liked that. Isnt it also true that whilst Obama can have a lead agaisnt any potential candidate, once a candidate is actually confirmed, there is often a bounce?

Newts personal life is being overplayed of course. Hes shagged around. Just like clinton and kennedy. SC have had their say and lets see if the others do too.
 
You can hardly overplay the record of a man whose personal life enclosed a great deal of lying and deceit, surely? (As an opponent and also if you really take church vows seriously, which, as we know, a good many Americans do.) Some might say, heck, if he can be that loose and that deceitful in his personal life, what other matters might he find convenient to keep hidden from our view? I think there's a great deal more to be made of it, frankly, which is certainly one thing I'd do if I were in Obama's campaign. No-one knew - as we do today - about other presidential proclivities to 'shag around' in spite of their professed beliefs and marriages before they were elected. But, more meaningfully, it would put his leadership in a weak position to debate ethics with any other countries (not that America's record in that area is too strong in that arena anyway): you can imagine the political cartooning that would go on were he to try to take any moral high ground. That's where I see it mattering to the wider picture. If I were Ahmedinajad, for example, I'd be well on the way to announcing how I would not be dealing with someone who would be stoned to death for his adulteries in my country. And he wouldn't be the only one to make pie out of that weakness, I'm sure. America is not the force it was when Kennedy did the dirty on Jackie, and a prez with a weak underbelly? Not what you want to start out with, surely?
 
I read a good article a couple of months ago that said the main Republican policy positions are so contradictory (reduced spending, no tax increases but maintain all sorts of things, especially the military, spout about patriotism but engage in what amounts to a campaign of civil disobedience in Congress, etc) that their candidates have to be either cynical chancers like Romney who say whatever their audiences want to hear or ideologues like Paul, Santorum, Bachmann and others who actually believe the stuff but will be too extreme for most people.
 
Oh do me a favour Krizon. I think debating human rights and democracy is not undermimed but having been divorced FFS

Grey. So what? Every political campaign is like that? Whats different? Doesnt add up? I can think of a good few areas in europe that certainly dont add up, including the failed euro experiment itself
 
If I were Ahmedinajad, for example, I'd be well on the way to announcing how I would not be dealing with someone who would be stoned to death for his adulteries in my country. And
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Thats obscene frankly.

As if the US electorate should consider voting in someone on the basis that they are acceptable to a bigoted islamic cnt
 
Grey said:
ideologues like Paul, Santorum, Bachmann and others who actually believe the stuff but will be too extreme for most people.
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I hope Santorum is deemed "too extreme" and gets his loathsome hypocritical ass handed to him on a plate. Hawks his anti-abortion views (he would ban it in every circumstance, including when the foetus's life is unequivocably non-viable or where the woman's life is at immediate risk) but when the baby his wife was carrying was found to have a fatal defect at 19 weeks, guess what? That's right, she had an abortion a week later. With his full knowledge and agreement. So it's okay for his wife to be allowed to take some control of a tragic situation and be spared the further trauma of having to give birth to a full-term stillborn or non-viable baby, but all other American women and girls can suck it up, get on with it or just plain die.

Pr*ck.
 
Fair enough Grey. The republicans have descended into simple minded rhetoric or plain idealogical fundamentalism. I would agree it doesnt bear scrutiny a lot of the time

Pretty unappealing bunch in the main
 
clivex said:
......The republicans have descended into simple minded rhetoric or plain idealogical fundamentalism. I would agree it doesnt bear scrutiny a lot of the time
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That's pretty-much how I few the current GOP......and most of its previous incarnations too, I have to say.

Obama might not be perfect, but at least he has some purpose about him. The Yanks will ultimately realise this, look at what's been presented as the alternative, and vote Obama straight back in again. He is an absolute tap-in at 4/5.
 
Cruella, I didn't realise Sanctimonium was that bad. I understand his 'pro-life' stance included denying abortions to women pregnant as a result of rape and incest (which is just family rape), so that a 14 y.o. girl impregnated by her father and/or his paedophiliac friends, would be made to bring the baby to full term. Presumably she would be expected to keep up her school grades and, after the trauma of a birth to a child she didn't want and quite likely would always resent, she might be offered the superb opportunity to park it on the grace and favour of the State.

I'd have thought that such girls and women might have the possibility of suing him personally if he ever got near to enacting such an edict, or the US government - on the grounds of State-sanctioned bodily harm, mental anguish, emotional distress, etc., etc. just as if they had been assaulted for nine months as they bore the pregnancy. They might also sue for any loss of schooling due to physical and mental stress, or loss of work opportunities due to an enforced pregnancy. And we criticise the Taliban, with whom they sound on a par in regard to women's rights?

The tragic issue is that illegal abortions will flourish and females will die or be maimed in the course of trying to lose their unwanted babies. I don't agree with abortion as a 'designer' alternative to proper contraception or, once you've completed your family, sterilisation by either or both partners, but I absolutely uphold women's and girls' rights to obtain them in the case of the conditions you mention, and most definitely for where they have been inseminated against their will.
 
That he is, Clivex, but what is also horrible is the amount of people who are contributing to him showing any points. The US candidacy - apart from Obama - doesn't look particularly edifying, which is quite a worry.
 
Gareth Flynn said:
it'll all be decided by the jobs reports over the next 10 months (there's one out tomorrow expected to confirm the slow but positive trend).
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New one out today has a better-than-expected 1/4 million jobs added for January. Still 8.3% unemployment. Slow is the word. Cue my favourite graph of the last couple of years:

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Markets liked it though - the Dow Jones at its highest since the banking crisis and the NASDAQ is at its highest since the tech bubble burst in 2000.
 
If the trend continues Obama is indeed a tap-in.

I'm far from a macroeconomist, but I don't understand how unemployment can continue ticking down whilst consumer spending remains relatively static. I read something about US exports being up 16% recently (can't remember the stat exactly), but is decreased unemployment actually sustainable in the long term without domestic demand increasing? And have house prices actually bottomed out yet?
 
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Obama 1.74
Romney 2.64

What would it take for Obama to go odds against?


.
 
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Trackside. Employment is probably just as much driven by sentiment as demand. Anticipated demand rather than a response to it. I dont have the numbers to hand but isnt the decrease small enough to be neither here nor there anyway?

but is decreased unemployment actually sustainable in the long term without domestic demand increasing?
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Depends what you mean by long term but corporations have been clearing very good profits last couple of years and maybe just starting to invest now

I think the housing market is very variable across the country too

slim...one mitt is confirmed and he cam campaign and appeal beyond his own party there could well be a bounce. Think that usually happens

Then it will become a choice between whether you want a very successful businessman running the country in bad economic times or a lawyer. Never underestimate how much americans admire those that have made a fortune (although admittedly he did have a head start)
 
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The GOP are a mirror image of Labour in the eighties. In fairness Labour were up against a formidable opponent wheres the republicans are not, but the self destruct button is being held down

But like labour back then, theyw ill win nothing until they shake off the activist extremists


If Sanatorum wins this he will be defeated by an absolute landslide. Fortunately it would appear he was awful on TV the other night so may lose momentum
 
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The GOP are a mirror image of Labour in the eighties.
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I know what you mean, but I think shaking off the extremists will be more difficult for the Republicans than it was even for Labour.

Labour was able to expel people it didn't want from the party, branch by branch, and in that way remove their influence. The US parties don't work in the same way, I think. People can register at their town hall as supporters of a particular party and have a vote in primaries without having to be members, and I don't know if there is any way of getting them de-registered.
 
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Agree and unlike labour in the eighties, there is a strong GOP voter constituency (if thats right phrase) that is strongly behind these candidates

And there are two extremes to contend with. The Ron Paul swivel eyed nutters and the religous bigots. What a nightmare

The GOP is overly dominated by the extreme but the activists influence in labour in the 80s was surely more wildly dispropotionate to the views of their supporters (nationalise the top 100 companies etc etc etc, ). The far left has always had very limited appeal in the UK

I am reading Bush's bio (surprsingly good and thoughtful read) and he would be seen as a relatively moderate candidate if standing now
 
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