The odds favour Hillary

By Richard Barry

In an article in New York magazine yesterday, Jonathan Chait tells us, in a very persuasive article, why he thinks Hillary Clinton is likely to be the victor in the 2016 election:

He begins with this statement:

Unless the economy goes into a recession over the next year and a half, Hillary Clinton is probably going to win the presidential election. The United States has polarized into stable voting blocs, and the Democratic bloc is a bit larger and growing at a faster rate.

And ends with this one:

The argument for Clinton in 2016 is that she is the candidate of the only major American political party not run by lunatics. There is only one choice for voters who want a president who accepts climate science and rejects voodoo economics, and whose domestic platform would not engineer the largest upward redistribution of resources in American history. Even if the relatively sober Jeb Bush wins the nomination, he will have to accommodate himself to his party's barking-mad consensus. She is non-crazy America’s choice by default. And it is not necessarily an exciting choice, but it is an easy one, and a proposition behind which she will probably command a majority

I don't know. Is there anything else that needs to be said? Okay, the only thing I would add is that if Jeb Bush, assuming he is the nominee, is able to push back against his "party's barking-mad consensus" it will be because the establishment wing of the GOP and all the money and influence it commands has been able to force some sanity on the situation. If they can do that, it will be more interesting than Chait suggests.

Still, the odds have to be with Clinton.