The money is on Hillary
Think Hillary Clinton will be the next U.S. president? Like to place a little money on that?
Actually, there are at least two websites where you can do just that. Both Intrade and the Iowa Electronic Markets will let you bet real money on the prospects of Sen. Clinton or any of the other leading candidates for President in both parties. You can win or lose money. Just like in a real horse race!
Both these sites have Sen. Clinton, the Secretariat candidate, as the odds-on favorite to be our next President. At Intrade, which is a for-profit company, 47.6 percent of investors believe she will be elected President in 2008, compared to 26 percent for former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and 16.8 percent for former New York mayor Rudolph Guiliani.
At the non-profit Iowa Electronic Markets, operated as an educational and research tool by the University of Iowa's Henry B. Tippie College of Business, 71.1 percent of participants say Hillary will get the Democratic nomination, while 40.4 percent say Guiliani will be the Republican nominee. In the actual election, IEM doesn't take bets on a Clinton-Guiliani matchup, but rather on a generic Democratic-Republican contest. It has the Dems willing with a 51.5 percent share of the total vote.
I'm amazed at the momentum of Sen. Clinton's campaign. She has made almost no serious mistakes. It has become popular of late to say, yes, but look at where Howard Dean was at this point four years ago. The difference is experience and the machine behind Sen. Clinton. She also has the benefit of 15 years of dealing with the rightwing attack machine and the polite disdain of conventional wisdom. She is far more liberal on social issues than many give her credit for. I still have reservations in the area of foreign policy. She needs to reassure liberal Democratic voters that she will remove U.S. troops from Iraq within a year after taking office, and engage Iran with diplomacy, not war.
I sense that Sen. Clinton will get many votes from women who, even if they disagree with her on some issues, are so pumped by the idea of a female President that they will put aside their reservations and vote for her.