Us politics

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Why the smart money is still betting against Donald Trump

From our UK edition

Would you bet against Donald Trump becoming president? Lots of us have. British gamblers have reportedly put more than £1 million on Trump not reaching the White House. Put this down to the general loathing of 'the Donald’, plus a common sense instinct that, while Americans may be mad and/or stupid, they can’t be that mad and/or stupid. Most bookmakers have Trump at 4-1 to become president. At those odds, most pundits on either side of the pond would advise betting against. A more difficult question now is whether Trump can win the Republican nomination. Most UK bookmakers now price him at 6/4 or 15/8 for that market.

Tuesday

Rod Liddle

Donald Trump represents the views of millions of Americans. Does the BBC not realise this?

From our UK edition

If you saw the BBC Ten O'Clock News last night you will have witnessed Nick Bryant’s dispassionate, even-handed treatment of Republican candidate Donald Trump. Trump had called for an end to Muslim immigration into the United States. Bryant’s face was puffed up with outrage; he almost spat out the words of the story and ended by saying that 'this is the gutter'. https://soundcloud.com/spectator1828/nick-bryant-discusses-donald-trumps-comments-about-muslims-on-bbc-ten-oclock-news It does not matter how often they are told, it does not matter how many complaints they receive: the BBC continues to pursue its own political agenda at every possible opportunity. If it addressed this problem it might find that fewer people wished to see the licence fee abolished. But fat chance.

Thursday

Ed West

There’s absolutely nothing polite about political correctness

From our UK edition

I hope anyone who sees footage of the two shrieking women at Yale and Missouri will finally concede that political correctness is not ‘all about politeness’. It’s about power, and always has been. The Yale hoo-ha started because the authorities failed to take seriously a letter from the university’s ‘Intercultural Affairs Committee’ warning about Halloween fancy dress costumes being offensive. People wonder how one of the most high-ranking universities in the world can be embarrassed by an argument over adults wearing fancy dress, but that is exactly the point; if the row was over something that mattered, there could be little kudos in winning it. This is about displaying power.

Monday

Kate Maltby

Yale students have exercised their right to be treated like children

From our UK edition

Shrieking girl. There it is. I’ve been trying to think of a less gendered, less belittling phrase for the subject of a video that went viral this weekend, a black female student at my alma mater, Yale University, letting rip her frustrations at a mobbed college master. But shrieking she is, and not like an adult. 'It is not about creating an intellectual space! It is not! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here!' (that’s one of the less expletive-laden sections). The trigger for this was Halloween, the subject at hand the question of who gets to judge potentially offensive costumes, and how. But how did we get to the point where students are brought to tears at the suggestion a leading university 'should be an intellectual space'? https://www.youtube.

Tuesday

Mark Gettleson

Joe Biden’s moment is now

From our UK edition

On 7th February 2000, for the first time in American history, a First Lady (a sitting one at that) took to the podium to announce her candidacy for public office – a New York Senate bid that would no doubt soon propel her to the White House. And so began perhaps the longest electoral campaign in American history. Cruelly, or at least unexpectedly, denied the Democratic nomination in 2008 – surely, just surely, 2016 was her year for the party faithful to come a’begging. But ever since her formal announcement in April, things have not looked good for Team Hillary. The Benghazi Committee, which began as an investigation into the deaths of American citizens in 2012, has morphed into an ongoing saga around her use of a private email server as Secretary of State.

Thursday

Niall Ferguson

Sorry, America, but it looks like Joe Biden is your next president

From our UK edition

I have a sinking feeling that Joe Biden might be the next president of the United States. In a brilliant essay published by the American Spectator in 2010, Angelo Codevilla of Boston University foresaw a popular revolt against ‘America’s ruling class’. What he calls ‘the Country party’ repudiates the co-option of the mainstream Republican party by the bureaucratic behemoth that is Washington, DC. You cannot understand the popularity of Donald Trump until you grasp the essential characteristics of this Country party. White, male, ageing Americans are sick of political correctness. They are sick of carefully calibrated talking points. They are sick of immigrants. They are sick of wars in faraway places of which they know nothing and care less.

Saturday

Kate Maltby

Maggie’s great, but can’t the US find an inspiring American woman to go on their banknote?

From our UK edition

Banknotes, again. Now it’s America’s turn to suffer the unintended consequences of an ill-implemented campaign to inject some XX chromosomes into currency. In June, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew announced that he was knocking founding father Alexander Hamilton, a self-made, illegitimate boy from the West Indies, off the $10 bill. There’s a nationwide hunt for a woman whose image could replace him: in this week’s Republican debate, Jeb Bush suggested Margaret Thatcher. You can even tweet your own suggestions to the Treasury, with the hashtag #TheNew10. Now, I’m pretty keen on Margaret Thatcher. (If Jeremy Corbyn wants to end the scourge of personal abuse in politics, he could talk to her family, for starters).

Thursday

Paul Wood

The man to stop Trump

From our UK edition

   Washington DC Ben Carson is relaxed. ‘He’s always relaxed,’ says an aide. The next televised Republican primary debate is two days away, but Dr Carson is about to begin his first rehearsal for it. The preternatural calm he exudes is presumably what gave him his steady hands during the 22-hour operation that led to him becoming the first surgeon to successfully separate Siamese twins fused at the head. That operation is part of the Carson legend: growing up poor, black, becoming chief of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins aged 33. This life story has aided an improbable presidential bid that is now starting to look more plausible. Carson is polling second in a Republican field of 16 and he has momentum.

Sunday

Michael Lind

The summer of Trump may soon be over – but the damage has still been done

From our UK edition

They call it the summer of Trump. Only a year ago everyone expected the 2016 presidential election to be a clash of dynasties, with Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush enjoying coronations by the Democrats and Republicans. But Bernie Sanders, the socialist Senator from Vermont, is proving to be a formidable challenge to Clinton. Even more disruptive, on the Republican side, has been Donald Trump. While Sanders represents the left wing of a common progressivism he shares with Hillary Clinton, Trump is challenging conservative orthodoxy itself by giving voice to a robust right-wing populism. Populists love outsiders, can-do executives and simple policy panaceas, and Trump, a billionaire real estate developer and veteran reality television star, gives the people what they want.

Thursday

Dot Wordsworth

Asexual

From our UK edition

There was a time when my husband, who often addresses the television, would habitually react to Edward Heath’s appearance on the screen with the greeting ‘Hello, sailor.’ Last week, though, the man who was Sir Edward’s principal private secretary during his time as prime minister, Robert Armstrong, now Lord Armstrong, commented on the posthumous accusations against him. ‘You usually detect some sense of sexuality when you are friends or work closely with them,’ he said of political colleagues. ‘I think he was completely asexual.’ Asexual is an anomalous word, combining a Greek prefix, signifying negation or privation, with an adjective derived from Latin.

Paul Wood

Iowa notebook

From our UK edition

 The Iowa State Fair ‘Donnnaaallldd!!! Donnnaaaaallldd!!!’ Donald Trump was surrounded by fans. He looked happy. He took a bite out of a pork chop on a stick — eating one is a campaign ritual for every politician visiting the Iowa State Fair — and raised his arm in salute. ‘We love you,’ a woman shouted. Someone else yelled: ‘Save our country! Save America!’ No other Republican candidate visiting the fair — no candidate from either party — has generated such crowds and such excitement. ‘I touched him,’ said one woman running over to her friends. ‘I got a selfie.

Friday

Ella Whelan

If Hillary Clinton keeps playing the gender card, others will too

From our UK edition

The American presidential race seemed more like a playground fight than a clash of politics this week as would-be Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton drew her claws on her Republican counterpart Donald Trump. The rumpus was sparked by Trump's comments on Megyn Kelly’s tough approach towards him during a recent Republican Party debate. ‘You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever,' he said. The possibility that Trump was blaming Kelly’s harsh tone on her menstrual cycle predictably sent social media into meltdown. Never too far from a scandal, Clinton seized her chance. In a public statement she described Trump’s comments as ‘outrageous’.

Thursday

Philip Delves Broughton

How Hillary can win it – for the Republicans

From our UK edition

 New York [audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/howtofixtherefugeecrisis/media.mp3" title="Philip Delves Broughton and Freddy Gray discuss how Hillary can swing it for the Republicans" startat=847] Listen [/audioplayer]Remember the fizz around Gordon Brown’s election campaign in 2010? The excitement he brought to the trail? The eerily intimate connection with the electorate? No, nor can I. But conjure up what you can and mix it with the thrill of a hot afternoon locked in a community centre discussing renovations to the ping-pong room and you’ll have a sense of the vibe around Hillary Clinton’s latest campaign for president.

Matthew Walther

Saying nothing, very well

From our UK edition

In June 2009, the good people of South Carolina lost Mark Sanford, their governor. Per his instructions, his staff told the press that he was ‘hiking the Appalachian trail’. When he turned up six days later at an airport in Atlanta, Georgia, he said that he had scratched the hike in favour of something more ‘exotic’. When it became clear that ‘exotic’ meant visiting his 43-year-old polyglot divorcée mistress in Argentina, things got bad. ‘I will be able to die knowing that I found my soulmate,’ he told the Associated Press, sobbing. Barton Swaim has written a memoir of his three years working as a speechwriter for Sanford, who is now a congressman.

Thursday

Tim Stanley

The Trump slump

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/theosbornesupremacy/media.mp3" title="Freddy Gray and Sebastian Payne discuss the rise of Donald Trump" startat=1607] Listen [/audioplayer]Lunatics with money are never ‘mad’, only eccentric. In America, they are also Republican presidential candidates. So Donald Trump, a barmy billionaire with a mouth bigger than his bank balance is leading the race to be the party’s next nominee. It’s a sad indictment of the American political process. And it is a distraction from how strong American conservatism could be. More than a dozen major Republicans are standing.

Thursday

Mark Mason

Political memorabilia

From our UK edition

My first reaction on hearing of Margaret Thatcher’s death in 2013 was: ‘Great — now my autograph from her will go up in value.’ This wasn’t callous. It was a simple application of demand and supply. As a child of the 1980s I had learned my lesson well. The Lady wouldn’t have objected to me viewing her signature as a pension plan. Indeed, it’s what she would have wanted. How many Caribbean villas, then, should I be thinking of buying? Because this is no ordinary autograph. I asked Mrs T. (as she then still was) to write out ‘There is no such thing as society’ and sign it. She embellished the quote, adding ‘…there are only individuals, it is we who bear the responsibility’.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Where Ukip went wrong

From our UK edition

[audioplayer src="http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/angelamerkel-sburden/media.mp3" title="Freddy Gray, Sebastian Payne and Owen Bennett discuss where Ukip went wrong" startat=685] Listen [/audioplayer]What’s happened to poor Ukip? Not so long ago, they seemed unstoppable. They were revolting on the right, terrifying the left and shaking up Westminster. The established parties tried sneering at them, smearing them, even copying them. Nothing worked. Then came the general election, the centre held, and Ukip seemed to fall apart. Farage failed to win his target seat in South Thanet, the focus of his whole campaign. He resigned, then farcically unresigned, three days later.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 11 June 2015

From our UK edition

The long arm of the FBI Sir: The White House may be less willing than it was to play the role of the world’s policeman in international affairs, but the FBI seems eager to be the world’s cop. No doubt, as Martin Vander Weyer has noted (Any other business, 6 May), the US Attorney General has been ‘careful to assert that many of the allegedly corrupt schemes of the Fifa officials so far arrested were planned in the US, and that US banking and “wire” services were used.’ Still, we are told that the FBI is also investigating matters such as the award of the next two world cups to Russia and Qatar, where there is no evident US involvement.

Thursday

Liam Halligan

Unequal struggle

From our UK edition

‘How do you feel when you go back to Gary?’ I ask Joe Stiglitz. ‘Well, frankly, I get depressed,’ he replies. ‘The American middle class was created in places like my home town and is now struggling badly — which makes me sad.’ Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and the closest thing the left has to an intellectual superstar, grew up in Gary, Indiana, during the 1950s, when it was the heart of the booming US steel industry. His father sold insurance and his mother was a teacher. ‘We had a modest detached brick house, with a lawn all around — it was safe and secure,’ he recalls. ‘Back then, if you worked hard and played by the rules in America, you’d make it — you could get ahead.

Thursday

Sean Kemp

Westminster’s obsession with US politics is both embarrassing and foolish

From our UK edition

Can you sense it? That thrill in the air? The feeling that suddenly the Labour campaign is just somehow more exciting? Yes, that’s right, David Axelrod is back in the country. Try to control yourselves. The Guardian recently revealed that 26 April was the date that The Axe was landing back in the UK. And not a moment too soon, as some in the Labour party have started to question what Obama’s former adviser has been doing for his reported £300,000 apart from the odd conference call. The idea that the election was a fight between the American and Lynton Crosby - who, whatever you think about him, clearly eats, breathes and sleeps this election - now seems rather quaint.