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US Election Betting: Hillary's cunning plan

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Chickendinner ask whether Clinton's stand-off for the Democratic nomination is designed to make Obama unelectable...

At the start of 2008 the political weather seemed to have produced perfect conditions for a Democratic candidate to gently take the reins from a spent and enfeebled George W Bush this November. But after sixteen weeks of still unresolved campaigning, Senators Clinton and Obama are flirting with giving the Republicans a previously unimaginable third term in office.

Since John McCain all but sewed up the Republican nomination after Super Tuesday back in February, his odds of being next president have shortened dramatically. He's still not favourite; Obama sits in the lead on Betfair at [2.2], with McCain close behind at [2.7], and Clinton a distant third at [7.2]. Overall, odds of Democrats being the winning party are still strong at [1.6], but the Republicans are an increasingly dangerous presence at [2.5].

Right now, John McCain must feel like the luckiest man in US politics. As the Democrats lurch increasingly towards meltdown (inspiring divisive visions of Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter at the 1980 convention), McCain has had time to consolidate his support. Since Feb 5, three-quarters of Republicans have declared that they are satisfied with McCain as their nominee, quite an achievement for a man originally regarded by party loyalists as less Republican than Hillary Clinton.

And while McCain waltzes round America looking presidential, the Democrats beat each other senseless. The daily negative exchanges between the two camps are unlikely to significantly alter the outcome of any of the remaining contests, yet they stir up massive hostility and mistrust, making it increasingly difficult to unite the party behind the eventual winner.

The sooner the race ends, the better chance the Democrats have at toppling McCain, but this won't happen soon. Barring some unforeseen event, Clinton will win Pennsylvania; Obama will win North Carolina, South Dakota, Montana; Indiana will go to the wire. And if you add it all up, Clinton stands to gain a net of no more than 30-50 additional pledged delegates, leaving Obama with more delegates, states and a greater share of the popular vote come June. But none of this will deter Clinton, who still adamantly believes she can win.

Clinton's endgame is a ruthless one. Pundits are calling it a Hail Mary strategy (from the American Football term of a Hail Mary pass when, with the clock down to a few seconds, the quarterback hoists the ball into the end zone in the blind hope it lands in the hands of one of his receivers), but it is more akin to industrial sabotage. It's a strategy that might rough up Obama so badly that he'll fold to McCain in November, but that is partly Clinton's objective. Clinton can still win the nomination if she can persuade enough people that Obama is unelectable, which basically entails ratcheting up a continuous stream of attacks designed to expose Obama's weaknesses, and therefore ruin his electability, divide the party and deprive Democrats of their last opportunity to put together an Obama/Clinton ticket, their best resource to beat McCain.

Why else would Clinton suggest that McCain would be a better commander-in-chief than Obama, and why else would Bill imply that Obama was less patriotic than McCain? Hillary has served up a choice: Hillary or nothing. Even if she fails to convince and the nomination goes to Obama, she'll have hewn a party rift so deep that Obama's chances of being president will have been severely compromised. Let McCain win and take him on in 2012 with Obama hobbled and out the way - not a bad plan at all.

Of course, Clinton could win more fairly by scraping up votes at the summer convention, but she would need 70% of the 355 undecided superdelegates to buy her argument. And a coup by superdelegates would not only overturn the will of people but cause a massive backlash from Obama supporters, costing her at a general election. No, she has exactly the right idea: this is not her nomination to win - it's Obama's to lose.