U.S. presidential election (3): who will be the Republican opponent to Hillary Clinton?
“On the Republican side there are already more than a dozen potential candidates jockeying for position. So 10 months before a single voter will cast a ballot – and 20 months before the 2016 presidential election – the race to succeed Barack Obama has begun.
At the outset of the race the position of the two parties couldn’t be more divergent – Republicans have no clear frontrunner, no candidate of presidential stature and continued intra-party pressure to move even further and further to the far right. Democrats, on the other hand, are united in a way they have rarely been in the past. [Hillary] Clinton is the direct beneficiary of this harmony.
While it is entirely possible that another Democratic aspirant will enter the race between now and the first presidential caucus next January, it is difficult to imagine any scenario in which he or she would supplant her as the party nominee.”
This is the introduction to a piece in today’s “Observer” newspaper on the US presidential election. Almost two years out, it is a most unusual scenario: we are almost certain who the Democratic candidate will be, but have no idea who the Republican candidate will be. This should favour massively Hillary Clinton – but politics often throws up surprises.