{"id":19036,"date":"2016-01-24T12:22:52","date_gmt":"2016-01-24T11:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19036"},"modified":"2016-01-24T12:22:52","modified_gmt":"2016-01-24T11:22:52","slug":"u-s-presidential-election-17-it-wasnt-supposed-to-be-like-this","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=19036","title":{"rendered":"U.S. presidential election (17): it wasn&#8217;t supposed to be like this"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Over a year ago, commentators &#8211; me included [see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/?p=16082\">this blog posting<\/a>] &#8211; were speculating that the 2016 presidential election could be a contest between candidates from families that have previously occupied the White House, namely Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and Jeb Bush for the Republicans. So, how&#8217;s it working out?<\/p>\n<p>This is an extract from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/jan\/23\/donald-trump-bernie-sanders-lead-two-headed-insurgency-against-establishment\">an &#8220;Observer&#8221; review<\/a> of the current state of the races:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;A year ago Jeb Bush versus Hillary Clinton looked like a safe, if dull bet. No one dreamed that, with the Iowa caucuses approaching on 1 February, polls might be suggesting the rather less likely head-to-head of Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders, a clash not of political dynasties but of popular movements.<\/p>\n<p>Trump, 69, a billionaire celebrity from New York who has never held political office, has dominated the national Republican race although hardline conservative Cruz, 45, another outsider, appears to have the edge in Iowa. Neither has the endorsement of a single sitting governor or senator.<\/p>\n<p>Sanders, a 74-year-old socialist senator from Vermont, appears well placed to beat Clinton among Democrats in both Iowa and New Hampshire. While she remains the long-term favourite, the former first lady could be forgiven for suffering stomach-knotting flashbacks to her defeat by Barack Obama in 2008.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Just to make life even more interesting, there is a possibility that there may be a independent challenge for the presidency in the shape of Michael Bloomberg [see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2016\/jan\/23\/michael-bloomberg-considers-third-party-presidential-bid\">here<\/a>]. Politics is never dull!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Over a year ago, commentators &#8211; me included [see this blog posting] &#8211; were speculating that the 2016 presidential election could be a contest between candidates from families that have previously occupied the White House, namely Hillary Clinton for the Democrats and Jeb Bush for the Republicans. So, how&#8217;s it working out? This is an [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-us-current-affairs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19036"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19043,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19036\/revisions\/19043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.rogerdarlington.me.uk\/nighthawk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}