It was on a plane from Atlanta to London in mid February 2007 that I first watched Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Up until that point, like most right leaning ex-Republicans, I was somewhat skeptical about the empirical evidence behind the global warming theories being bandied about by pseudo-scientists. My final destination was Spain to watch my home town team Liverpool beat Barcelona in the Champions League, soccer’s most prestigious club completion in Europe. En route to the game I decided with a couple of friends to visit the Val D’Aran in the Spanish Pyrenees for a spot of skiing. It had been 20 years since I was last there and the difference was amazing. It was not the mass development in that the region that surprised me the most, it was the lack of snow in what was the peak of the season. A local told me that the snow had receded up the valley each year and there had not been skiing at Tuca my favorite resort for about 15 years. It got me thinking about Al Gore’s movie. I was slowly becoming convinced that he might be on to something.
When I returned Stateside I read an article that predicted that Al Gore would win an Oscar for his documentary and had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize to boot!! It was at that point that I became convinced-Al Gore was going to be the next President of the United States. I went online to my favorite site oddschecker.com to see what his chances were-the English bookies are always right about political outcomes, especially with regards to US politics-and there he was.
A great big 14/1 against him being the next US President and 7/1 against him being the Democratic nominee.
As the Democrats were, and still are, odds on to beat the Republicans, I took the 14/1 and placed my bet. All my friends think I’m nuts. But the bookies don’t. Since February, Al went on to win the Oscar ( and joked about running in front of about 1.5 billion people) and then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. His odds of being the next Democratic Nominee tumbled to 4/1 in October and 6/1 to be the next President. My thinking here for the apparent inconsistency with the book is that the bookies believe there’s a chance Al might run for the Presidency but not as a Democrat. Interestingly, some bookies will take a bet on Al being the Democratic nominee but not as the next President.
There are a couple of bookies that will still take a bet on Al being the next US president and London book maker Victor Chandler has him drifting in the market and today you can get 16/1 against. More interestingly for me is those bookies that were offering odds Corals, Ladbrookes, Hills are no longer doing so.
As I watch Al being asked every day if he intends to run and watch as opinion polls confirm that he is the only person capable of beating Hillary, he seems more Statesman-like in his demeanor and more and more like the next U.S. President- for real this time.
So what are the bookies thinking? I think that they think he will run, possibly as an Independent, and if he does run that he will win the Presidency. In the meantime they are quite happy to take any money they can get on any other candidate including Hillary. The bookies are as they say “never wrong”.
I think I need to call Victor Chandler……
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