Society

To Liverpool to chair the annual conference of the British Chambers of Commerce, stout yeomen of the country’s small- to medium-sized businesses. I’ll let the train take the strain, I thought, and burnish my green credentials, even though I planned to travel on a Sunday, which meant the normal two-and-a-half-hour trip would take an extra hour. In fact, it was my wallet which felt the strain first: Richard Branson’s Virgin charged me £320 for the privilege of a first-class return from London, an obscene amount of money for a modest train ride. (I can fly business class to Nice and back for less!) Undaunted, I arrived at Euston in plenty

I’m at Obama’s election night event here in Raleigh. It’s been held in the basketball arena at North Carolina State which gives the press section with its rows of wooden desks and folding chairs the feel of a school exam hall.  The early exits are a mixed bunch but suggest that Hillary will both fail to secure the double victory she needs to really turn the race around and that Obama’s margin in North Carolina will be bigger than Clinton’s in Indiana. But looking ahead to the general election, the Obama camp has to be worried that 48 percent of voters in both states said that the Rev Wright affair was important to how

A late breaking poll has Hillary up by seven against Obama nationally among Democrats, this follows an earlier poll which also had Hillary up nationally. At this point, national poll numbers mean little—the majority of states have already voted—but they are signifiers of momentum. So, if Hillary were to beat expectations in Indiana and North Carolina these numbers could help turn around perceptions of the race. Certainly, Bill Clinton was doing little to downplay expectations at his late night rally, suggesting that Hillary might even win in North Carolina. If she were to do so, the race would look very different on Wednesday morning.