Forget opinion polls. On either side of the Atlantic an endorsement by Rupert Murdoch has proved a far more accurate bellwether of election outcomes. Supporters of Hillary Clinton should therefore swallow their doubts and take heart that Mr Murdoch's News Corporation plans to host a fund-raising event for the New York senator.

So far Mrs Clinton has done nothing so daring as to make the journey to News Corp's shareholders' meeting in Australia - a pilgrimage Tony Blair made before the Labour party's sweeping 1997 victory. Nor has Mrs Clinton been slaughtering Democratic holy cows as Mr Blair did when he shredded Labour's commitment to public ownership. Not that she needed to. Bill Clinton, Hillary's in-house psephological adviser, already put a torch to most of the Democrat party's shibboleths in the 1990s, such as its opposition to welfare reform, its fondness for deficit spending and being soft on crime.