Chances for real debate are circling the toilet

So it’s come to this: the clear No. 1 candidate in the Republican Party, the man who is moving ever closer to having a legitimate chance at becoming the leader of the free world and who would have access to nuclear codes that could obliterate the planet, is obsessed with what happens when women go to the bathroom.

Donald Trump says that Hillary Clinton needing a potty break is “disgusting,” somehow implying that his personal waste products magically disappear when nature makes a house call on his own 69-year-old body.

That’s what passes for debate in the race for the White House in 2015-16, where two former governors (Rick Perry, Lincoln Chafee), a sitting governor (Scott Walker), a sitting senator (Lindsey Graham) and a former senator (Jim Webb) have been forced to the sidelines before the voting has even started so others can discuss serious topics such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome.

Poop aside, nothing much is likely to happen any time soon to the significant polling leads that Trump and Clinton now enjoy. The holidays are here, and Americans have trouble doing more than one thing at a time. The last thing they want to think about is what happens to holiday egg nog after it goes down the hatch.

So, a pre-holiday look at the odds in the race to see who gets to use any of the 35 bathrooms at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 13 months from now.

Odds of which party wins the 2016 Presidential Election:

• Democrat: 4/7
• Republican: 5/4

Dems are pretty much united, Republicans not so much — and history tells us that party unity is an important factor.

Odds to win the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1:

Democrats

• Clinton: 1/6 – She leads in all Iowa polls, but . . .
• Sanders: 16/5 – Might be worth a wager here. His supporters are more intense.
• O’Malley: 33/1 – Can’t even afford party platters for a few dozen of his caucus-goers

Republicans

• Cruz: 4/7 – Santorum won in 2012, Huckabee in 2008, riding strong support from religious conservatives that now form Cruz’s base.
• Trump: 5/2 – Chances are his supporters never heard “We’re not gonna take it” by Twisted Sister, but they know how they feel.
• Rubio: 6/1 – He’s the Republican “Break Glass in Case of Emergency” candidate.
• Rest of the field: 10/1 – Gap between the top three and everyone else is too great to overcome. Several ‘Kids’ table candidates keeping their powder dry for New Hampshire.

Odds to win the New Hampshire primaries on Feb. 9:

Democrats

• Sanders: 8/11 – Most polls show him with an eight to ten-point lead over Clinton, but that will shrink if Hillary decides to spend some serious cash right after Iowa. This is a basically a home game for the Vermont senator. He has to win big here.
• Clinton: 1/1 – Hillary can take a loss, and won’t be too concerned unless she loses by double digits.

Odds on the next Republican candidate to drop out of the race:

• Jim Gilmore: 1/1 – If you even consider him a candidate.
• George Pataki: 3/1 – He’s auditioning for a job, any job.
• Rand Paul: 5/1 – Aqua Buddha is under pressure from his Kentucky BFFs to drop out and start to take care of business in his Senate race.
• Carly Fiorina: 8/1 – Wants to be the new VP pit bull candidate, Spiro Agnew in a skirt.
• Jeb Bush: 14/1 – Lady Macbeth had her damn spot. Jeb has his last name. Family cookouts in Kennebunk this coming summer will be uber awkward as he tries to explain to his father and brother just what went wrong.
• Mike Huckabee: 16/1 – Never should have quit that cushy Fox TV gig.
• Rick Santorum: 18/1 – It was over for Santorum the minute Ted Cruz announced, but Rick needs campaign cash to pay the bills, so he’ll stick for a bit.

Odds on Hillary Clinton clinching the Democratic nomination before June 3 (Note: Obama clinched the 2008 nomination on that date):

• Before: 2/5
• After: 2/1

Clinton just has too big a lead and too much support among Democratic women for Sanders to keep this going too deep into the spring.

Odds on the next group that Donald Trump will insult/ostracize:

• Mentally challenged Americans: 4/1 – Technically, he has already criticized Ben Carson.
• Jews: 5/1 – He would do it just to confuse Muslims.
• Asian-Americans: 7/1 – But drops to 2-1 if he gets has bad Chinese food for lunch.
• Native Americans: 8/1 – Not enough of them to be worth it.
• Italian-Americans: 40/1 – Mafia could make things tough on him if he hires non-union workers at his hotels.
• Caucasians: 200/1 – Long odds are pretty obvious.

Odds Ben Carson falls asleep during a debate: 6/1

Carson thinks the Golden Globes are flat.

Odds on the next body part that Donald Trump will turn into a verb:

• Finger: 2/1
• Nose: 4/1
• Johnson: 5/1

Over/under on the number of people who know that Jim Gilmore is running for President

• Within Gilmore’s own family: 5
• Outside Gilmore’s family: Still 5

Odds on Trump and Megyn Kelly getting into another spitball fight at the next Fox debate: 5/1

Once you’ve commented on a moderator’s menstrual cycle, there’s really not much left to talk about.

(Photo credit: Gage Skidmore [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)