Sitting in a century old steakhouse staring out at the Brooklyn Bridge thirty years ago Hank Greenburg (the pollster not the baseball player) explained an election that could only happen in the grubby circus of New York politics: Given a choice between a Crook and a Fool, he said, voters take the Crook.

His theory was simple: You can predict what a Crook will do but you never know what a Fool may do.

Back then – during the final chapter of the Cold War – from where I sat in the world of southern politics I saw two kinds of candidates: Conservatives and everyone else. And Hank’s idea that crooks and fools had a unique role of their own to play struck me as perverse.

But three decades later Hank’s theory has stood the test of time: We have two New Yorkers running for President and the last fifteen polls show Hillary Clinton leading.