It did not take the latest head-to-head debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump for me to start doubting whether Biden’s age was likely to become a major issue in the November election race.
Will there be another such debate which was, by the way, very fairly umpired. Would Trump offer Biden a second chance? Could Biden do any better given that chance.
I wrote here as far back as September 2021 about the dangers that the Democrats faced in fielding a “somewhat tired” Biden-Harris ticket in 2024 and then raised the possibility of the Democrats finding some pathway to field different candidates offering a younger and stronger ticket than Biden-Harris.
At that time in 2021, I saw the potential for a Trump comeback in the wake of a possible midterm electoral disaster in 2022. That disaster did not come about. The Democrats predictably lost the House of Representatives but kept partial control of the Senate by a wafer-thin majority.
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And, as I forewarned here in January and May of this year, the criminal and civil prosecutions and suits against Trump have been delayed and frustrated by reasonably predictable adroit legal tactics by Trump’s lawyers to the point of potential irrelevance.
Biden’s frailty also turns the spotlight on to Kamala Harris. Her role as vice-president will increasingly come into sharp political focus
The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket is looking very, very suspect at this point, especially in the swing states that will give the majority in the electoral college system that will decide the November outcome.
Both Biden and Harris are becoming electoral liabilities at the worst possible time in the electoral cycle. The thought of a Kamala Harris presidency seemed unlikely then and seems like a complete negative now. Entirely predictable.
The US Supreme Court’s latest immunity decision was not only predictable but predicted here.
If Biden slips behind in the polls by a 5 per cent or 10 per cent margin in the run-up to the Democrats August convention at which he has nearly all the pledged delegates at this stage, will anyone be able to stop an electoral car crash in November?
The consequences of leaving him at the wheel are appalling in scope. His wife, Jill, may think he is still fit for office, but the optics tell us otherwise. He has lost physical fitness and mental acuity in the last two years in the eyes of most objective observers. He is long past his political sell-by date.
Biden’s frailty also turns the spotlight on to Kamala Harris. Her role as vice-president will increasingly come into sharp political focus. And the sad fact is that she has already earned a record low opinion poll rating in the role over the last three years.
Could Biden even now attempt to freshen up his own candidacy by dropping Harris in favour of a different running mate? Would dumping Harris cause even more damage than keeping her on the ticket? Probably so. That is a further millstone around the Democrats’ collective neck.
The ‘nothing to see here’ public reaction by Democrat political insiders to Biden’s debating fiasco, underlines their fading grasp on reality and reveals their desperation about the corner into which the party has painted itself. All of this is totally depressing.
Trump, perhaps ludicrously, looks more on top of things politically and seems to have been forgiven his felony conviction already by voters. He appears to have a political wind in his sails while Biden looks politically becalmed and psychologically bedraggled.
What new disaster could befall Trump at this stage? He seems to have hollowed out the scandal possibilities. If being convicted of multiple accounting felonies and being shown to have orchestrated a massive secret pay-off to conceal his matrimonial infidelities with a porn star have not dented his appeal to America’s evangelicals and hardline conservative pro-life Catholics, what can stop him now?
The answer is a new candidacy to appeal to middle United States. Instead of Biden-Harris, a Governor Gavin Newsom-Governor Gretchen Whitmer ticket could be the game changer that the Democrats need – that we all need to avoid international disaster.
Could that happen, or is it impossible for the Democrats to avoid a November car crash? While it may seem improbable, there is still time before August. Politics is the art of the possible, as one cliche tells us. And necessity is the mother of invention, as another reminds us.
Anything is possible now if the US is to save Europe from the consequences of a Trump capitulation to Vladimir Putin in Ukraine. Can they not see that if the political tide starts running heavily towards a Trump win, they will lose their Senate majority and suffer a heavier setback in the House?
It is no unfair reflection on Biden to thank him mightily for saving us from Trump in 2020, and then implore him and his party to let someone else prevent that huge victory being reversed in 2024.