Month: June 2024

No, not that one.

Not the surprise French one either. Funny really – like buses, you wait ages for one and then three elections come along at once. France on Sunday, the UK next Thursday (which I appreciate is sounding a bit like Hitler’s ‘To Do’ list) and the US after that.  Granted it’s not actually till November but it feels like it’s been looming for months already, if not years.

The American election has been brought to the forefront, for the moment at least, by last night’s first TV debate in which Joe Biden needed to prove he was focussed and dynamic and absolutely up to the job… and sadly didn’t. I appreciate that his camp this morning is pointing out how ‘the other guy’ spent a lot of his time telling lies, but I’m afraid the nature of these TV debates is to impress at least as much with the candidate’s demeanour and presentation and delivery as it is with the actual content coming out of their mouths. Which may be an unpalatable truth, but if you’re on a presidential media team in 2024 you should already know it.

Maybe if Biden had been the candidate instead of Hilary Clinton in 2016 it would have been very different. He might well have won that and Trump, the out-of-left-field surprise candidate, would never have become President… and chances are, after a few weeks of sober reflection, even the Republican party would have reached the, “What were we thinking?!!” stage and we would never have heard from him again…

But that didn’t happen, and from last night’s showing it seems likely that Trump’s going to make what he’s presumably already calling the Greatest Comeback in the History of the World Ever. He doesn’t even really need to win, not properly, he just needs the other side to lose.

I’m sure, even allowing for my youthful apathy, that the UK in general never used to be all that bothered about American politics when I was  younger. I would have known who was President, but other than that I don’t think I could even have told you which party was in power. But now, we seem to know (and hear!) all about caucases and the mid-terms and… That’s mainly the Trump effect. For all sorts of reason he’s so ‘newsworthy’ that it’s meant US politics has become a big part of UK news..

But it’s a shame for America. Trump, as far as I can see, is likely to spend most of a second term trying to dramatically reform the courts that dared convict him, the electoral system that dared vote him out, and indeed the Constitution that says he can only have two terms. I suspect anything more germane to actually running the country for the actual voters will come a very distant second to his ever-growing list of vendettas.

Maybe there’s still time for the Democrats to field somebody else. Somebody younger, more dynamic, more focussed and enthusiastic (frankly if they can find somebody like that, half the job of winning the election is already done). But presumably, based on him having the most nominations or however the heck their system works, they can’t not choose to accept Biden.

Unless he decides to take himself out of the race of course. I appreciate that seems very unlikely, but it could happen. Roger Moore pulled out for example (that’s not a mid-seventies Bond innuendo, I’m recalling him being cast in Aspects of Love but exiting the role with no more than a fortnight till curtain up). Maybe Mrs Biden will have spent breakfast trying to suggest to her husband that it’s time to hang up the… whatever it is that Presidents get. Robes of Office? Crown? Nuclear briefcase? Well, whatever.

But I don’t expect that’s going to happen. So the US outcome seems, to this cross-Atlantic observer at least, a dead cert for the Republicans.

I guess it must be rather disheartening to go into an election with a choice between just two candidates, neither of whom is very inspiring, and with a result that seems already clear.

Yes, poor America…