ROLL up, roll up for the worst election race in history.
No, I don’t mean our next general election, I’m referring to the US Presidential election, which also takes place in 2024.
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Because this week Joe Biden announced he is going to run for another term.
In perhaps the least inspiring video message of all time, the 80-year-old President announced his candidacy.
“The question we’re facing” he said in it, “is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom, more rights or fewer”.
Most Americans — especially in the crime-ridden inner cities — have a lot more questions than that.
Doubtless some 80-year-olds could do the most difficult job on the planet. But not Joe Biden.
He has stumbled through his first term barely answering questions from the media, fluffing his lines, forgetting his trains of thought. He makes the average goldfish look like Memory Man.
All the while the President is assisted by a Vice President, Kamala Harris, who has achieved almost nothing and who is perhaps the only person in American public life able to give more embarrassing media interviews than her boss.
In any ordinary season Biden and Harris would not stand a chance of re-election.
All the polls show that the American public do not think he should be running again.
But there is an elephant in the room. Or at least in Mar-a-Lago.
For of course, last November Donald Trump also announced that he is running for the Presidency in 2024.
If Trump gets the Republican Party nomination, and Biden is not challenged in his own Democrat party, then we will see another Trump-Biden race.
I don’t know anyone in America who has the mental strength to go through that again. A nastier race is hard to imagine.
Trump still thinks he won last time and is consumed by bitterness and vengefulness.
The version we saw of him in 2016 is light-hearted and kindly compared to the seething ball of resentment and wounded pride he is today.
A far better candidate for the Republicans would be the Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
He is half Trump’s age and has shown twice his ability at actually doing things.
The polls show that in a Presidential race between DeSantis and Biden, DeSantis would be most likely to win.
But he may not get that chance, as Trump’s popularity rating has soared — particularly since Republicans have been watching the unfair political attempts to prosecute Trump in New York.
But while Trump is popular with Republicans and unarguably has a loyal base, he is also the candidate Biden and the Democrats most want to see.
He is the worst imaginable candidate for the undecided and swing voters you have to get onside to win the Presidency.
Many people were willing to give Trump a chance in 2016. Still others were just sickened by the option of Hillary Clinton.
This time, however, there is no one in America who doesn’t have a strong view of Trump.
And aside from the die-hard loyalists, he is political poison in the US.
If he runs against Biden he will lose again — and lose big.
Democrats will vote for Biden in record numbers and swing voters will do the same just to keep Trump from the White House.
There are reasons to do so. Trump has already suggested that he wants a second term to carry out his acts of revenge on all the people and institutions he thinks let down his Presidency last time. Which is just about everyone and everything in America.
Apart from himself.
It would be a disaster for the Republican party. But worse — it is a disaster for the country.
Biden is plainly struggling. He fools no one with occasional faked bursts of energy.
If people think he is struggling now, imagine what he will be like in five years.
Gaffes have been excruciating
And the idea of Kamala Harris taking over and becoming President is too awful to contemplate.
She is even worse than him. The Democrats seem to know this. In Biden’s video this week, announcing he was standing, Harris appears but does not speak.
It is assumed she is on the ticket but no one has made it clear.
Harris’s approval ratings are even worse than his — more than 54 per cent of Americans think of her unfavourably, according to a recent poll by Real Clear Politics.
After only one year in the job even the BBC was running an article asking: “Kamala Harris . . . Where did it go wrong for her?”
Her gaffes over the past three years have been excruciating, not least her admission she hadn’t visited the US/Mexico border, despite being the lead on immigration issues.
So a man struggling in office will be up against a man who is unfit for office.
Not least because he did not even concede the most recent election until there was a riot in Washington.
Buckle up, America, this is going to be one heck of a ride.
It’s high time protesters felt strong arm of the law
THE head of the Met Police, Sir Mark Rowley, gave a very poor performance before Parliament this week.
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Questioned on why eco-loons like Extinction Rebellion keep being allowed to shut down our cities, he seemed to think it was all just peaceful protest.
More videos have emerged this week of frustrated motorists urging XR to move on, only to be told to go away and move on themselves by our so-called police officers.
Well, I’m sorry, but the moment you take your “peaceful protest” from the side of the road to the centre of it, from the pavement to the motorway junction, you aren’t doing a peaceful protest.
You are obstructing the public from going about their business. You are breaching the peace, and much more.
Of course they should allow peaceful protest. But disruption like this is different.
Why are the police repeatedly on the wrong side on this?
Get F.O in the office
WHAT exactly will it take to get our civil servants back to work?
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Two summers ago most of our Foreign Office seemed to be on holiday as the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal was going on. It was a disgraceful episode.
And now it has happened again. After fighting broke out in Sudan, most countries have been withdrawing their nationals from the African nation.
Yet despite the violence starting last week, it wasn’t until Tuesday this week that British nationals had a plane sent for them.
I wonder if this had anything to do with the fact that in the weeks running up to the Sudan crisis, 60 per cent of desks at the Foreign Office were empty?
It seems that more than half of the necessary officials were still working from home as the fighting started.
How is this still possible? I know our civil servants like to turn up to the office in great numbers only if they are striking.
But this is madness. Everyone should be at their desk. At the Foreign Office, in particular.
Covid is over. It’s done. The excuse doesn’t wash any more.
If you’re still pretending to be so scared of Covid that you can’t go to Whitehall then you should get another job.
There are Brits in Sudan who needed help. As there were people in Afghanistan in 2021.
Honestly. Sod these civil servants sunning themselves in the garden while the world goes up in flames.
I loved Jerry
THERE aren’t many people who you can say actually revolutionised TV, but Jerry Springer was one of them.
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Love him or hate him – and I loved him – he transformed daytime talk shows for ever.
Suddenly they were a cross-over between counselling and a boxing match. It wasn’t to everyone’s taste, but Jerry always showed that whatever the exploitation some people accused him of, his heart was in the right place.
Abbey guest puzzle
I KNOW there’s limited space in Westminster Abbey, but some of the invites seem rum to me.
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The fact that Sinn Fein leader Michelle O’Neill has been invited has raised eyebrows. As has the fact she has accepted. But it has been explained as part of a process to build trust and peace in these islands.
It would have sat a bit better if Lady Pamela Hicks, bridesmaid to the Queen, and daughter of Lord Mountbatten (who was murdered by the IRA in 1979), had been a guest.
But what is the excuse for having Han Zheng on the list? Mr Han helped snuff out freedom and democracy in Hong Kong on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party.
I wouldn’t have him in the country, let alone in the Abbey.
Speaking of the Coronation, is Prince Harry going to speak to anyone at the Abbey?
Apart from Meghan boycotting the ceremony, the Sussexes have announced that Harry will return to California immediately after the ceremony.
It’s possible Harry knows he isn’t wanted after all the ransom notes he has handed his family of late.
Or perhaps there’s DIY work to do at the house in California, or another garden sprinkler system in urgent need of being set up.
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