If Biden wins, the US heads into a deeper decline — but if Trump wins, America burns
2024 is election year not only in the UK but also in the US.
They say every election is the most important election in America, but wow, this is going to be a big one.
At the moment Donald Trump still leads the polls among Republican primary voters.
Despite every effort to take him out, he is still hugely popular among the Republican base. They know he’s an SOB — but think that at least he’s their SOB.
On the other side Joe Biden totters along trying to eke out his first term.
The idea that the President will be able to run an energetic campaign of a kind that would exhaust someone half his age seems unlikely.
The idea that he will be able to see through another four year term seems almost impossible.
Yet there the two of them stand — Trump and Biden — both at the top of their parties.
Both have people nibbling away beneath them in their own ranks.
And both have the other side lamming into them.
But this will be the year of the unimaginable.
We know that because every scenario is unimaginable. It is almost impossible to imagine 2024 being another Trump v Biden race.
If it is, it could go either way.
Vengeful and nasty
Although Trump is the best “get out the vote” candidate his opponents could ever have, it is still possible he could win.
Especially if America slips into recession this year (which it keeps just avoiding).
Then the voters are very likely to think that “Biden-omics” just isn’t working for them.
If Biden does win, America will be headed for four years of serious decline on the world stage.
Even the President’s greatest defenders can’t say that he is genuinely in a fit state to oversee the multiple challenges coming on the world stage.
But if Trump wins, I seriously expect America to burn.
I was in Washington DC on election night 2020 and remember the whole town being boarded up in expectation of a Trump win.
With his opponents trashing the town.
Things started to get pretty ugly on the streets around the White House when Trump won Florida and re-election looked — falsely — within his grasp.
The radical left will literally burn down some of the inner cities.
But Trump himself would do more than enough flame-throwing from inside the Oval Office if he returns there.
He is vengeful and nasty these days — more vengeful and nasty than he ever has been before.
He wants to wreak hell on his enemies. And his enemies seem to be everyone outside (and sometimes inside) the Trump family and a tiny number of loyalists.
But what if either of these candidates doesn’t run? Then America is going to be in even more choppy waters.
Vice President Kamala Harris is supremely unpopular. But the Democrat party almost certainly can’t stop her from running for the top job if she wants it.
Gavin Newsom in California clearly wants the job but all that Republicans will have to do is to point to his crime-laden, excrement-covered cities and say that America should expect more of this if he gets to Washington.
Meantime, the Republican candidates under Trump will have to make up a lot of ground.
None of the other contenders are getting anywhere near the approval ratings they need in their own party.
How on Earth are they going to prove themselves on the national stage?
It’s a right non-royal mess. But a reminder that something is badly off in American politics.
Considering America is the most successful country in the world, filled with people who are innovative, successful and full of ideas, how is it possible that we have entered 2024 with a replay of Trump-Biden being the most likely outcome?
That’s a question not just for the parties, but for America as a whole.
DAVEY DAZE
IT’S no one’s fault if they haven’t heard of Sir Ed Davey.
He is the head of the Liberal Democrats, a small rump of a party that still has a few seats in the House of Commons.
But Sir Ed has been in the headlines in recent days because he was Post Office minister during the period that the Post Office Horizon scandal came to light.
Now it has emerged that wronged subpostmaster Alan Bates (played by Toby Jones in the ITV drama) asked the then minister for a meeting to discuss the scandal and was refused.
Such a meeting would have “no useful purpose” Bates was told.
Now Sir Ed claims he was “deeply misled” by Post Office heads and admits he should have done more to defend the hundreds of Post Office workers who were prosecuted on false charges.
I don’t know whether that claim will satisfy the hundreds of families whose lives were ruined.
But it is a good reminder of why the Liberal Democrats should never be allowed anywhere near government.
Invertebrate at worst. Incapable at best.
HAMAS HATERS
IT was a bad week for terrorist group Hamas.
As well as being pummeled in Gaza, the group this week also saw their No2, who helped plan the October 7 massacre, taken out in an explosion in Beirut, Lebanon.
The terror group condemned the killing of Saleh al Arouri, which is thought to have been carried out by the Israelis.
Hamas called it a “cowardly assassination”.
Interesting coming from a group that thinks that gang-raping women and murdering children counts as “heroic resistance”.
MEAT ME IN THE MIDDLE
I WAS thrilled to read this week that vegan fast-food meals turn out to be at least as bad for you as the normal meaty varieties.
A study published in the journal Nutrition has found that people who eat vegan food seem to think they are doing a wondrous amount of good for their bodies.
Perhaps it is one of the reasons why vegans often have a slightly superior air about them.
As though they are part of an elect group. Unlike us terrible carnivores.
I can’t cook, so I don’t have the misery of people telling me that they are vegan and therefore require a separate meal to be cooked for them when they come over.
But I do notice among friends that such demands are very much a one-way thing.
I have yet to hear of a meat-eater going to a vegan or vegetarian house and insisting they are given a meat option by their hosts.
But it turns out that it doesn’t make very much difference anyway.
You can eat a whole pile of hamburgers. Or you can eat a plant-based burger. The results in terms of calories will be just the same.
I don’t know why, but I find that a rather comforting fact. Bring on the burgers.
RICKY’S NOT SO SPECIAL
I WAS looking forward to watching Ricky Gervais’s new Netflix comedy special Armageddon.
Not least because there had been a woke backlash against it.
People love being offended these days.
It’s almost like a competition where the person who feels the most offence “wins”.
So I was sorry to find myself frankly bored by the special.
Gervais is a hugely talented comedian who can roam over almost anything and make it funny.
His Golden Globes opener in 2020 was probably the best comedy opener of any bloated awards show ever.
But there was something lazy about the new show. Not least the way in which he immediately starts making jokes about disabled children.
In my view absolutely nothing should be off limits in comedy. And the truth is that the closer to the line of unacceptable something is, the funnier it tends to be. I hate the scolds who don’t get this.
Still, you have to earn the right to make some of these jokes.
And you have to say something insightful or original to make the audience look at things in a way they hadn’t seen things before.
Anyone can make “cripple” jokes, and Gervais is well within his rights to do so.
But the rest of us are within our rights to say “We’re not offended, actually. We’re just a little bit bored.”
PERHAPS we humans aren’t done for just yet.
Research from Oxford university says our brains still learn new information better than robots and AI.
And machines are able to suffer from “catastrophic interference”.
But looking at UK politics in recent years, I can’t help thinking that certain human – especially political – brains are capable of some pretty “catastrophic interference” themselves.