Friday 19 July 2024

Biden should step down to save America from Trump

Time is running out.  Joe Biden should make the decision to step down as the Democratic candidate this weekend. He has contracted COVID-19 and looked even more frail than usual boarding Air Force One the other day, and that says a lot considering his recent dire performances. He is certainly under pressure and the urgency is growing. The latest polls show he is behind Trump both nationally and in the seven swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Biden won all seven in 2020. 

The US electoral system allows candidates to stack up votes in states that usually vote for one party or the other but it doesn’t help win the electoral college that paves the way to the White House. Like Hilary Clinton in 2016, Biden could win the popular vote and lose the presidency.

We may think Trump is a psychopath and a moron but his MAGA supporters have now transformed the Republican Party, the Grand Old Party (GOP), into a dangerous cult that owes allegiance only to Trump himself. 

A new Political Action Committee has been launched to try and raise awareness that Trump is in fact a mentally ill narcissist:

Ever since he came to prominence, I don't believe I have ever heard Trump say a single thing that sounded statesmanlike, profound, incisive or even half-sensible. Often he isn’t rational or understandable. His speeches are rambling and incoherent and getting worse. He should be receiving psychiatric help and shouldn’t be anywhere near the White House, but millions of Americans are gripped by something totally inexplicable.

Trump and his supporters claim he was saved from assassination by an angel or even God and that he is saving democracy for the citizens of America - and Republicans believe him!  It's hard to accept that of all the people in the USA, God would choose to save him, a man with so many flaws they're virtually impossible to count.

Biden should appreciate that if he doesn’t win in November, the chances are that American democracy and the rule of law won’t survive, with all that implies for global stability, and he will be held responsible. Nobody is going to thank him for that. He will go down in history as the man who let a madman back into power, knowing how crazy he was.  Who would want that on their conscience?

Democratic donors are withholding funds because they don’t think Biden is capable of winning. The pressure on him to step aside will soon be irresistible.

Even if he does step down and is replaced by his VP Kamala Harris or someone else like Gavin Newsom the governor of California, there isn’t a guarantee they will win, but at least they might have a chance. Trump will overnight be cast as the doddery old man, incapable of governing for four years when he'll be 82 at the end.

Harris is a youthful 60, and Newsom is 57. She is a lawyer from California and served as California Attorney General from 2011 to 2017.   They are both smart and either of them (or indeed anybody else apart from Biden) should easily demolish Trump in a head-to-head debate.

It's not even that difficult to defend what the Dems have done with the economy over the last four years compared to what Trump achieved from 2016 to 2020.

I see the former head of the FBI James Comer was on Newsnight last night suggesting that Trump's running mate JD Vance is smart and will change his mind on Ukraine when he begins to receive security briefings about the threat that Russia poses to world peace.  Maybe he will, bit that supposes Vance will be able to prevail over Trump and persuade him to keep up military aid to Ukraine and support for NATO.

We know what happened to his first VP Mike Pence in 2021 during the Capitol riots. Trump's chief of staff told him the rioters were erecting a gallows on which to hang Pence once they found him and Trump's reply was: "He deserves it."

I don't doubt he meant it too. Vance should look out. 

The King's speech 2024

One of the welcome announcements in the King's speech this week was about new legislation making it easier for government ministers to copy new EU regulations into UK law.

This isn’t necessarily going to make trade any easier unless there is some way for the EU to legally enforce standards, but it will at least help to prevent Britain from diverging passively too far from the EU. This will make it easier for businesses that won't need to have double regulation and easier to rejoin the SM at a later date.

In the briefing note that accompanied the King's speech, this new legislation is called the Product Safety and Metrology Bill (pages 37-38).  It says:

"The majority of the UK’s product safety and metrology framework is derived from EU law developed over the past four decades. As technology and regulation continues to develop, we need new powers to address current or future threats and hazards, and ensure a continued supply of safe goods on our market and so this Bill will enable us to make the sovereign choice to mirror or diverge from updated EU rules, so that we can maintain high product safety while supporting businesses and economic growth."

It goes on to say the new legislation will ensure, "that the law can be updated to recognise new or updated EU product regulations, including the CE marking, where appropriate to prevent additional costs for businesses and provide regulatory stability. This legislation will also ensure the UK can end recognition of EU product regulations, where it is in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers."

I assume this last sentence is a sop to Eurosceptics in the press since I can't really imagine where or why it would ever be in the interests of UK firms or consumers to end recognition of EU product regulations. This is the precise opposite of everything that the Tories were trying to achieve, in scrapping every last EU law on the statute book. All that will stop and we will now begin adding EU regulations to British law.

It brings to an end the fiction that Britain was ever going to be able to develop its own regulations in opposition to the EU and will free up a lot of civil service time to focus on stuff that really matters.
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