Biden’s decision to withdraw from the 2024 US presidential election was welcome and it appears that VP Kamala Harris has enough delegates to ensure she becomes the Democratic nominee. She has already attracted $92 million in campaign funds but there are still doubts about whether she has the ability or the profile to beat Trump in November. The election will tell if Americans are yet ready to have a woman as president. She’s well qualified and on paper, a far better candidate than Trump who is easily the most insane person ever to have occupied the White House.
Harris hasn’t chosen a running mate so far but there is some momentum building up around Pete Buttigieg, Transport secretary in Biden’s administration, a former mayor of South Bend, Indiana and in 2020, Iowa’s candidate for POTUS. He’s gay, in a same sex marriage, has two kids, is a former Rhodes scholar (like Clinton), speaks eight languages and served as an intelligence officer in the military in Afghanistan.
He’s a formidable intellect, debater, and someone I mentioned as a potential future POTUS on this blog in December.
However, it’s still Trump’s election to lose.
Nobody should be in any doubt that if the mad, orange gibbon wins there will be deep and lasting changes to the way the US is governed. To get a glimpse of what is at stake and who is behind it all, you could do worse than read this longish article in The New Yorker: Inside the Trump plan for 2025.
He has a lot of very rich backers financing a network of right and far-right groups working towards getting him back into power with most of the restraints of government removed. This includes placing many more political appointees in key positions and institutions and turning the Department of Justice into “an instrument of The White House.“ I don't believe for one second he understands what they are planning but he doesn't care as long as he wins. He is just a sock puppet.
In April the US Supreme Court ruled that presidents have immunity for 'official acts.' This was an attempt to offer some retrospective protection to Trump. The ruling was made on a 6-3 vote which went along party lines, removing any doubt that the American justice system is now hopelessly political.
A lot of people, including Republicans, are worried what this might mean. Biden called the ruling "a dangerous precedent."
In my opinion, while important it doesn’t really matter that much. It’s pretty clear that after four years of trying, including by impeachment, his political opponents have barely laid a glove on him for what are clearly crimes against the state including treason and insurrection.
If his sworn enemies couldn’t do it despite massive efforts, don’t expect his friends and allies to hold him accountable for anything. All the charges for inciting riots on 6 Jan 2021 and taking hundreds of classified documents for who knows what purpose will be dropped as soon as he is sworn in.
Can anyone imagine Republican senators or a Republican DoJ bringing proceedings against Trump regardless of what he’s accused of or even what laws he has clearly broken - up to and including murder? And even if that were to happen, the SCOTUS, stacked 6-3 in his favour, would find a way to exonerate him. Trump will ipso facto have immunity without needing any help from the Supreme Court.
He will have the same power as a medieval monarch to do whatever he likes. That would be ironic given the War of Independence was fought to free the then-British colony from the same thing.
At some point, democrats from both sides of the aisle will have to question the American education system that has produced perhaps 70 million citizens who can't see that Trump is not just a con-man but also an idiot with the intelligence of a ten-year-old. They have already had the example of what another four Trump years in the White House means - chaos, gibbering incoherence, hiring and firing of staff, lies, corruption, and above all criminality, but are still willing to vote for him. They have no excuses.
He was bad enough between 2016 and 2020 when he was merely 70 years old at the outset. Now he's 78 and even more senile.
If you met Donald Trump in a pub you would immediately recognise him as a fool and a braggard. If you interviewed him for a job it would be apparent pretty quickly he was incapable of doing anything important because he is a fantasist who doesn't know his a**e from his elbow about anything although he thinks he's an expert at everything. This would be a dangerous combination for any role, let alone leader of the free world.
Between now and November the news agenda is going to be full of the US election so get used to it. In Europe, we ought to pray Harris wins but prepare for Trump to come out on top.
The SS Brexit is still moored to Europe
Lord Frost has his regular piece in The Telegraph warning that: The Tories and Reform need to expose Labour’s blatant Brexit backsliding
Note, he brackets The Tories and Reform as one, which I assume is what he would like to see. If you didn't already guess, the article is about Labour's plan to mirror future EU product regulation to protect our exporters from unnecessary extra regulation and cost. This is what he calls "backsliding."
This is what Frost says about it:
"A second straw in the wind is the Product Safety Bill slipped into the King’s Speech this week. The briefing says this will give us the “sovereign choice to mirror or diverge’’ from EU rules. But, as I said above, when they use the word “sovereign”, count your spoons.
"We don’t need new legislation to diverge. We only need it if we intend to mirror. The Government goes on to note that the Bill will have “specific powers to make changes to GB legislation to manage divergence” between GB and Northern Ireland – that is, once again, to mirror EU law. Take all this together, and you have what we always feared: an intention to use Northern Ireland as a Trojan Horse to force us to follow EU legislation. This is the Chequers deal once again by the back door."
In Frostworld, diverging in product standards from the EU, our largest overseas market, isn't a matter of trade at all, it's a virility test to show we can do something no matter how damaging it might be to future prosperity.
He's right to be concerned. The good ship Brexit remains moored where it always will be, in Europe and it isn't going anywhere, ever.
