American presidential politics is, at least for the outsider, a subject that has legitimate interest for them. This is because of the influence that this elected position has for world politics and also is also seen as somewhat of an entertainment.
Both the 1980 contest between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan and the 2016 one between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump were both US presidential elections that both elicited much interest outside of the USA and also provided entertainment. Outside observers of the 1980 contest looked with similar amused bewilderment at a contest between a sitting president and an actor who was mostly known by non-Americans for performing in the B-movie ‘Bedtime for Bonzo’. Similarly those not in the USA looked on with interest at the equally fascinating fight in 2016 between a property developer and TV celebrity, Donald Trump and a career politician and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton.
It looks as if the 2020 US Presidential election contest is going to be equally if more interesting than the two contests that I’ve mentioned above. With the presumptive nominee for the Democratic candidacy for president Joe Biden finally picking his Vice-Presidential running mate in the form of Kamala Harris, this years contest looks to be a highly interesting bun fight.
Joe Biden, is as many people have observed, not fit for the office of president. His dementia is now painfully obvious and from what I can see people are now not laughing so much at his many gaffes or at his political record, but are just saddened at the cruelty of putting him up for election. The Democrat party has acted with monstrous cynicism by putting Biden up as a candidate for President. The man is not up to the job, he is tainted in the eyes of many Americans by his association with the scandal riddled Obama administration, by his alleged association with segregationists in the past and by his failure to see Black Americans as individual citizens as we saw with his comment to an interviewer that ‘you ain’t Black’ if you don’t vote Democrat. The Democrat party is reduced to a policy of ‘hiding Biden’ from the public and from the necessary and inevitable hostile questioning that should be aimed at a person aiming for the US government’s top job. Surely a person who is running for President should, in the modern world, go through what is the equivalent of a job interview by the American people by being strongly questioned by the press about such issues as policy, character and outlook. Other Presidential candidates, including Trump, were subjected to a public examination but the Democrats don’t want Biden to face this sort of quizzing. That must surely tell the American people a lot about Joe Biden?
The choice of Kamala Harris as candidate for Vice President also promises to be a potential comedy of errors. It is an indication of how far left wing identity politics has come to dominate the Democrats that they pick someone solely on the grounds that a) they can be perceived or can claim to be Black or minority ethnic and b) is the possessor of a vagina. Are Americans going to vote for someone purely on those grounds? I hope not. I credit Americans, based on the many that I’ve met and talked to over the years, with more sense than to vote for a person based solely on sex and skin colour.
Kamala Harris comes over as a shallow individual and one who would do anything and say anything if it gained her power, money or success. There are a shedload of questions that have been and continue to be asked about her political record, her character and her personal life. Her record as a prosecutor in California is questionable to say the least with allegations circulating that she took a hard line with weed smokers whilst having been a weed smoker herself, her failure to disclose information that could have removed a prisoner from Death Row and that she used prisoners as cheap labour for the State of California and kept felons in gaol for longer than was legally necessary. Then there is Harris’s personal life and character. She once claimed that she listened to a particular rap artist years before he came to public prominence, a claim that is patently a lie and her association with former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown has become a highly combustible fuel for the meme merchants. It is bad enough that she had a relationship with Brown whilst he was still married to his wife, although that is a matter for her own conscience and her god if she has one, but there have been persistent allegations, none of which seem to have been adequately reputed, that Harris used her relationship with Brown to advance socially and politically. America is to a large extent a meritocracy where people who have advanced and risen by their own efforts are admired and respected, especially if they behave like decent people whilst doing so. If the allegations that Kamala Harris exchanged blow jobs for a job whilst Brown had political power, then it offends the idea that she gained her position on the grounds of pure merit or talent. This is not going to go down well in a society where personal achievement by honest means is considered a virtue.
It is very telling that the Democrat party and the left leaning US mainstream media is trying to divert attention away from Harris’s record as a prosecutor and her alleged character failings by trying to claim that every attack on Harris is down to ‘misogyny’ or ‘racism’. What utter rot. After all during the 2016 contest Donald Trump was continually attacked on grounds of record and character yet he didn’t run for the shelter of what have become empty lefty buzzwords, like how Harris is preparing to do.
Like many non-Americans, for reasons of international politics and because Donald Trump is one of the few US politicians who seem prepared to stand up for the West and for Western values, I would prefer to see a Trump presidency for the next four years. I fear that the Democrats would do to the world what they’ve done with some of the US states and cities that this party has controlled for decades, which is destroy them with damaging policies that will only be cheered on by the enemies of the USA and the free world.
I cannot deny that this year’s contest for President will be extremely interesting. It is interesting not just because the free world stands on the sort of political knife edge that I’ve not seen since the Cold War ended but also because of whom the Democrats have put up to challenge Trump, his challengers are both awful and comedic at the same time, something that would be a mild amusement if they were running for a more unimportant office but also frightening when they are running for the office of President of the United States.
Whilst I believe that it’s not necessary for those seeking high office to be squeaky clean in their records, we are after all, ‘all too human’ and all have failings, there are too many awkward questions to ask Biden and Harris that will probably fail to be properly answered by them. Yes Trump has been a philanderer in the past, he’s had failed businesses and made personal cock ups but his record has been on view for decades. The American people understood what Trump is and voted for him anyway.
Will the Americans vote for a Biden / Harris ticket where it’s obvious that the candidates are trying to obfuscate their past and their record rather than coming clean about it, I hope not. This is because I suspect that for all their lefty bluster during the campaign I believe that a Biden/Harris co-presidency, because that is what it would effectively be, would be a terribly authoritarian one, their own political records show that to be the case and I don’t think that such authoritarianism will be welcomed by the great many Americans who will end up suffering under it. If I was an American I’d be saying no to the Sleepy Joe and Willie Brown’s Hoe Show, even if I had to hold my nose and vote Trump in order to do so.
