US needs fresh political blood

Suggestions that Hillary Clinton, who would be 77, could be wheeled out to run for the Democratic Party nomination in the 2024 US presidential election are risible. They are no more plausible than the notion that Joe Biden, who will be 82, will get the party’s nod for a second term. Or the naive belief that at 78, Donald Trump, despite his role in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, could be a shoo-in for the Republicans.

Mr Biden’s incumbency is demonstrating what a poor choice Kamala Harris was for Vice-President. That is why US news reports claim “Mrs Clinton not only recognises her position as a potential frontrunner but also is setting up a process to help her decide whether or not to run for president again”.

She sees her chance in the fallout from what are expected to be big Democrat losses in November’s midterm elections. But if the losses are anything like those being anticipated, the party should be seeking new leadership, not a rerun of Mrs Clinton’s failed campaign against Mr Trump in 2016.

After she snatched defeat from the jaws of victory with her references to “deplorables”, recycling Mrs Clinton is not the answer.

At a time when America and the free world face major challenges from China and Russia, both major US parties need new leadership. Mr Trump has further damaged his prospects for 2024, flailing around and claiming without evidence that the 2020 election was stolen from him, despite US courts rejecting his sore loser’s dummy spit. Photographs of Mr Trump and Bill Clinton with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell reinforce perceptions that US politics needs to move on. The world’s greatest democracy of 350 million people deserves better.