Joe Biden, Democrats on track to hand Donald Trump a second term
Even five or six years ago you could have had long odds from bookmakers about Donald Trump becoming President of the United States, or Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister of Great Britain. They stood apart from the long-time leaders of their respective political parties.
They began dismantling the old order and ushered in their mates and those who liked their conservative vision. At the same time the parties opposed to them were riven with personal divisions and produced poor leadership.
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Trump has no regard for rules and precedents. He proudly brandishes the letter he sent to the Ukrainian President asking for any dirt on Joe Biden or his son. In his view the end most certainly justifies the means.
The complete failure of the Democrats to renew their leadership is astounding. No matter how much good she may have done in the past, octogenarians such as Nancy Pelosi look anachronistic in the space they occupy. Surely generational change is possible. If there are no Democrats capable of filling her shoes then what has the Democratic Party been doing for the last decade or two. In the richest nation on earth, which is still by far the most powerful, it beggars the imagination to see Joe Biden as the best the Democrats can do to field a candidate against Trump. The Democrats are in danger of being seen as the party which gifted Trump a second term. It may have seemed at times that it wold be nothing more than a walk in the park to prevent a second term for him, but Trump’s appeal to former Democrat working-class Americans, while nothing has been delivered and surely everyone knows that the rust belt industries will never rise again, still prefer the upbeat of his empty promises.
Under this weird system of primaries, the next year will see a vicious bunfight for the position of the Democratic nominee to take on the President.
Every one of the Democrats who run will spend a full year bucketing every other Democrat while the Republicans will not be able to keep the smiles off their faces. While Biden is the early frontrunner, I can’t imagine that sufficient numbers of Democrats at their convention will be overcome with a “Jonestown” like desire to commit political suicide by supporting him. I can’t imagine a set of circumstances developing which would produce a Biden victory. At the last federal election, Australians were never going to vote to make Bill Shorten Prime Minister. Labor persisted with him and the “unlosable” election was lost. Plenty of senior Labor people including myself, shirked our duty to the party. Like the 600, we rode headlong into the valley of political death. It wasn’t a shock to me and while it may have achieved little or nothing, I should have spoken out.
While British Labour persists with Jeremy Corbyn, Boris Johnson has a licence to make mistakes for he knows that Brits will never make Corbyn Prime Minister. A rank-and-file takeover by the Left a few years ago gave Corbyn his dream run.
All that has been achieved by this is a confirmation of the views of every right-wing Labor member that Corbyn is unelectable. While no one can see Corbyn as a Prime Minister the situation in Australia with our Opposition Leader is vastly different. Anthony Albanese is electable, although Scott Morrison will have to make an uncharacteristic big-time blunder or the economy would have to endure a major hiccup to give Albanese his chance.
Sometimes the electoral gods may desert you for a time but history shows us that they do return.
Political party membership in Australia remains critically low. Apart from the odd bout of branch stacking on either side of politics, Australians continue to show that they are not joiners. Our service clubs are languishing, too, as Australians remain comfortable sitting at home and communicating by their fingers typing on their computers or phones.
Our written language is being preserved, apart from the liberties taken with it by too many in the modern era, but our spoken language is not nurtured or valued nearly enough. Getting school children involved in debating would be a big step forward.