Publicly mistaking his deputy Kamala Harris for rival, Donald Trump, and ally Volodymyr Zelensky for Russian President Putin, Joe Biden is an embarrassment to the US. So, last week, the cruelty of advanced age confronted insatiable ambition forced Biden 81, to drop out of race for a second term against former President Donald Trump 78 embroiled in many controversies, thirty-nine criminal charges, and felony conviction for buying a prostitute and trying to hide the facts. Thirty-seven years as Senator, eight as vice president and four as president, Biden should have gracefully retired.
Although Biden has been struggling on the public stage often physically falling or losing speech midway, he and those around him had tried to live in evident denial. But his performance against Trump in the first debate rematch couldn’t help as the speed and tenor of leaks asking him to withdraw became louder by each passing day. Many Democrats saw Biden donating the presidency to Trump, a man they despise, on self-aggrandizement, venting wild anger and no one knows what he will do should he get a second chance. Trump, who failed to build the “great, great Mexican wall”, he touted so much, will just be more of the same.
With Biden’s endorsement of Harris for the party ticket, even listening from a ‘shithole’ country to the coordinated drumbeats from almost all top democrats, it’s a given, she will be crowned when their convention meets in Chicago, August. A week ago, with Biden carrying the ticket, the electoral terrain looked bleak, as Trump surged even with his checkered record, now there is certainly a new dynamic that republicans must contend with.
At 59, Kamala is twenty years younger than a rambling, incoherent, visibly tired, weaker and diminished Trump on the receiving end of the age equation and whatever else goes with it like cognitive ability unlike when he shoved his masculinity over Hillary Clinton in 2016. While republicans will ratchet new rhetoric attack lines on Harris, possibly her race being African-Asian woman coming on the heels of Barak Obama, Trump will find difficulty to raise age or cognitive issues which had become his pet points against Biden. Her entry redefines many of the important campaign issues that Trump surrogates had prepared against a Biden.
Kamala’s swift consolidation of power mirrors that of Anita Among for Uganda’s Parliament Speaker when Jacob Oulanyah died in May 2022, that stymied NRM power brokers and players alike ahead of time although kept scantly secret. Among’s stratagem and plan, like that of Harris now, appeared to have strangled any hope of viable alternative candidates from emerging. Today, the Democrats have stalled the aspirations of some in the party for a speedy primary to select a new nominee to replace Biden.
But that near-universal endorsement also comes with high expectations as Democrats consider their investment in her as the last barrier with unrestrained second possibility of Trump who is seen to be a danger to American democracy which he tried to crush on 6th January 2020 after losing elections. Additionally, they view him as a threat to global engagements particularly NATO from which he threatens withdrawal, yet it is what defines American hegemonic military prowess.
Trump, an old man, and convicted felon, received his party’s endorsement last week as a hero following Biden’s bad debate performance. Trump also received godly touch after a failed assassination at a campaign rally. But if Americans could not elect Hillary Clinton, a White in 2016, the world waits to see, if in Kamala Harris, the beacon of dreams, ‘evident truth’ will triumph. But strange politics happened when the Tories installed Rishi Sunak, an Indian, as prime minister who the Brits promptly discarded early this month when they got an opportunity to avenge the curse.
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