Kamala Harris and Ron DeSantis are responsible for a senile man’s finger on the US nuclear button

I can’t even say, I think, how old I am. Anyway, I can’t get the number. It doesn’t work… it won’t register with me.’

Oh dear. It wasn’t the most reassuring answer President Joe Biden could have given when asked last week about pretty much the only issue Americans are talking about in the wake of his re-election announcement: his age.

Biden, already the oldest president in US history, is now clearly senile. At press conferences, reporters’ questions are printed for him on cue cards — though even then he struggles to provide cohesive answers.

According to White House aides, it is difficult to schedule public or private events with the president “in the mornings, evenings or weekends.”

If this is 80-year-old Biden, what the heck would he look like at the end of a second term, at 86?

How terrifying to the world that this is the man whose withered finger is on the nuclear button and who supposedly commands the most terrifying military machine ever built.

Let’s hope the next global crisis doesn’t happen in the morning, evening or weekend.

Meanwhile, as the latest poll put him 30 points ahead of his nearest rival in the Republican race to become Biden’s opponent, Donald Trump has been busy.

Not making plans to face the threat from China or fight the drug and human trafficking cartels that are wreaking havoc on the US border with Mexico.

Instead, the former president fought his accuser in a New York rape case, furious over a “witch hunt” and saying his accuser used “the old ‘Monica Lewinsky’ stuff” — a reference to the then-White House blue dress. intern who had an incriminating stain with Bill Clinton’s DNA.

It is astonishing that in a country of over 330 million people, with brilliant leaders in so many fields: governors, mayors, senators, entrepreneurs and billionaires, celebrities and sports heroes… the 2024 presidential election looks like a rematch between Biden and Trump . How did we get here?

Much of the answer lies in the spectacular political belly flops of the two people who are expected to be the more palatable alternatives: Vice President Kamala Harris and, on the Republican side, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

During his first quiet presidential campaign, Biden repeatedly described himself as a “bridge” to the next generation. Aware at the time of concerns about his age and mental capacity, he suggested he be a one-term president — a temporary salve after the drama of the Trump years.

It was clear that he was hinting that his vice president would then take over the reins. As a black woman, Harris was indeed one of Biden’s main selling points for identity-obsessed party activists.

Unfortunately, Harris’s comically clumsy performance – after being given the two important policy jobs of immigration and voting rights – thwarted that plan. On immigration, she ridiculously denied that a crisis existed, made a vain attempt to deflect blame, and bizarrely refused to visit the border on the grounds that she hadn’t “been to Europe” either.

But the real stake at the heart of her reputation was her alarming (and growing) tendency to spew gibberish in public.

For example, this is an unedited quote from a speech the day she and Biden announced they were running for re-election.

“I think it’s really important for us to see at any given moment, especially this moment, the moment in time where we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize that. Understanding where we stand in history and in the moment, not only in relation to the past but also to the future.’

Perhaps it’s no wonder Biden decided to extend his “bridge” to the next generation for another four years, and keep going.

As for his Republican rivals, many hoped that Ron DeSantis would turn his successful tenure as governor of Florida into a credible pitch for “Trumpism without Trump” — Trump’s policy agenda and fighting spirit (which are still widely popular) without all the chaos and the scandal.

After last year’s midterm elections, in which disappointing results for Republicans were attributed to Trump’s support for underperforming candidates, DeSantis seemed the inevitable standard-bearer of Trump’s “America First” populism.

However, since taking the national stage, it has been one stumble after another for DeSantis.

He was for and against the war in Ukraine; for and against Trump on his New York criminal charges; he has moved from a mainstream to a minority stance on abortion, and is involved in a minor feud with Disney.

Still, you might think, how is it possible that after everything — the denial of the 2020 election results, the Capitol Hill riot, the lawsuits — Trump is the nominee with a commanding lead?

The explanation is that Trump wins because of those things, not in spite of them.

The importance of the “stolen election narrative” in grassroots Republican thinking cannot be overemphasized.

Of course, the 2020 presidential election has not been stolen. As I argued at the time, there were certainly serious issues with the election, for example, the tech companies censoring evidence of the Biden family’s shady foreign business dealings. And in key “battlefield” states, Democrats made last-minute changes to voting procedures that were, arguably, inconsistent with constitutional rules and designed for partisan benefits.

But the time to challenge everything that was before the election, not after. Claims of large-scale fraud were tested and rejected in the courts, which is why I never gave them the time of day.

Nevertheless, most Republicans sincerely believe that Trump was duped, and that is a major factor in his continued support.

Moreover, the media’s incessant focus on Trump’s “legal woes” inadvertently helps him, because the contempt of the media and the ruling establishment is Trump’s political life force.

The fact is that his core, the proletariat of the working class, see him as their champion: the only thing standing between them and the hated coastal elites who would send their jobs to China, their gas stoves and petrol cars to the scrap heap and their children. to shake up indoctrination camps.

Trump’s “legal problems” are not a distraction from his campaign, they are his campaign.

All this could be a painful prospect for British observers.

It may not even be the election choice most Americans want. But it looks like it’s the choice Americans will get.