Last Saturday was a typically glorious autumn day in New York — refreshingly chilly under a bright, clear blue sky.
‘We’re going for a brisk walk through Central Park,’ I informed a dear friend and native New Yorker.
‘Take off your watches,’ she shot back, ‘tell Susan [my wife] not to wear any jewellery and don’t carry cash. There are muggers everywhere.’
These warnings were standard when I moved to New York from California in late 1970s. The city was known as the American crime capital. New York was made a safe place by American standards over the years thanks to a number of powerful mayors, including Rudy Giuliani. It’s not so.
Once again, the Big Apple has fallen into decline. London is more scarred by the pandemic that New York City. Even in areas that are wealthy, there is evidence of dereliction and decay everywhere.
We passed row after row of closed retail stores as we headed towards the park from midtown Manhattan. At street corners, homeless sleep in sleeping bags. There is a feeling of fear and menace because panhandlers are returning (or as Americans call them, beggars).
President Joe Biden has had nothing to say about his country’s growing crisis, hampered not just by the fact that he doesn’t seem to care but also because the worst crucibles of crime are all under Democratic control and the president is, of course, a Democrat
New York is not the only city in decline. Many other U.S. towns are also in a similar situation.
Some parts of Chicago have become war zones. At least 28 people were killed and at least 26 others were wounded in a single weekend last month.
The greater San Francisco region has been dubbed the “shoplifting capital” of America. With impunity, gangs took merchandise from luxury retailers and stole their stock.
The police can often be found nowhere. They may even turn up when the thieves have run. The current climate of anti-police created by Left-wing politicians, activists makes it difficult for them to swiftly and boldly act.
Urban America isn’t just fraying at the edges. It’s rotting in its core. America is not seeing the leader it needs in crisis situations.
President Joe Biden has had nothing to say about his country’s growing crisis, hampered not just by the fact that he doesn’t seem to care but also because the worst crucibles of crime are all under Democratic control and the president is, of course, a Democrat.
So it is no wonder that over 70 per cent of Americans think their country is heading in the wrong direction and Biden’s approval ratings are tanking. According to the latest USA Today poll, he has a 38 percent approval rating. About 50 per cent don’t think his health is good enough for him to perform his duties effectively.
He had a benign-appearing colon polyp removed under general anaesthesia last week. This procedure required a transfer to Vice President Kamala Harris. She became, for exactly 85 minutes, America’s first female acting president.
Last week, his benign-appearing gallstone was removed. The procedure resulted in Kamala Harris being made the Vice President. Harris became for just 85 minutes the first woman to serve as acting president of the United States.
The President’s spin doctors insist he’s in fine fettle and say that not only is he up to the job but that he plans to run for re-election in 2024, when he will be 82 (he’s already the oldest president ever).
Naturally, the White House will have to confirm that he is running again. Any hint of the contrary will immediately make him a weak president, and his power would be eroded inexorably. There are signs of senility everywhere and it is reasonable to believe they will get worse before 2024.
Biden is unlikely to be able to run for the presidency again. The American people have already made up their minds: over 60 per cent don’t think he should. It’s easy to see why.
We can dismiss as social media tittle-tattle — in the absence of any evidence to the contrary — stories of him having what has been euphemistically called a ‘bathroom incident’ when he recently had an audience with the Pope. Also, there is unsubstantiated gossip that he uses nappies.
You can forgive him also for pulling off 40 winks earlier this month during the Glasgow Climate Change Jamboree. Who wouldn’t nod off during the interminable and repetitive virtue-signalling of world leaders? Other gaffes, however, are more difficult to overlook.
In recent weeks he has mixed up Syria and Libya while trying to warn Russia against further meddling in the Middle East, referred twice to an American defence treaty with Taiwan which doesn’t exist, and signed a watershed military agreement with the prime minister of Australia whose name he couldn’t recall (Biden was reduced to calling him ‘the fella Down Under’).
We can dismiss as social media tittle-tattle — in the absence of any evidence to the contrary — stories of him having what has been euphemistically called a ‘bathroom incident’ when he recently had an audience with the Pope (pictured)
He also told a U.S. military base in the UK that he ‘keeps forgetting I’m President’ and struck a bizarre ‘jet-pack’ pose — raising two clenched fists and standing still for 15 seconds — on cable news when asked about inflation.
Reports that while trying to curb global emissions in Glasgow he emitted a major emission of his own by breaking wind while chatting to Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, are hardly of any great political significance — except that they add to the growing perception of him as a figure of fun among U.S. voters and undermine any pretensions he might have to leadership.
America’s Left-wing politicians, commentators, and activists are furious at any suggestion that senility might be setting in. This is dismissed as Right-wing gossip. Team Biden wouldn’t put in so much effort to shield their man from the public eye if that were all.
They limit his public appearances to a few scripted speeches, on the basis that they are reasonably confident he can read the autocue, though this week he managed to include a prompt — ‘end of quote’ — in a speech.
But the moment he’s done speaking he’s whisked away before anybody can ask him a question; and when he can’t avoid questions he is rambling, incoherent and often grumpy.
Hardly surprising for a man pushing 80 who’s had two brain aneurysms and sometimes gives the impression that he’s not sure where he is — or why.
In the circumstances, perhaps we should welcome Biden’s announcement in September that America was hanging up its boots as the world’s policeman in the wake of its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.
He also told a U.S. military base in the UK that he ‘keeps forgetting I’m President’ and struck a bizarre ‘jet-pack’ pose — raising two clenched fists and standing still for 15 seconds — on cable news when asked about inflation
The U.S. was done with ‘remaking’ nations, he said, a change of course that will have been welcomed by Beijing and Moscow but spells bad news for the people of Taiwan and Ukraine, who live in fear of invasion by their superpower neighbours.
The idea that Biden may be serious about announcing he would run again is shocking to the American key Democrats whom I met last week. Problem is, their Plan B has failed.
Biden has been viewed by party managers as only a one-term President. The plan was to seamlessly hand over the Democratic nomination in 2024 to Kamala Harris who, as a woman of Jamaican and Indian heritage, ticked several key boxes for today’s Democratic party.
This plan has been ruined by Harris, who is even less competent and popular than the president.
Biden’s approval ratings may be a terrible 38 per cent but hers are in the dirt at 28 per cent. They are not showing any sign of recovery. Even serious questions are met with an absurd cackle.
Her responsibility has been assigned to deal with illegal immigration at the Mexican border. She has not made any difference so far.
It is nearly impossible to comprehend the scale of this problem. More than 1.7 Million migrants tried to illegally enter America through Mexico in the twelve months ending September. This is three times more than the average for 2012-20.
Further 160,000 border officers took them into custody last October. The numbers show that it’s becoming easier for drug cartels and other criminal organizations to transport large quantities of heroin, opioids, and counterfeit pills over an overwhelmed border.
The Biden administration has abandoned Donald Trump’s wall. It doesn’t have anything to replace it. Biden seemed more open to migrants, which is why they flooded north.
The Biden administration has abandoned Donald Trump’s wall. However, it doesn’t have anything to replace the wall. Because Biden was more accepting, migrants flocked north.
Now the U.S. government is reduced to pleading with them not to come and Team Harris is currently complaining that she’s been sent on a fool’s errand, given an impossible task designed to discredit her.
At the top of America’s government, there is a massive briefing war. Race is an inevitable part of 21st-century America.
Harris’s supporters contrast the way she thinks she’s been abandoned with the way the president puts his arm around transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, who’s getting billions to spend as part of the Biden infrastructure programme while Harris struggles to hold back the tide on the border.
The fact that Buttigieg was a white man and Harris is a woman from color, Team Harris emphasizes this. Biden’s folk say that’s stuff and nonsense — she’s just not up to the job.
The Democrats are now suffering in elections because of a growing sense that they’ve lost control of both the border and the towns and cities — and that lawlessness is increasingly the order of the day.
There is no question in my mind that the Republicans will win back control of the House of Representatives in next November’s mid-term elections.
I’m pretty sure they will take back the Senate too. That will mark the end of Biden’s legislative programme, which is struggling in Congress as it is.
Virginia, which supported Biden in the last election, elected this month a Republican governor. New Jersey, which tends to be more reliably Democrat than Virginia, was almost the same.
Harris’s supporters contrast the way she thinks she’s been abandoned with the way the president puts his arm around transport secretary Pete Buttigieg, who’s getting billions to spend as part of the Biden infrastructure programme while Harris struggles to hold back the tide on the border
But, as always with America, it is what’s happening away from the big cities that is most telling. Columbia, South Carolina is an example. Biden won it by forty points last year. It elected this month a Republican mayor.
The pro-Democratic media — which in America means most of the media — is in a state of near panic. As I experienced firsthand, news media are saturated with commentsators expounding on how Biden and Democrats can stop the Republican resurgence.
‘What Democrats need to do to maintain power in 2022’ was a typical headline in the slavishly Democratic Washington Post. Of course, when you read the article it turned out that the writer hadn’t a clue. No one among the Democratic commentators knows.
Their worst nightmare is Donald J Trump. Biden was the one who defeated them in the White House. He teases them that he might run again. Maybe he’s serious.
Already having amassed a war fund of $100 million, he will increase that amount with an extravagant fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago on Palm Beach.
His supporters are already conducting polls in the five states he lost to Biden last year — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — and finding that he is leading in them all. For some states, including Wisconsin, he is leading by as much as double the number.
The Republicans currently hold an eight-point lead over the Democrats nationally, polling 46 per cent to their opponents’ 38 per cent.
I spoke to one of Trump’s closest confidants in Florida this week. ‘Trump hasn’t yet made up his mind to run again,’ he told me.
‘He’s in no rush. He will wait to see the outcome of next year’s mid-term elections. Next, see the results of polls. He doesn’t need to decide much before the end of 2023.’
Their worst nightmare is Donald J Trump. Biden, the man who lost White House, teases them about returning to politics. Maybe he’s serious
Trump’s close friends and colleagues confirmed the same. It is evident to me however that Trump would win the Republican nomination if he chose to do so again.
I doubt any major Republican figure would dare to challenge The Donald, such is his grip on the party’s base, even though many possible contenders wish he would just go away.
Meanwhile, as uncertainty reigns over Biden’s future and Harris is increasingly regarded as a busted flush, I very much doubt either of them would be given a clear run for the Democratic nomination.
Seven names were mentioned to me this week as likely contenders — and the presidential election is still three years way.
The Democratic primaries are likely to be bloody. It is more than a second term for Biden and his successor.
There is more at stake than that. It was supposed to be the Democratic decade. Now they’re wondering aloud if, post-2024, more years in the wilderness beckon.
Biden would be equally responsible if this happens.