Elections--Here And Abroad

Starting with the United States' presidential election, have Biden and Harris switched brains?

• Joe Biden, 81, describes himself as a black woman during radio interview--Daily Mail. Actually, it was a bit more than that:

    The gaffe-prone president, 81, stumbled over his words during Thursday's interview with Philadelphia's WURD, seemingly mixing himself up with his Vice President Kamala Harris.

    'By the way, I'm proud to be, as I said, the first vice president, first black woman... to serve with a black president. Proud to be involved of the first black woman on the Supreme Court. There's so much that we can do because, look... we're the United States of America.' 

• Giddy Kamala Harris calls Biden 'vice president' at July 4 event, as growing calls for him to step down stoke rumors she'll be 2024 nominee--Daily Mail
  

More seriously, though, Biden gave a 22-minute interview with ABC anchor (and former Democrat strategist) George Stephanopoulos which most charitably has been described as "rambling". Paula Bolyard at PJ Media lists some of the worst questions and answers in the interview, including:

    "Are you the same man today as when you took office three years ago?" [Stephanopoulas] asked.

    "I am [the same] in terms of success," Biden claimed in that creepy whisper he trots out when he—well, I don't know why he does that. He ticked off his "peace plan for the Middle East" and the expansion of NATO. "I took on Big Pharma. I beat them." He took credit for the U.S. inventing "that little chip, the fingerchip" (not a typo... listen closely) as he pointed to his pinky finger.

* * * 

    Asked if he's had a full neurological exam since the debate, Biden retorted, "I get a full neurological test every day with me." It was clearly a scripted line and he repeated it twice more in the interview.

    "Have you had the specific cognitive tests?"

    "No. No one said I had to," Biden said.

    He tried to offer proof of his wellness by ticking off world leaders he's spoken to recently but stumbled over names and events. 

    Shockingly, Stephanopoulos continued to demand answers about Biden's cognitive condition. 

    "Watch me. There's a lot of time left in this campaign," said the president.

    "George, I'm the guy who put NATO together," he lied. "I'm the guy that shut Putin down," he lied again.

    "I've already done it," he added. "I mean… I just… anyway… I don't want to take too much credit. I wouldn't be running if I didn't think I [unintelligible]." After a long pause, he began again, "Look… " then trailed off. 

Bolyard hypothesizes that Stephanopoulos' role was to finish off Biden. However, it must be remembered that other leading Democrats had given Biden a 2-week "grace period" to try and reverse falling polls following the debate last week and reassure top donors; so this interview may have been intended as this opportunity. As the New York Post editorial board summed up the interview:

    Rather than ask tough questions about President Biden’s mental deficiencies and the message it sends to our allies and enemies, [Stephanopoulos] begged in a dozen different ways:

    Do you really think you can beat Donald Trump?

But in the end, this is all political drama because:

• The Fix is In: Washington State Abolishes Residency Requirement for Voter Registration--Gateway Pundit.
• Rumble Video: Heritage Investigation Finds 10% Of Illegals Aliens Investigated Are Registered To Vote
•  Wisconsin Supreme Court overturns ruling that barred most ballot drop boxes--NBC News.
  

    Meanwhile, across the pond, "Britain wakes up to new government as Labour Party wins election in a landslide." Rishi Sunak, the Indian serving as prime minister while the conservative party was in power, has been replaced by Keir Starmer of the Labour Party. The article notes:

As election night rolled through the small hours, the scale of Labour’s win sharpened into focus. With the counts remaining in just two of the 650 constituencies represented in Parliament, Labour had secured 412 seats — six short of its highest-ever total. The Conservatives won just 121 seats, which would be the worst result in its almost 200-year history.

But, the story adds:

    Starmer has acknowledged that things will not be easy for Labour. “Now this wound, this lack of trust can only be healed by actions not words, I know that,” he said.

    The party inherits a stagnant economy, crumbling public services, rising child poverty and homelessness, and a National Health Service that, though taxpayer-funded and beloved, has become decrepit and dysfunctional.

    Meanwhile, prisons are about to overflow, and some city and regional governments are about to go bankrupt or have already done so. Several colleges also look likely to go bust.

    The party itself also has potential problems. Opinion polls and interviews suggested that many voters were motivated not by love for Labour but rather by a desire to punish the Conservatives for 14 years of scandals and policy missteps. It raises the prospect that Labour’s support — while wide — could be shallow and brittle, shattering just as easily as it came together.

The British public were fools. Starmer pretended to be a Briton--displaying the Union Jack, mouthing the appropriate words about reigning in the budget and restricting immigration--but the Labour party has always been a soft-communist party. Perhaps the election was to punish the Tories, but it will see the British public punished as Labour is now free to pursue what it will view as a socialist mandate. 

    Unlike in the United States where we are stuck with the Uniparty no matter what, the UK had a choice and could have gone with Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party. Farage, as you might remember, was quite the gadfly to the EU when he served in the European Parliament and was a key force behind Brexit. But while Farage won a seat in the UK's House of Commons in this election, his party only won 5 seats total.

    And in a look at the future of British politics, four Muslim candidates running under a pro-Gaza campaign won seats in Parliament as well.   

    Britain's Labour Party suffered significant election setbacks in areas with large Muslim populations on Friday amid discontent over its position on the war in Gaza, despite a landslide victory in the parliamentary vote.

    The party, which has long counted on the backing of Muslim and other minority groups, saw its vote fall on average by 10 points in seats where more than 10% of the population identify as Muslim.

    Finally, turning to France, "France: Left and Pro-Establishment Parties Unite to Keep Le Pen’s National Rally From Power." As I noted several days ago, the French election system has a second round of elections (sort of a run-off election) where a candidate to the National Assembly does not win an outright majority. The second round eliminates candidates that earned less than 12% of the popular vote, and then runs a second election for the remaining candidates. But, as feared, the far-left candidates are withdrawing from the race in the hope of uniting votes with the intention of keeping the National Rally from gaining an outright majority in the Assembly. 

    More than 200 candidates, ranging from Communist to pro-EU parties, have dropped out of the race for the second round of the vote. The move is expected to unite the vote behind candidates considered most likely to beat their National Rally rivals in individual constituencies.

    “More than 210 left-wing or Macronist candidates qualified for the run-off round of the legislative elections have already withdrawn in order to block the far right from winning a majority, according to a provisional count by AFP,” the state-run France24 TV channel reported Tuesday.

But even if the National Rally (NR) can't win a majority, it doesn't mean that the NR can't stymie Macron's leftist-Globalist agenda: "If the National Rally falls short of a majority and decides to join the opposition, this, too, could spell trouble for President Macron, who will have to contend with a large hostile bloc in the parliament." 

• See also, "Candidates in pivotal French legislative elections drop out in tactical move ahead of final vote"--CBS News.
  

    So why the strong opposition to NR by elites and their brown-shirt allies?

    The NR opposes Macron’s pro-EU policies that erode French sovereignty and transfer power to unelected Eurocrats in Brussels. The right-wing party is also opposed to the EU’s open borders policy that is causing a demographic shift in Europe as the continent is swarmed by illegal immigrants from Muslim-dominated North Africa and the Middle East.

    Electoral gains by the French right-wing party could have a spillover effect in neighbouring countries, EU political elites fear. “A potential victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in France’s snap legislative elections has sparked fears of a wider Euroscepticism wave across the bloc, compounding the far-right’s surge in the recent EU elections, the pro-EU news website Euractiv noted recently.

The second round of elections are Sunday.