Finally, then, worried Democratic Party leaders – and funders – appeared to have talked some sense into Joe Biden and got him to withdraw from the US presidential race before it became a legacy-destroying campaign.
The sitting US president has, even supporters will admit, not been looking like the man to lead the supposedly most powerful country on earth.
He has looked frail physically but, more importantly, seemingly losing his mental faculties, too.
This has played into the hands of his opponent Donald Trump, self-proclaimed martyr for democracy after the recent assassination attempt.
Even before the shooting, Trump was ahead of Biden in the polls and appears on course to reclaim the White House he lost in 2020.
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Biden has endorsed his deputy, Kamala Harris, to carry the Democrat flag and she certainly has considerable clout among hard-core Democrats.
But whether she can convince the fence-sitters that her way will be better than Trump’s Republican one is not certain at all.
Whether the US is prepared to elect a woman – and a black one at that – to the top job is also in doubt.
Harris and the Democrats have their work cut out for them in just trying to keep up with Trump.
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