ANDREW CARSWELL: Anyone but Joe Biden or Donald Trump for president? Careful what you wish for

It sounds like a sensible statement.

Certainly, for us outsiders looking upon the political circus manifesting in the United States, where one dangerous and delusional old man is taking on another dangerous and delusional old man to be the most powerful person on the planet, the statement elicits a collective head nod.

“Anyone but Biden or Trump”.

Of course.

It’s the new mantra of the so-called double haters. Or the single haters who despise Donald Trump but are quickly realising that President Joe Biden’s prospects of beating his Republican foe are as diminished as his capacity for clear articulation of basic sentences. That their best hope of defeating Trump is a late switch to someone who resembles the living and not the dead.

Anyone but Biden or Trump.

Certainly.

At least someone who is in charge of his own faculties, let alone the executive arm of government; someone who can remember what day it is, who doesn’t squat in invisible chairs and sniff the hair of young girls. Surely someone who isn’t a convicted felon, who had sex with a porn star while his wife was pregnant, and whose ability to stretch the truth to the point of it no longer resembling the truth, is unparalleled.

Anyone but Biden or Trump.

But are we sure?

Because as the likelihood grows of Joe Biden stepping aside in a bid to spare his country the indignity of having Trump back in the White House, the only genuine Democratic alternatives who could orchestrate such a bloodless coup at the death can best be described as either dangerous, disastrous, dim, or all of the above.

Been to California lately?

Hardly a glamorous utopia of social advancement and prosperity. Perhaps the most generous term you could afford the once-blessed jurisdiction is “failed state”. Makes even Victoria blush.

The leading candidate for the Biden putsch is Gavin Newsom; he of the slickest hair, whitest teeth and smoothest skin in the game, the genetic mutation of real estate agent and car salesman. A total spinner who just happens to be California’s Governor and allegedly the future of the Democratic Party. JFK on steroids or botox. Or both.

Newsom has presided over California’s darkest age.

The Golden State has the country’s highest unemployment rate and the highest inflation rate, in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis.

It has the highest rate of homelessness, with one in three homeless people in the US sleeping rough on California’s ever-dangerous streets. While the national rate has tumbled 10 per cent since 2007, the state’s homelessness rate has gone up a staggering 36 per cent.

California’s crime rate is running at 31 per cent above the national average. Robberies were up 10 per cent in 2022, retail theft is up 14 per cent since 2022 and burglaries in the city of Oakland, which stares loathsomely across the bay at San Francisco proper, are up 41 per cent in one year.

While it has the highest top tax rate in the country, and the third highest business tax rate, state and local government debt is running at 1.6 trillion. Yes, that is a ‘t’.

Its energy system is fundamentally broken and is prone to inflicting regular blackouts or brownouts on its residents. It ranks 35th in power grid reliability out of the 50 states. In terms of the cost of that unreliable energy, only Hawaii has higher residential electricity prices, so says Forbes magazine.

Water rationing is a thing.

The highest median house prices in the country. The highest level of migrants in the country. The highest cost of basic goods. And understandably, the highest rates of poverty in the country, coming in at 35 per cent higher than the national rate.

Is it any wonder why 2 million people have upped and fled the state since 2016?

Not even Newsom’s smile and ravishingly good looks were enough to keep them.

Anyone but Biden or Trump.

Hmmm, really?

Perhaps an easier option to trump Biden in order to trump Trump would be Vice President Kamala Harris, running second in the order of wannabe consensus alternatives.

If you can actually understand what she is saying.

You see, Harris’ inability to speak clearly is a vastly different handicap to Biden’s inability to speak clearly. She actually knows what she is saying. But she’s the only one. You can actually hear her words but then wish you hadn’t.

The great philosopher of our times, or someone who should be arrested for crimes against the English language?

You be the judge.

“We got to take this stuff seriously, as seriously as you are because you have been forced to have taken this seriously.’’

OK, maybe she had a bad day.

“It is time for us to do what we have been doing. And that time is every day.”

Sure, not her best work. Maybe she’s better on foreign policy.

“So Ukraine is a country in Europe. It exists next to another country called Russia. Russia is a bigger country. Russia is a powerful country. Russia decided to invade a smaller country called Ukraine. So, basically, that’s wrong.”

Anyone but Biden or Trump?

Careful.