Allow me to introduce myself. I am a disaffected registered Democrat. I voted for Joe Biden on the assumption that he was a boring, moderate placeholder who could steady the national ship after the nauseous high seas of the Trump presidency. Two years on, I’m still sick to my stomach. Biden is captive to a radical left that has made the party I joined at 18 unrecognisable. It is now intolerant, racially obsessed, fiscally incontinent, eager to encourage dependency on the state and politically high-handed. But I cannot stick putting 2016’s crude, anti-democratic boor back in the White House. So the prospect of facing down a none-of-the-above contest in 2024 – a Trump vs Biden redo, much less Trump vs that idiot Kamala Harris – makes me suicidal. I’ve never voted Republican in my life. But if you were to secure the nomination (admittedly dependent on whom you ran against), I could be tempted to defect for the first time in nearly 50 years.
They say you’re insufficiently ‘charismatic’. But have you seen the Democratic competition? C’mon man, what passes for eloquence from our current occupant of the White House-cum-care home is making the same lame statement, word for word, three times in a row (for instance, on Putin’s threatened use of nuclear weapons: ‘Don’t. Don’t. Don’t.’). Could this guy conceivably pass for charismatic? Is Kamala charismatic? Apoplectic loathing for the vice-president is about the only thing that unites the whole country right now. Is meek softy Mayor Pete charismatic? Or Gavin Newsom, the slick, vain huckster who has turned the Golden State into the world’s largest open-air pit latrine? Granted, the 2016 primary candidate, Amy Klobuchar, while hardly magnetic, is at least likeable. Yet she rarely appears in journalists’ speculative lists of credible alternatives to Biden. Moreover, I reject the characterisation of Trump as charismatic. People flock to him because he’s an arrogant bully, not because he’s so charming. Sure, Ron, you’re a bit stodgy, and not the most rousing speaker in the world, but in comparison with the rest of this lot, you’re Abraham Lincoln. Jesus, while we wish her the best, the UK’s new PM won the Tory leadership contest with the charisma of a cardboard box.
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