President Joe Biden’s brain has been dissected and found wanting. Million-dollar fundraisers are trying to talk big Democrat donors off the ledge. Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman’s latest column is headlined “Please, Mr President, Do the Right Thing”. James Carville, veteran of Democratic presidential campaigns, says the jig is up. Biden has taken to portraying himself as an outsider fighting off the elites.

Donald Trump has gone uncharacteristically silent. Next week the convicted felon will be proclaimed GOP presidential nominee at the Republican national convention co-chaired by his daughter-in-law. Meanwhile, the old TV showman builds the suspense, keeping his vice president running mate a secret since his last actual vice president Mike Pence had to be bundled out of the Capitol while Trump’s baying mob set out to hang him from the handy gallows.

The more likely reason is because he is waiting to see if his new opponent is a woman. That would change everything. The smart move, say some Democrats, is for the party to hold steady until he has revealed his hand.

Either way it would take an uncommonly courageous woman to take the Democrat nominee’s baton. One of the most prominent names floated was the strikingly successful Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer. A doll resembling her hanging from a noose was carried by a man among the swastikas and........

© The Irish Times