California Dreaming

 by Stoker

At last, some good news for California.  The Golden State, which for so long seemed the ultimate in seaside, wealthy, laidback living, has been through some bad times recently.  Increasing and painful poverty, failing services, devastating fires in the beautiful Pacific-side suburbs, the flight of some of the great tech companies and their enormously wealthy employees to Texas and the south.  But finally good news to report:  Kamala Harris will not be running for Governor in the gubernatorial election in November 2026.

Ms Harris, the unsuccessful Democrat candidate at the 2024 presidential election, is of course a child of the state and achieved political progress and fame there, if not great popularity. She had been rumoured, by those usual “close friends” to be gearing up for a run for a term as Governor-boss in Sacramento (the rather downbeat state capital).  With a population of some 40m people California is the size of a number of sovereign states, and richer than many, so it’s a serious job.  The state has tended politically to be Democrat-leaning, somewhat surprisingly maybe given that it is one of the richest in the Union.  Though we must not forget that Ronald Reagan honed his political crafts there, firstly as a Democrat president of the Screen Actors Guild, and then for eight years as a highly successful Republican state governor.

The present Governor is Gavin Newsom, Democrat, who moved hastily into the top job from being a fairly disastrous mayor of San Francisco.  He was a left-winger in Democrat terms in SF, though now slowly moving centrist, and seems to have become much more politically adept since he won the big job.  He too is rumoured to be contemplating a run for the presidency in 2028, though perhaps unlikely to succeed given his record so far, and the fact that he is a rich white male, somewhat out of fashion amongst Democrats currently. 

But it’s not all good news.  Ms Harris is said, by those close friends again, to be gearing up for a run at the presidency too. After her weak attempt a year ago that might seem surprising, but she was given a very poor hand to play by the sudden exit of Joe Biden from the race in late July 2024.  That left very little time for her to develop her platform, her originality, and to build a base with the electorate.  Though on her record as Joe’s Veep, that might actually have always proven pretty difficult.  She managed from day one in the job to be consistently unpopular and failed to make any real record of success, with Joe taking any credit that was around and blaming Kamala for such issues as controlling illegal immigration.  She also is a poor speaker without either Joe’s folksy style or Donald’s (c’mon, you knew he would pop up) outrageous originality; and has a very irritating giggle, not suggestive of presidential gravity.  But she has 17 months to sort all that out and for a new Kamala to emerge to take the hustings by storm next summer.  She says she won’t return to the “broken” US system, but we take this as a “maybe” while she raises the backers, political and financial, for a run. And another thing, apart from any challenge from Mr Newsom, who is handsome and polished if with a poor record of achievement, there is not much sign of any other strong Democrat candidate.  But there is time for them to appear.

And so to Donald.  President Trump has recently returned from a strange mixture of golfing holiday, whirlwind round of diplomacy, and shameless promotion of his family business interests in Scotland.  There is something rather bizarre and undignified about all this and especially the fawning demeanour of that chap in the glasses who kept following him around.  Surely Keir has things he could be doing other than promoting Trump resorts?

Donald also did what foreign leaders are supposed not to do in other countries, which is to comment on various domestic matters of interest.  He commented on cross-channel immigration (he’s against it), offshore wind farms (against them), high tax (against it), tax on farmers (against it), and the former First Minister of Scotland (against her).  But, just a thought. He cannot run for another term as leader of the free world when his term of office ends in January 2029. So, given his friendship with Mr Farage and the faltering steps of the current Tory leader, Ms Badenoch, how about Donald becoming leader of the Conservative Party, merging the Tories and Reform and doing a spell as Prime Minister?  Let’s face it, his suggested policies as laid out above, what we might call the Turnberry Declaration, are the core of the Reform programme and probably currently supported by a large majority of the UK electorate.   And his mother was a proud Scotswoman of humble background who emigrated to the US aged 18, so local support should be good.

One thing The Donald is very carefully not doing is commenting on his friendship, or otherwise, with his former Florida neighbour Jeffrey Epstein.  Mr Epstein is long dead, but his sinister shadow hangs over a number of politicians, and, most interestingly, over Mr Trump.  Donald says that they were friends, sort of, many years ago, but that they fell out over a land deal – indeed over the Mar A Lago deal which is now the Trump family home.  Mr T could hardly deny the friendship, given the amount of photographs of them looking friendly, but the falling out seemed to be genuine too.  The problem here is that many enemies of Donald would like to turn this friendship into a smoking gun pointed at the Trump administration, though it’s a long way from that to impeachment. And then what do you get?  President Vance until 2028.  But the wish is a long way from the proof, and putting Mr Vance in the White House soon could ensure his victory for a further four years in 2028.

As Donald says, if there was anything to find, would not Mr Biden’s investigators have found it, given their possession of Epstein’s papers, their full deep investigation (pace Ghislaine Maxwell,) and how useful anything on Donald would have been a year ago?

Mr Trump is obviously irritated by the subject but given that he is well on with his schemes to bring about world peace and win the Nobel Peace Prize, it would irritate any world leader.  And he may yet win it; he stopped the Iran/Israel conflict, and he may yet broker something with Mr Putin over Ukraine as Mr Zelenskyy seems to be increasingly faltering in his command of the country.  That might bring both sides to the table for a chat and make concessions possible.  And Mr Putin, though a tough talker, will be contemplating US submarines lurking somewhere close, as Donald says.  That tactic has worked before, at the Bay of Pigs in1962, to give one example. 

That just leaves Gaza to sort out.  The Arab world is finally getting tough with Hamas. More significantly, the Israeli government seems to have finally lost its last friends with its behaviour in the rubble of Palestinian Gaza, and that may yet bring USA-backed regime change in Jerusalem, and a new Prime Minister willing to make a deal and keep his Washington support.

We can but hope.