Trump misses Biden

Everyone in the Democrats’ Convention centre – a bleakly corporate sports stadium on the edge of Chicago – is giggling. It’s an atmosphere properly described as bonkers. The Democrats have gone from wake to wedding party with no intervening period of sobriety. People whoop as they meet, knowing how miserable they were prepared to feel with Joe Biden still on the ticket, and how freed from misery they are now.

I thought Chicago an oddly dangerous choice for the Democrats (1968 and all that) but I was wrong: I had forgotten what a great city it is. The centre is grand, the hotels capacious and snooty, one of them the actual place where the phrase ‘smoked-filled room’ was coined – by a wire reporter covering a party meeting. It’s a city with heft and history and space: yes it is troubled and crime-ridden but it contains seriousness to counter the giddiness.

On our Americast podcast last year I predicted that neither Biden nor Donald Trump would make it to November on the top of their party’s tickets. My reasoning was simple: horrified fundraisers who had attended private events with the President were telling friends (including me) that Biden was fading fast; if he went, then surely the Republicans would ditch the candidate most likely to lose to anyone but Biden. I got the timing wrong, or to put it another way, Biden got the timing (accidentally) right. It would be difficult for Trump to be ejected now, but what if he chose to go? If he continues to sink in the polls, I wonder if he might prefer a grand storming out to a second electoral beating. I should stress I have no money on this outcome. But I’m not giving up on it yet. If it happens, I will use Americast to predict lottery numbers.