Dear Editor,

As I hinted broadly in my letter of January 31, 2024 ‘Trump or Biden: Don’t bet on it’, published by pressreader, US President Joe Biden has decided to call it quits and US Vice-President Kamala Harris is about to be crowned the Democratic candidate. Republican candidate Donald Trump also came within an inch of dropping out when an assassin’s bullet clipped his ear after one of the most puzzling security failures of the US Secret Service since US President John F Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 (I didn’t see that one coming).

So now the pundits will be all over the media 24/7 with their reading of polls and endless predictions focusing on the economy, inflation, and immigration. However, I believe the outcome of the election turns on a very simply matter, having little to do with what the pundits are talking about. The allocation of votes in this strange beast called the Electoral College and the traditional voting pattern in various states means that for Biden to have won (and now for Harris to win) the Democrats must win all three of the so-called “battleground states” of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, Harris chose Wisconsin for her first big rally.

Can she do it?

Talk that Biden bowed out as a result of bad polls in other states, such as Arizona and New Mexico, because of concern over his age and perceived mental impairment is hard to believe. Those sagging polls could have been reversed over a three-month campaign by a better public showing and the erratic, error-prone Trump’s proclivity for snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

While Biden would have had a good shot at winning Pennsylvania and an outside chance in Wisconsin, it is hard to believe that Biden would have had a snowball-in-hell’s chance of winning Michigan. The reasons have nothing to do with his age or mental fitness as the pundits would have you believe.

In Biden’s primary, 110,000 registered Democrats who are Muslims refused to vote for him because of the bombs and bullets he had sent to Israel to slaughter their family members and friends and demolish their homes and hospitals. It was more than a stretch to believe the man they call “Genocide Joe” would have got their vote in November. Michigan and the drying up of donations are the real reasons he dropped out.

So ignore all the hype, predictions, and all the other accurate but meaningless national polls. The Michigan poll is the only one that counts, and whether Harris pulls it off turns on how many of those Muslim voters Biden alienated she can recapture. It will be a tall task.

Errol W A Townshend

Ontario, Canada

ewat@rogers.com