Joe Biden is in a world of pain with a week to go to the election and polls tightening. Every time he ventures outside his basement, truckloads of cheerful Trump supporters show up waving flags and chanting “Four More Years”.
He became so exasperated by their exuberance in Pennsylvania on the weekend that he called them “chumps”, which quickly became the new “deplorables” of 2020.
Then there is the matter of his wayward son Hunter’s abandoned MacBook, which President Trump calls “the laptop from hell” because it links Biden to his family’s influence peddling schemes overseas.
Worst of all, Biden made the mother of all electoral gaffes when he *admitted at last week’s presidential debate that he would kill off, or “transition” out of, the oil industry in order to dial down the planet’s thermostat.
“The oil industry pollutes, significantly,” he said. “It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time”.
This Gillardesque comment, since amplified on giant screens by Trump at every rally, will probably sink Biden in the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania, where he was born 78 years ago next month, and which he has tried to claim as his own.
Not only is oil and gas the lifeblood of the state, but unlike some other states, Pennsylvania hasn’t embraced early voting....