An Irish actor's sideways view of American life from within...
It was one of those miserable post-Christmas weeks in Kerry a few years back when a local correspondent in The Kerryman summed up the news succinctly as: “No news this week”. A grey January in Sneem, where the biggest event might be the odd sheep wandering into the village, doesn’t lend itself to breaking headlines. But as I sit here in sunny Los Angeles, in the middle of a sprawling city brimming with election fever, I’m struggling to come up with real news myself.
Following the notorious recent presidential debate hosted by CNN, The Hill reported on July 1st from a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll that 72% of voters have already decided who they will vote for in the upcoming election, with 58% of Independents, 16% of Republicans, and 28% of Democrats yet to decide. Meanwhile, Trump leads Biden in a head-to-head match-up in the poll by 6 points. Since then polling suggests that Biden has lost further valuable ground in swing states due to the public’s reaction to his dismal debate performance. These seven crucial states, where less than a hundred thousand votes can swing the election either way, have the Democratic Party in turmoil over whether Joe Biden should be the nominee to contest the upcoming election against Donald Trump.
