The Tribune

With CHARLIE HARPER

TUESDAY was Election Day in the US. It might be easy to overlook that fact, because no regular Congressional elections were scheduled. Those come a year from now. But Tuesday’s elections did produce some interesting outcomes, and here are some of them.

Donald Trump was correct again. Almost as soon as the Supreme Court, packed with anti-abortion zealots recruited and nominated by Trump and his allies, last year overturned 50 years of established precedent and withdrew federal protections for abortion rights, Trump noted that the issue would be a political disaster for Republican candidates.

Tuesday’s election results reaffirmed Trump’s assessment. In making his judgment, Trump is likely laying the groundwork for explaining away his potential defeat in the forthcoming rematch with Biden next year, but still: Trump’s assessment was right.

Democrats recaptured both legislative houses in Virginia, probably puncturing the balloon of Republican governor Glenn Youngkin’s hopes to emerge as a credible alternative should the GOP finally tire of Trump’s circus and seek a different candidate. The Democrats hammered their opponents on the abortion issue.

Governor races produced a decisive win in deep-red Kentucky for a popular Democratic incumbent and a closer-than-expected contest in deep-red Mississippi, where the Democratic candidate was a distant relative of Elvis Presley who shares his surname. Abortion was a Democratic priority in those races also.

Ohio, once a real swing state but now reliably red, overwhelmingly approved a state constitutional guarantee of women’s reproductive rights.

It will be difficult for Trump to uncouple his candidacy from the Supreme Court’s abortion decision even though he will evidently try to do so.

Despite the importance of Tuesday’s contests in a few states, however, everyone in the political sphere can now focus undivided attention on November 5, 2024. Here are some facts and thoughts about that.

It looks like Donald Trump is planning to run as a messianic figure, or perhaps even as the contemporary Messiah. He continually rants to his supporters about how he is “running for you; they’re coming for you next”. For some, it’s eerily reminiscent of the Christian belief that Jesus Christ “died for our sins”.

In his outrageous rants and blusters during his current New York City court appearance to defend himself and his family against charges of corporate fraud, Trump sounds like a victim. Perhaps in his mind, he really is the victim of a politically-driven conspiracy by his political opponents to deny him his rightful place back in the White House. But his bombast is also intended as a distraction from the seemingly inevitable revelation that he and his company really are, in some respects, frauds.

He wants voters to challenge and disbelieve all the evidence presented to them that he is corrupt and disdainful of democracy, the free market economy, the established American juridical system and rule of law.

Liberal pundits have ramped up the rhetoric about Trump’s existential threat to American and world democracy. That’s to be expected. But there is a lot of evidence that Trump is running as hard as he is for president at least partially to wreak revenge on his opponents and “traitors,” as well as to enrich himself and his friends.

Opposing Trump is of course incumbent president Joe Biden. Biden still isn’t polling strongly, and is blamed for economic woes that are actually fading. As we have discussed in recent months, Biden looks and often sounds old, in ways that Trump, only three years younger, does not. Pundits and politicos alike are grumbling out loud that he shouldn’t run. So why does Biden persist?

 He thinks his public service has earned him a second term. After all, he has been offering himself as a presidential candidate since 1987. Earlier, Biden had been the seventh-youngest senator in American history when he was elected to the US Senate from Delaware in 1972, at the age of 29. He was re-elected to the Senate six times, and rose to become the fourth-most senior senator.

He ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination in both 1988 and 2008.

Biden didn’t run in 1992 partly because he, like most of the Democratic political establishment, didn’t think George H W Bush could be beaten after American forces triumphantly routed the Iraqi Republican Guard, drove Iraq’s army from Kuwait and pushed Saddam Hussein off his presidential perch in Baghdad.

In 2000, Vice-President Al Gore just had too many political chits in his pocket, as did Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2016.

But Biden never gave up his presidential ambitions, and he has also never stopped believing that he deserves to continue as America’s chief executive. He benefited in 2020 from COVID and he did, as Republicans charge, largely campaign remotely, thus both avoiding the physical rigors of the presidential race and concealing from view his age-related deficiencies.

Still, if Biden can manage to avoid stumbling too much – either physically or verbally – over the next 12 months, he should still be the favorite to win re-election.

England’s Premier League Soccer and the foreign ownership controversy

The most powerful league in the world’s most popular sport has now finished about one-third of its 2023-2024 schedule. But while England’s Premier League commands the lion’s share of world soccer attention, its foreign ownership remains controversial. And although Persian Gulf oil riches sustain some clubs, ties to American ownership continue to expand.

Over this past weekend, the world’s most powerful team reclaimed its place at the top of the EPL standings. Manchester City, owned by an entity closely affiliated with the United Arab Emirates’ royal family, clobbered outgunned Bournemouth 6-1 to edge past previous frontrunner Tottenham. Spurs were drubbed at home by mercurial Chelsea in a highly contentious London derby match.

Lingering close behind are powerful Liverpool and Arsenal, so the top four places remain occupied by members of the EPL’s traditional “Big Six” powerhouse clubs.

But this soccer oligopoly is now being threatened by clubs that have not sustained greatness since the EPL was formed in 1992.

Newcastle, acquired in 2021 by the Saudi Arabian government’s private investment fund, has qualified for the Champions League this year and is threatening to force its way into a new “Big Seven”. With its Saudi riches, Newcastle is now regarded as the world’s richest soccer club.

Another challenger is Birmingham-based Aston Villa, like Newcastle a traditional English power team that has not prospered in the EPL. But the Villans haven’t won a league title for over 40 years, and few expect them to seriously contend this time.

Two teams have been notable for their recent tumult and stark lack of traditional success. The world’s “biggest club”, Manchester United, carrying a brand rivalled only by Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona, has stumbled this season under Dutch manager Eric Ten Hag, and some of its most prominent players have brought themselves and the team into disrepute with unseemly behaviour.

Since Sir Alec Ferguson retired ten years ago as United manager, the team has not approached the success he achieved in 27 years at its helm. It has been, maddeningly for its millions of worldwide fans, supplanted at the apex of soccer by cross-town rivals Manchester City.

The other big disappointment in 2023 has been Chelsea. After the British government last year forced the team’s sale by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, the team has been in disarray and its inconsistency has been an embarrassment to fans.

Chelsea and United share another distinction. They are American-owned. But they are hardly unique in this. Here is a current list of EPL soccer clubs that have American ownership, with a note about other US professional teams owned by the same wealthy people.

Arsenal - Stan Kroenke (Los Angeles Rams, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche of NHL and Colorado Rapids of Major League Soccer).

Aston Villa – Wes Edens (Milwaukee Bucks).

Bournemouth - Bill Foley (NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights).

Chelsea - Todd Boehly (LA Dodgers, LA Lakers, and LA Sparks of WNBA).

Crystal Palace – Josh Harris (Washington Commanders, Philadelphia 76ers and NHL’s New Jersey Devils).

Fulham - Shahid Kahn (Jacksonville Jaguars).

Leeds United – York family (San Francisco 49ers).

Liverpool – John Henry (Boston Red Sox, NHL’s Pittsburgh Penguins).

Manchester United – Glazer family (Tampa Bay Buccaneers).

There is also English League Two’s Wrexham, a Welsh team purchased in 2020 by actors Ryan Reynolds and American Rob McElhenney, and the subject of a widely-viewed TV documentary.