Joe Biden has called off a four-day trip to Germany this week that had been intended to culminate in a summit to discuss Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s “victory plan” for Ukraine.
The White House said on Tuesday evening that the president would stay at home “to oversee preparations for and the response” to Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
It was not clear how Biden’s absence would affect the planned summit, the first time world leaders were due to gather at the Ramstein US airbase, normally the location of a regular meeting of defence ministers to discuss military aid for Kyiv.
I had the same thought at first, haha.
I think they shouldn’t give up here though - if Biden can’t go and Harris (his second as VP) also can’t go in his place, there must be some cabinet level official who could travel and attend the summit instead.
Given that Harris will be the one actually overseeing the American response to this suggestion pretty soon if she wins the election, it seems to me like she might even be a more fitting representative than Biden
If she wins the election being the key operative word. The race is far from won right now; her attention needs to be on her race. Ukraine does not benefit in the long run if she loses it now.
Would you think that her attending this if Biden is personally handling the hurricane situation would dent her chances? I’m not American so I’m not particularly familiar with how the domestic attitudes to these situations tend to play out
I’m not a political scientist or at all a political expert, so I lack the background to make a supported or definitive statement to that effect. So this is my opinion based on what I’ve seen and read but is otherwise unprofessionally qualified.
Most people probably already know how they would vote if polling day was today. The issue as I see it is not so much about chasing after the undecided voters as much as it driving engagement and enthusiasm upwards such that people actually will go vote. It’s hard to drive that enthusiasm and engagement without facetime, without being on stage giving speeches about the issues, without debating about policies and implementation. With the win/loss margins being so razor thin right now in some of the key battleground states (so-called “swing states”) anything that gets her away from the voters is a distraction that can’t be allowed to manifest.
Yeah, Ukrainian citizens and NATO partners don’t vote. If she wants to help Ukraine, she needs to prevent the Kremlin’s candidate from winning.
That makes sense to me.