9, September 2019
US: Biden’s election chances even lower than Hillary Clinton 0
An American political analyst and activist says leading US Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s prospects are even lower than previous elections’ also-ran Hillary Clinton.
Myles Hoenig, who ran for Congress in 2016 as a Green Party candidate, made the remarks in an interview on Sunday.
“Clinton’s political positions were so far to the right,” he said, adding, “Biden is in a similar situation.”
“His political views are very conservative, anti-environmental, and pro-war, nothing that would truly engage or electrify especially younger voters,” Hoenig noted.
As one instance of political posturing that shrinks Biden’s powerbase, he cited his views on the run-up to the 2013 US-led invasion of Iraq and the war itself.
Hoenig said Biden’s fellow Democratic presidential aspirants at least acknowledge that the invasion was “a mistake.”
Not only does not Biden do that, but also he “blames [former president George W.] Bush for convincing him to go to war against Iraq, rather than saying the war was an act of aggression on the US’s part,” the analyst observed, noting, “For that matter, there really isn’t any Democrat running who would say that.”
Many people, who would more likely vote for a progressive Democrat were, therefore, likely to stay home, “seeing only personality as a difference, not policy,” the expert stated. “That could mean another four years of a Republican administration, with or without [current President Donald] Trump,” he added.
In 2016, at the end of Barack Obama’s limit of consecutive presidential mandates, Trump raised eyebrows by stunning Clinton thanks to the US’s Electoral College system.
The system overrides the popular vote, which gives the victory to the candidate winning the most ballots. It instead makes 538 “electors” across different states, who are chosen based on each state’s representation in Congress, liable for electing the chief executive. Therefore, if a contestant secures at least 270 of the electoral votes, they have won the presidential race.
Trump’s victory came while Clinton had received three million more popular votes.
Earlier in the month, the results of an ABC News/Washington Post poll came out, showing that Biden, who used to serve as the US vice president under Obama, remained the favorite presidential candidate among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents in the 2020 nomination field.
According to the survey, 27 percent of Democrats favored Biden as the party’s 2020 presidential nomination, followed by Bernie Sanders with 19 percent of support and Elizabeth Warren with 17 percent.
Source: Presstv



















9, September 2019
Zimbabwe: Mugabe to be buried next Sunday 0
Zimbabwe’s former president Robert Mugabe who died Friday in Singapore at the age of 95, is scheduled to be buried on Sunday, September 15, in a location yet to be determined, the presidency announced Sunday.
“His remains are expected on Wednesday afternoon (in Zimbabwe). The official funeral is scheduled for Saturday, his funeral will take place on Sunday (next),” President George Charamba told AFP, adding that the place of his funeral would be determined by his family.
Since his death, discussions between his family and the government about how to organize his funeral have been taking place.
Heroes Acre or not?
As early as Friday, the Head of State decreed official mourning and awarded him the status of “national hero”, which offers him a place in the “Field of the Nation’s Heroes”, on the edge of the capital, Harare.
This monument, which contains three bronze statues of soldiers donated by North Korea, traditionally houses the graves of veterans of the “War of Liberation”. It has recently been opened to personalities from the arts and sciences.
However, the speaker’s spokesman suggested on Sunday that Robert Mugabe could be buried elsewhere.
The place “will be determined by the family,” Charamba said Sunday.
According to reports in the local press, Robert Mugabe’s family opposed his burial at the “Field of National Heroes”, assuring that the former master of the country wanted to be buried in the village of Zvimba, where he owned a house.
“We, the inhabitants of Zvimba, do not want him to go to the Heroes’ Field (…) for what purpose,” his aunt Josephine Jaricha told AFP on Sunday, “we want him to be buried here.
Since the fall of Robert Mugabe, relations between the former president and his successor, whom he publicly called “traitor”, were notoriously bad.
In November 2017, the army had pushed him out after his decision to dismiss his vice president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, at the insistence of his second wife, Grace, who coveted the succession of her ninety year old husband.
AFP