Satirists tend to overstate for comic effect, but Marina Hyde didn’t need to exaggerate in the slightest to produce the blackest of comedies on Joe Biden’s continuing candidacy (Joe Biden now relies on instruction manuals, so here’s a good one: ‘Walk to podium, smile, wave goodbye’, 9 July). From another planet, the situation she depicts might seem almost funny. But Donald Trump is a lethal threat to American democracy, world peace and the rapidly diminishing prospect of averting a global climate catastrophe.
Listening to Democrats, it is glaringly obvious that some don’t want to understand a simple political truth. It doesn’t matter that Biden has been mostly a good president, or that he perhaps still has most of his marbles. The only issue they should be agonising over is whether a small percentage of swing voters will believe he is no longer mentally fit enough to be president. The answer is all too obvious to horrified friends of America.
Bob Heyman
Newcastle upon Tyne
