Elections 2024: Whither America?

The question the world is now asking as the United States spirals: out of control or back to sanity?

Continuing our pledge at Andelman Unleashed to report and comment on every national election everywhere in the world, this mid-week special as we focus on the world suddenly gripped by election fever in America.

The bulletins spread across websites and television screens the moment of the first flash from Delaware. And the image that was most vivid? Biden: “jeter l’éponge.” The President had thrown in the sponge.

So perhaps the best way to capture all these emotions in every language, on every continent, is simply a tour d’horizon of the world’s front pages…..so here we go:

Britain / The Times

Britain / The Telegraph

With a slightly different spin:

And their three front-page columnists:

France / Le Parisien

With four days til the opening ceremony of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad, and Paris gripped by a nightmare of an unprecedented lockdown ….

…..it’s a subject that would be hard to escape on the capital’s front pages….where, all but universally, there’s that image of the sponge…..

France / Le Figaro

France / Le Monde

Germany / Süddeutsche Zeitung

Pretty straightforward:

    Joe Biden is withdrawing his Candidacy

The US President declares in an open letter that he will not stand for re-election. He recommends his deputy Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate.

Switzerland / Neue Zürcher Zeitung

   Biden withdraws in favor of Harris

After the president’s withdrawal, the election campaign in the USA has been re-started.

The pressure has gotten too big. After the disastrous television debate against Donald Trump, Joe Biden drops out of the race for the White House. He also recommended his vice president as his successor.

Italy / Corriere della Sera

 America Toward the Elections

Biden Farewell: vote Harris

The announcement on Social media, I am longer a candidate. Republicans: resign as president.

Poland / Wyborcza

Hungary / Magyar Nemzet

The nation’s leading daily dances very much to the tune of Hungary’s ruling autocrat, Viktor Orban, close confidant of Donald Trump and recent visitor to Mar-a-Lago.

Spain, Latin America / El Pais

Israel / Ha’aretz

  Leading opposition newspaper to the Netanyahu government

The Times of Israel

  Leading pro-government newspaper

Israel Hayyom

Owned by Miriam Adelson, widow of founder Sheldon Adelson, major Trump supporters, on its front page:

The era of Biden

Joe Biden did not survive the shockwaves of the confrontation at the end of June and the pressures that came after it and announced that he would not run for president in the November elections. Trump attacked: “He was the world’s worst president in history.”  [Israeli] President Herzog: “I thank him from the bottom of my heart. For his friendship and support for the people of Israel.”

Today: Netanyahu is scheduled to land in Washington, ahead of his speech to Congress and widespread coverage.

Columnists on p.1:

Ariel Kahana: The crazy election the USA is going through is only getting more extreme.

Danny Ami: Too late for the Democrats. Today it is clear that the White House hid the president’s decline.

Egypt / Al Ahram

Singapore / Straits Times

Hong Kong / South China Morning Post

Once one of the great newspapers of Asia, it now tilts determinedly toward Beijing….on its homepage, the Biden news was a small box:

Inside, New York correspondent Mark Magnier reported:

Facing intense pressure from across the political spectrum, US President Joe Biden made the extraordinary move on Sunday of withdrawing as the Democratic candidate to lead the party in the November election, the president announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Biden, 81, gave his support for Vice-President Kamala Harris to succeed him.

His decision makes him the first elected American president since Lyndon Johnson in 1968 to opt not to seek a second term….

The decision follows the first televised debate last month against the Republican nominee, former president Donald Trump, that the Biden campaign asked for, yet ultimately proved politically disastrous for the octogenarian.

In the weeks following the debate, Biden and his advisers went into overdrive hoping to repair the damage, with defiant statements, interviews and campaign events trying to convince donors and Democratic Party stalwarts that he was mentally sharp and physically capable….

The president failed spectacularly in a performance seen as meandering, halting and unsettling that failed either to promote his successful handling of the economy, his positions on abortion and foreign affairs or to fact-check Trump’s multiple misstatements.

China / People’s Daily

Faced with the aftermath of China’s landmark Third Plenum, which Andelman Unleashed chronicled this past weekend….the Biden announcement just barely made it onto the homepage as a virtual footnote [emphasis added]:

Russia / Pravda

Hardly the big news of the day, but with a definite spin:

US President Biden Drops Out of Presidential Race

Joe Biden declines to run for a second term. The reason for his decision was mental health problems that made it impossible for Biden to fulfill his public policy duties.

At the same time, Biden did not name a successor in his statement, so there will be no automatic nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris for the presidential post. 

The Democratic Party lacks a clear leader who can compete with Donald Trump. Barack Obama, the party's most popular politician, has already served two terms as president and cannot run again. 

Clearly the prisms through which much of the world is viewing this epiphanal slice of time is all too often deeply skewed by the inclinations of a host of media, free or deeply controlled, not to mention their context. The mission of Andelman Unleashed is simply to provide a window into these pages that are setting so many global agendas—a mission we will continue to fulfill for the American elections as well as all others across the globe.  Stay tuned.