US elections matter - and my lifelong passion for politics
August 2024
I was 17 when this faded black and white photo was taken.
It’s me and Joe Kennedy, son of Bobby Kennedy (RFK) and nephew of John F Kennedy, the US president assassinated two decades earlier.
Joe was the newly elected Democrat congressman for Massachusetts and I spent the summer of 1987 interning in his Washington DC office. Manning the phones, answering letters. Loving every minute.
The ‘Kennedy clan’ are US political royalty and there was talk Joe might run for president. The internship sparked a lifelong interest in US politics.
Fast-forward to today and Joe’s brother, RFK Junior, is making headlines, backing Donald Trump and the Republican Party in the November election.
Joe, my old boss, and others Kennedys - all staunch Democrats - have all denounced Robert and urged support for Kamala Harris, the Democrat candidate.
It’s just one of the many angles in what is set to be one of the most pivotal elections for years.
Harris, the liberal West Coast former attorney general from a mixed race background, is running to be the first women to be president. Her slogan ‘we’re not going back’ sends a clear message and she has momentum.
Against her, Donald Trump, the 78-year-old white billionaire property mogul turned TV personality turned politician, hoping to become president for the second time.
His Supreme Court choices overturned a woman’s right to abortion and he’s running on a climate change denying, anti-immigration, tax cutting platform with a pro-oil slogan of ‘drill, baby, drill.’
It’s also the first time since 1976 there’s no one with the name Bush, Clinton, or Biden on the ballot. It really is a watershed moment in modern US history.
So, over the next ten weeks, I'll write regularly on the election, looking at the people, politics, and the policies involved.
I’ll explain the way the US political system works - about the 52 states’ electoral colleges whose block votes are needed by either candidate to win, for example - and provide commentary and analysis as the campaigns unfold.