It is a huge mistake.

In my view if, other than election machine tampering, cost the Democrats the election, it was not the calibre of Kamala Harris or her team but their failure to define a significant change between the current administration and what would come under Harris. Indeed, as much as I admire and respect Kamala Harris, I believe that she was significantly hamstrung by her current role as the Vice-President and a need or wish to be loyal to the end. I think that virtually any vice-president running in those circumstances would have similar difficulties.

So, for me and meaning no disrespect to Kamala Harris or her suitability, I consider that she had an uphill battle from that start and someone without that undoubted identification with the administration would have had a better chance.

I also believe that the continued backing of Israel and failure to *stop* Netanyahu, if necessary by force, was a monstrous miscalculation. Until and unless the USA can fee itself of being shackled to Zionist backers and billionaires who want quid pro quo, it will continue to leave itself open to, indeed even invite, control by those who, regardless of their promises, will do little to nothing for the millions of impoverished or disadvantaged Americans, including native American Indians; the assault by the right wing, including the Christian Nationalists on women and the appalling insularity and prejudiced; the absence of a fair, just and accessible health service for *all* citizens; and the deteriorating respect from and credibility with the World community of nations.

It is not 1945 and we will not be returning to a time of almost universal condemnation of facism, gratitude to America for its part in the war and closed eyed indifference to Israel's decades of brutal treatment of those whose lands were forcibly taken away, without any consultation, and given to the Zionists to create a national home for Jews.

This *is* a time of reckoning in so many ways and the Democrats need not only to recognise it but to act accordingly. Trump has played to many of the factors of this change and the exhausted patience of the worst affected, which gave him an edge. Although I don't for one moment believe that his occupying the seat of power will be anything but a tragedy for the nation, if one is objective and views the whole scenario that brought it about, it isn't hard to see how it happened.*

...

* I do consider that there may have been another factor at play, in as much as there seems to have been some plausible evidence of deliberate tampering with the automated voting machines; having come to light because of significant inconsistencies with usual patterns or even wild swings in reported voter sentiment by margins too great, in the eyes of some experts, to have occurred without interference. I don't say that is the case but do wonder why, as far as I can tell, the Democrats and the appropriate authorities generally, have been curiously silent about this.