man' image which helped Jimmy Carter win the intervention in Afghanistan that Carter's main tomorrow Central America, York shopkeeper that the right to selfan analogy, restrictions).
matter?' It is now just six months until the American presidential elections take place. Meanwhile US marines have been practising beach landings, a call has gone out for helicopter pilots Vietnam mine-laying experience and the army has out to be rather too simple. seems to be out of control, with inflation running •Hamburger' That's how a New summed up the for the primary results in his state last month.
He was talking about the soaring price of mince beef, but he cannily summed up the American presidential race.
For a system where beef can be called "ham', and the name can stick it, is as good Many for what passes as democracy in America.
Time magazine recently devoted a whole page to proving that an array of statements made by Republican frontrunner Ronald Reagan were patently false, (that, for example, Americans could have cheap petrol again by lifting Government Concluded Time, "The Big question is: Do the facts, after all, really Since late last year there has been a Britain.
great media hoo-ha about which politicians will emerge with the nominations of the Democratic and Republican parties to has suffered humiliation and failure. war the limitations run for US President.
The nomination methoa, favoured uf to as late as 1968, was for machine-picked delegates to select the nominees at the party conventions.
With the decline of American popular confidence political institutions however, an attempt was made to give the impression of greater mass participation in the selection process.
Thus, the two main bourgeois parties, the Democrats and Republicans have their convention delegates elected, in the majority of states, by 'primaries'.
Primaries Everytime there is an election in Britain, TV man Bob McKenzie appears on TV with his swincometer davocate ollarics Ironically it is those very • swingometers which are sending US pollsters round the bend.
In the recent Democratic party primary in at its highest rate for 33 years, while in Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East US foreign policy In Afghanistan the US can, and is, attempting all sorts of 'covert' action — some not so covert -against the government and the Soviet presence there. However, at the very most this can offer Carter only limited mileage. It is a comment on on the possibility of US New York the Harris Poll managed to miss the winning result by 38 percentage points as Kennedy raced past their choice, Carter ne reasol pous cannot picaice a curately is that the real winner in these elections has been abstention. In the 1976 presidential election. Carter was halled as a tearaway vot catcher Florida, he won great acclaim for win ning half the Black vote in the primary But a won half of the look at tne resuit, snowca tnal da had four percent of blacks who voted!
He swept the nomination nationally by taking a grand total of 4.2 per cent of the elec torate, 80 percent of whom didn't bother to vote.
This year, top pollster Ruth Clark told Time that primary polls couldn't be relied upon torate, not those who actually vote.' Her own agency • Yankelovich, Skelly White, have just conducted a poll in which th majority believed that they would face a Carte • choice in November: however 36 D cent wished there was a better alternative.
boch RACINE LABEl
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green. The
painted its tanks desert-brown instead of jungle- approaching vote and the preparations are not unconnected. The 'simple presidential election last time around has turned
The US economy -Tweedledee, Tweedled
strategy is to boycott a sports tournament. Iran is a different case, where the US is not directly facing the might of the Soviet Union.