Three elections, three mistakes

Xenophobic populist right is set to take control of France, the US, and the UK - thanks to critical miscalculations by centre-left and centre-right leaders

Joe Biden had a disastrous evening on the debate stage on Thursday. He may still be a more reliable President than Donald Trump, three years younger than he is — but that says more about Mr Trump than anything else. Nor will it be easy to convince American voters that Mr Biden is worth voting for at this stage.

Yet replacing someone on the ticket at this late stage is not easy in the United States. It is just one way in which the US’s constitutional system is poorly adapted to the modern age. The comparison with, say,