Never witnessed before

AMERICA’s November 5, 2024, presidential election scenario presents some extraordinarily unusual intimate and interesting Indian-American features; perhaps never witnessed before in any previous White House election contests: The Gender Factor!

As it’s well known that unlike India’s multi-party democracy pattern, the United States of America follows a two-political-party system for the nation’s all political posts and appointments, including that of its president. Ever since America’s first presidential poll in 1789, America’s two political parties, Republican and Democratic, have nominated only the white men to be their presidential contestants.

But for the 2024 US presidential election, one major national political party, the Democratic Party, has nominated a woman, and that too the South-Asian, a Black female of the Indian descent. So far, in all the American presidential elections during the last 240 years, as per the records, all contestants have been only the White American males. (The American women did not have voting rights until the1920s, though the country became independent in 1776).

However, interestingly for the upcoming November 47th presidential election, both political parties’ presidential candidates have some uniquely distinctive features never been seen before: The ruling Democratic Party’s presidential candidate is a Black, America-born woman, Kamala Harris. Kamala is an Indian with American links, having been born in Oakland, California. Similarly, the Opposition, Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, married to an Indian-origin woman Usha, a lone Indian link. Kamala’s mother Shyamala Gopalan Iyer, a South-Indian Brahmin, was married to Donald J. Harris, a Jamaican-American. Kamala Gopalan Harris’s own husband, Dough Emhoff, is an American.

The Indian link of the Republican Party’s vice-presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, is in the form of his  marriage to the 38-year-old Indian woman Usha. Usha Chilukuri Vance is the daughter of Indian immigrant parents -- engineer father and biologist mother. Usha is an America-born, Telugu-speaking-Andhraite, and an American lawyer. J.D. Vance, 39-year-old, is Ohio’s junior Republican Senator, ex-president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump’s running mate.

Be that as it may, due to sudden political twists and turn, and electoral complexities, Democratic Party nominee, President Joseph R. Biden who was running for president, withdrew from his White House re-election bid on July 21, and instantly endorsed his Vice President, Kamala Harris, to be the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

While endorsing Kamala Harris for president, Biden said that he hoped she would be a ‘barrier-breaking nominee as the first woman, the first Black woman and the first person of South-Asian descent ever to serve as the US president.’ It’s expansively considered that Kamala Harris’s gender-effect could widely galvanize the Democratic party’s overall nationwide campaign. In the party’s all poll drives, Democrats have benefited from the gender gap. Since several past electoral records have shown beyond doubts that women have voted for Democrats, by a wider margin, than men who favour men (candidates). Kamala Harris is likely to tilt this delicate balance to the Democratic Party.

With less than 100 days until the election-day. Kamala Harris knows it’s no time to relax. Thus, getting quickly into a mind frame in accelerating and energizing the campaign, Kamala Harris has named the 61-year-old, two-term Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice-presidential nominee and running mate.

Tim Walz is a party veteran: he has served 12 years in Congress, 24 years in the Army National Guard; he is well known former football coach with firm roots in the countryside. The Minnesota state is a large, strong Muslim community state; Walz is an articulate, popular, intensely smiling guy with massive local following that could bring enormous support to the Harris-Walz ticket, rejecting Trump’s anti-Muslim disquiet.

Besides, what Kamala Harris said in approval of Tim Walz’s vice presidential nomination will boost the Democratic Party’s public image and winning chances: “One of the things that stood out to me about Tim is how his conviction on fighting for middle class families runs deep.” Walz’s career as a high school teacher, football coach and adviser…and his service as the governor to push progressive policies had impressed Kamala Harris for selecting him as her running mate.

Tim Walz’s personal experience gained during his 30 visits to China would enormously enhance the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz administration in appropriately dealing with that US- adversary country.

Since Kamala Harris is amply familiar with Donald Trump’s ‘big mouth, loose talk stance and scant public mannerism’, she is adequately equipped in responding to the former president’s duplicitousness and multi trickeries. Also having been a distinguished, competent public prosecutor and a two-term country’s one of the biggest state, California’s attorney-general, Harris too would be able to handle any exigencies.

Moreover, since Donald Trump has undergone profound humiliations and has been legally branded as a ‘convicted felon’, one can hope him having been trifling reformed. Besides, his Republican Party running mate and vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, too could be a massive support to his boss’s conduct.

The Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, a Yale law graduate, would be able to influence his vainglorious bearing in the state affairs with Kamala Harris who has amply proved this by her par excellent career and conduct in the nation’s politics and civil service.

Meanwhile, the young, enthusiastic J. D. Vance, the recently picked vice presidential nominee,  introducing himself at the Republican Party’s national convention that approved the Trump-Vance team to contest the forthcoming November presidential election. J. D. Vance, who has served less than two years as Ohio senator, said how he has been transformed from ‘a bitter critic of the former president to an aggressive defender and is now positioned to become the future leader of the party and the torch-bearer of  Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) political movement.

An important GOP- the Republican Party – member averred whom Donald Trump termed J.D. Vance as the future of the nation, future of the Republican Party, the future of the America First movement.

Finally, the results of the November presidential polls will show who wins the White House and occupies this most powerful office in the world for the four-year-term beginning January 21, 2025. The currently prevailing political soothsayers and common people in the streets seem to suggest that the Democratic Party team comprising Kamala Harris and Tim Walz will make it.

The approval ratings announced today, August 13, 2024, record 50% in favour of the Kamala Harris team and 46% for   Donald Trump. Let’s sit with fingers crossed and watch how the twin-party campaign shapes fight.

By : Prof M R Dua