The contest and the contrast
Less than three weeks are left before the US electorate decide who will be the next US President. This is the most important forthcoming global political event. The choice made by US voters will decisively influence not only their own country but the world at large. Despite the growing importance of China in international affairs there is no doubt that the US is still the world’s pre-eminent power; it has the capability of impacting the flow of political and economic and to a considerable extent social developments in every part of the planet. Besides, the US is also critical to the management of the existential crises facing humankind. These begin with the climate crisis but also extend to the rapid and fundamental technological changes which are presently underway.
Thus, US voters who constitute a small percentage of the global population which is now more than 8 billion will make a decision which may have a lasting impact on humanity’s future. Certainly, US voters are not considering the election in this light. For them the immediate issues which impact their lives are of supreme importance. And, it is these matters that will determine their choice of either Republican Party’s nominee and former President Donald Trump or the Democratic Party’s choice the current Vice-President Kamala Harris.
No two candidates could be so different in every way than Trump and Harris. Trump is white, conservative who was a successful businessman before he joined politics and stunned the US and the world by winning the Republican nomination in 2016 and thereafter, defying all odds, defeated Hillary Clinton for the Presidency in 2016. His success was due to the very large number of people in the US who are unable to cope with the swiftness of change in contemporary life. These people, conservative to begin with, were getting more and more concerned with liberal approaches on sensitive issues such as abortion and personal choices in matters of partners. Trump successfully tapped into their fears. He was also helped in winning the Presidency by the ineptitude of Hillary Clinton’s Presidential campaign.
Trump turned the US in a conservative direction. His choice of three US Supreme Court Judges contribute to overturning fifty years of large parts of the US becoming more liberal. The Supreme Court consists of nine judges who serve for as long as they are physically fit. Hence, their ideologies matter for generally they remain in office for decades. Trump appointed three conservative judges and was able to secure the Senate’s approval because the Republican Party had enough senators to endorse their nominations. With these three, the ideological orientation of the Court became conservative. That led the Court to overturn its 1973 decision in the case of Roe vs Wade which gave women the right to abortion. In January 2022 the Court held that its Roe vs Wade decision was wrong and basically gave the constituent states the power to decide on abortion laws. Trump applauded this decision. Another decision which the Supreme Court has taken makes it far more difficult to prosecute former Presidents for actions which may be of a criminal nature which they may have taken in their personal capacity while in office. This too went against the standard understanding of US law. Of course, US Presidents cannot be prosecuted for any action while they remain in office.
Trump’s foreign policy was basically isolationist. He pulled the US out of the Paris climate pact and was not concerned with promoting democracy or human rights abroad. He was more concerned with making the US a manufacturing nation again and focused on its allies for paying for their defence. He remained strong on US force levels. But above all he was anti-immigration and this has been a basic theme of his current campaign too.
Harris is the daughter of immigrants. Her father, from Jamaica was an economist at the Stanford University and her mother an Indian who went to the US in the 1950s studied endocrinology and worked on breast cancer. Her parents divorced when Kamala was young. She was brought up by her mother and became close to her mother’s family. However, she also was on good terms with her father and went to college in Washington DC at the Howard University which was a centre of learning for Blacks. Early on, she identified her politics with Black community issues. She achieved the American Dream becoming the Attorney-General of California and then a Senator of that state. In 2020 she was picked up by Biden to be his running mate for the Vice-Presidency.
Harris is committed to liberal causes. She was especially appalled by the reversal of the Roe vs Wade decision. And, she has made the right of women to take decisions concerning their own bodies as a central theme of her campaign. There is no doubt that taking the baton from Biden in July when only a few months were left for the elections made her task difficult. But the Democrats have rallied around her and she has now become the great liberal hope in a polarized society and polity. Biden had made her in charge of preventing illegal immigration but that has not been stemmed over the past few years. That vulnerability is being attacked by Trump.
This election will be decided, as this writer has noted earlier, in the swing states even if Harris wins an overall national majority. In these states—Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Utah, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan and Wisconsin—the polls suggest that the race is really tight. Hence, the US and the world will be on tenterhooks till the election results become known on the 5th night or the early hours of the next day.
