Just as we were bracing ourselves for a potential Biden-Trump standoff, something unexpected, although not entirely unpredictable, happened. President Joe Biden, whose personal ratings were in freefall, engaged in a televised debate with Donald Trump on 27 June 2024, which served only to highlight his frailties and made him seem less desirable as a second-term President. On 21 July 2024, Biden eventually accepted the inevitable and withdrew from the presidential race, while endorsing vice-president Kamala Harris as Democratic candidate. Within no time, the Democrats rallied behind an increasingly popular Harris, anointing her as their presidential nominee at the end of the four-day Democratic National Convention (DNC), on 22 August 2024, at the United Center in Chicago.
Eschewing the divisive rhetoric that has characterised much of the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris promised to be “a president for all Americans” and set the theme for her speech by referring to her efforts on behalf of many underprivileged and disadvantaged sections of the public, first as a courtroom prosecutor in Oakland and then as Attorney-General of California. Harris described Donald Trump as “an unserious man”, referring to recent charges against him of fraud and sexual assault, his refusal to accept the 2020 election result, his fondness for autocrats, and his threats to cut back on public spending. She shared her vision for an “opportunity economy”, designed to bring hope to many of those left behind, including the long-suffering middle classes. Her support for reproductive freedom will undoubtedly resonate with many American women deprived of access to birth control, abortion, and IVF. Harris confirmed she sought to boost national security, resurrect the bipartisan border security bill, strengthen the armed forces, and support NATO. She reiterated her support for Ukraine. While supportive of Israel’s right to defend itself, she also decried the “devastating” events in Gaza over the past ten months. Overall, her speech was optimistic in tone, devoid of any major blunders, and consequently well received by the audience, although not by Donald Trump, who posted more than 50 times on his Truth Social account as he ‘fact-checked’ her address in real-time.
Kamala Devi Harris was born on 20 October 1964 in Oakland, California, the elder of two daughters of Shyamala Gopalan, who had arrived in California from India aged 19 and became a biomedical scientist, and Donald Harris, a Jamaican student who became an economist. Her parents met at a civil rights event, fell in love, and married in 1963, only to separate in 1971, while Kamala was still in elementary school. She was raised mostly by her mother on the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay area, and subsequently educated at Howard University in Washington DC and the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. Having served as deputy district attorney and then as district attorney in Oakland, where she gained a reputation for toughness in dealing with offenders, she rose to become Attorney General of California (2011-2017), before serving as Senator for California (2017-2021). She married Douglas Emhoff, a Jewish lawyer, in 2014, gaining two step-children in the process. Harris became 49th Vice President of the US in 2021, the first woman to hold the post.
Kamala Harris’s late entry into the presidential race appears to have caught an increasingly complacent Donald Trump off guard after a resoundingly successful Republican National Convention. As might be expected, Trump has vigorously attacked Harris’s character, her intellect, her racial identity, and her ideology, while downplaying her track record in public office. At the same time, he continues to cultivate his strong-man image, capable of standing up to other strong rulers, and claims he can tackle crime, control the border, and handle the economy much better than Harris is capable of. To the increasing dismay of many of his supporters, Trump has frequently gone off-piste recently while addressing the public, thereby obscuring his message and diluting any likely impact on his audience.
Much is being made of the changing results of various pre-election opinion polls, reportedly in favour of Harris’s presidential prospects. Unfortunately, the convoluted nature of the process by which the US President is elected means that there is usually some discrepancy between the popular vote on Election Day in November and the intentions of the 538 temporary voters who comprise the Electoral College. The latter is a uniquely American institution, with its origins in Article II of the US Constitution, as drafted by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. This novel electoral system was meant to uphold the rights of states within a federal America. The “winner takes all” stipulation means that the candidate with the most popular votes receives all of the state’s electoral votes, with predictable results in predominantly Red (Republican) and Blue (Democratic states), with the exception of Maine and Nebraska. The election of a president is thus down to the electoral votes in the seven so-called “swing states”- the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which is where candidates concentrate their efforts as they approach the finishing line. A minimum of 270 electoral votes is required to win the contest. Judging from recent presidential elections, it would be a waste of time to speculate on the ultimate outcome in November 2024. There can be little doubt, however, that the entry of a younger and feistier opponent will take the focus off Joe Biden’s cognitive state, reinvigorate the election campaign, and ensure lively public debate between the two candidates, irrespective of what transpires on Election Day.
Ashis Banerjee