A week, they say, is a long time in politics. In the last two weeks, America has seen the assassination attempt of a former president, Donald Trump, the forced abdication of a sitting president Joe Biden, and the rapid acclamation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Together, the three developments have injected new life into the US elections scheduled for November and turned the race into a close battle, and a sharp contest of political ideas.
Last week seemed to herald a boring battle between two old white men, Trump and Biden, who were getting ready to repeat their 2020 contest. This week has raised hopes for the first-ever woman to be elected as the US president. Kamala Harris also happens to have both African and Asian lineage. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, had migrated from Tamil Nadu to the US for higher studies in California. There she married a fellow student from Jamaica, Donald Jasper Harris. Kamala was brought up by her mother after her parents separated.
Harris’s Indian roots will indeed occupy our media discourse on the US elections in the next few weeks. That will be a pity, for it will say little about her politics or policies. India should instead get used to its growing diaspora, especially in the English-speaking world, occupying the highest positions in their new homelands. Whether Harris likes idlis for breakfast may be noteworthy, but it is of little consequence in explaining her political trajectory.
Understanding Harris and other emerging Indian-origin leaders should be more about a critical appreciation of the politics of Western societies they are flourishing in and making a significant difference to. The rise of Kamala Harris may say something about the Indian diaspora in America. But her current position at the top of the US political heap is a quintessential American story — of migrants rising to the pinnacle within a generation.
In her intellectual upbringing Harris is as African American as Indian American. Growing up in her mother’s activist circle in the 1960s California, Harris spent much time in a Black Community Centre in Berkeley. Unlike a lot of Indian American kids, she did not knock at the doors of Harvard and other Ivy League colleges but went to Howard University, the celebrated Black university in Washington DC.
At Howard, Harris became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha, the oldest American black sorority. Earlier this week, she skipped chairing a speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the US Congress to fulfil a prior commitment to address another black sorority, Zeta Phi Beta. Both Alpha Kappa Alpha and Zeta Phi Beta are part of the historically influential “Black Divine Nine” sororities and fraternities.
Seeing Harris through the Indian or African American lens does a political disservice to her presidential run. Her adversaries are doing precisely that, defining her as a product of identity politics on the left and that she is a “DEI” candidate representing the liberal penchant for “diversity, equity, and inclusion”. Irrespective of the right-wing caricature, Harris is the new great hope for Democrats by offering an entirely unexpected chance of success in an election that they had given up for lost, irretrievably, just two weeks ago. More broadly, Harris represents the powerful liberal political trend in the US with a reasonable chance to lead the US at a critical juncture. Her victory over Trump is possible and could be consequential for the US and the world.
But first a quick recap of our three ‘A’s. The assassin’s bullet that went through Trump’s ear two weeks ago enhanced his chances of regaining the presidency. Earlier he was seen as besting a fading Biden in the presidential debate. Although he appeared incoherent at the debate and unsteady in his appearances, the 81-year-old Biden refused to step aside. Only the God Almighty, Biden insisted, can persuade him to withdraw from the contest.
As the pressures from the party mounted over the last week, Biden announced his abdication on Sunday and endorsed Harris. Biden’s support did not necessarily mean Harris would automatically be the presidential candidate of the party. But the elders of the Party moved quickly and decisively to short-circuit the procedures for the election of a new nominee and avoided a debilitating internecine war in the party barely three months before the polls set for November 5.
Republicans are of course excoriating the Democrats for engineering a “coup” against Biden and making Harris the new nominee in an “undemocratic coronation”. But questions about the legitimacy of her nomination have been blown apart by Harris’s very impressive performance at the first two rallies she has held this week.
With her vigorous articulation and bold assertion of a liberal political agenda, including women’s rights on abortion, Kamala has brought new energy and enthusiasm to the Democratic Party’s campaign. As she challenges Trump with political aplomb, her supporters are describing the election as a contest between a “prosecutor” and a “criminal”.
Kamala’s relative youth at 59 to Trump’s 78 has turned the ageist argument against the former president. If the young supporters of the Democratic Party were beginning to tune out of a battle led by Biden, they are now rallying up behind Harris. The liberal establishment that views the potential return of Trump with great concern and deep distaste is going all out to boost Harris’s candidature.
Harris’s presidential campaign has had a great start this week. But her political honeymoon will not last forever and her challenges begin now. She will have a tough time if Trump succeeds in defining her as a “radical left lunatic” and a “California socialist” who will end the “American Dream”.
While her liberal record will activate the base of the Democratic Party, some of her positions, especially on border control and immigration, could put off many voters in the heartland. Like all left liberals, Harris will also have a challenge in winning over the socially conservative working class in the battleground states of the American rust belt in the mid-West. The big question, then, is whether Kamala Harris can move closer to the centre of the American political spectrum and prevent Trump from tarnishing her as a “crazy San Francisco liberal”.
The writer is a visiting professor at the Institute of South Asian Studies and a contributing editor on international affairs for The Indian Express
