To think how long those repulsive messages have been flying, how many times Hitler has been invoked, and how dark the ‘shining city on a hill’ has gone, is mind-boggling. It’s started to feel ‘normal’ – the ‘boiling frog’ theory – after years of Donald Trump‘s casual, consistent demonisation of various groups.
To subvert Kamala Harris‘ slogan, America ‘is not going back’ to more innocent times when insults were rare, and dog whistles were enough to ‘direct’ voters.
Without cataloguing the ugliness unleashed at Trump’s latest rally, let it be said that people are on edge. 87% of voters believe the country would suffer ‘permanent damage’ if their candidate lost, according to a WSJ poll last week.
On Tuesday, Harris made her ‘closing argument’ and tried to send calm vibes to those who still are undecided from the same spot where Trump incited a mob and sent them rampaging on Jan 6, 2021, to paint a contrast. Whether she succeeded will be known when results are out. Her campaign has found new confidence that she will beat Trump.
After losing support among Black and Latino men relative to what Joe Biden enjoyed, she has to contend with a drift of desis. A new Carnegie Endowment-YouGov survey this week showed growing cracks in the Indian-American wall. Support for Harris is down 7 points from 68% to 61%, and for Trump, it’s up 9 points from 22% to 31%.More tellingly, young Indian-American men are showing a growing inclination for the Republican candidate, with 48% supporting Trump compared to 44% for Harris, while women of all ages are rooting for Harris.Interestingly, India hasn’t made much of an appearance this campaign. Which is just as well. Two wars and the horrific US withdrawal from Afghanistan are the main foreign policy issues. Except when it comes to trade, Trump gets going. He’s always ready to slam India, and did so at two rallies. India is a ‘very big abuser’ of tariffs, he said, and hinted at ‘retribution’. But he has also praised Narendra Modi as ‘fantastic’ and ‘a great leader’. There’s enough in the memory bank to draw from.
Modi doesn’t seem to share a rapport with Harris as with Biden and Trump. Why? In 2021, she ticked Modi off when she raised human rights issues in her first official meeting. Whether to placate progressives who were critical of India, or to show she can be tough on India as an Indian American, her move didn’t go down well. Modi skipped her reception for Quad leaders and left for New York earlier than planned. Whether the lecture and departure were related is unclear. But it wasn’t a good beginning.
The fact that Harris didn’t visit India is also seen by some as a snub. Generous explanation: travel was difficult in the first half of the administration, because as veep, hers was the tie-breaking vote in the 50-50 senate. A not-so-generous explanation: since India was getting enough attention with multiple senior-level visits, including by Biden, there was no need to risk a potentially difficult visit by Harris. Senior White House officials wanted the India file under their control.
But she did engage Modi a few times on different issues. She called him to offer support and sympathy when India was reeling under the second Covid wave in 2021. As National Space Council chairperson, she also nudged him to sign the US-led Artemis Accords. In June 2023, Harris hosted a lunch for Modi during his state visit where the atmospherics were much better.
Moving to the present, S Jaishankar met Harris’ NSA Philip Gordon earlier this month in the first high-level contact since she became a candidate. Gordon, a Europe and West Asia expert, is expected to get a senior White House position in case Harris wins. He briefs Harris on the Quad and Indo-Pacific issues. In 2008, when the Indo-US nuclear deal was going through life and death moments, he wrote a piece saying the US Congress should support the agreement.
Interestingly, Gordon also signed a (now) infamous letter to Trump in July 2019, along with many other experts, arguing that China was neither an ‘enemy’ nor an ‘existential national security threat’, and that Trump’s approach was ‘fundamentally counterproductive’. Much water has flown down the Potomac since. Not only did Trump ignore the naive letter, but Biden also declared China to be America’s main rival.
As for Trump’s potential cabinet picks – former officials are jockeying to get noticed on TV since he watches cable news during flights to campaign rallies. Robert O’Brien, one of his four former NSAs, wrote a 15-page piece in Foreign Affairs recently to make the case for Trump’s foreign policy. A version of Ronald Reagan’s ‘peace through strength’, the idea is to exert ‘maximum pressure on enemies’ and make friends more self-reliant and secure. While talking about the China threat over several pages, O’Brien stressed the need to focus on allies and traditional and emerging partners. India surprisingly did not figure.
But these are early days in the parlour game. No one knows Trump’s mind.