Then, a deranged individual shot at Trump, offering hundreds of memes, including one that said, ‘Man shoots, misses Trump, wounds Biden’. For that’s what happened. With a halo around him, Trump’s return seemed inevitable.
In Milwaukee, he spoke of unity and then reinforced divisive tones at the Republican convention. He paraded his vice-presidential nominee James D Vance, with his ‘exotic’ Indian wife, the Yale-educated Usha Chilkuri. Like her husband, she once hated everything Trump stood for, but was now going to support him.
But then, Biden finally stepped aside. Trump was caught gearing up for the wrong battle. Democrat leaders paid ritual tributes to Biden, but quickly – remarkably quickly – regrouped behind Kamala Harris. Instead of fighting an 81-year-old man, Trump would have to deal with a prosecutor not yet 60, and a woman.
Yes, as former British PM Harold Wilson once put it, a week is a long time in politics.
Harris has a Black father, an Indian mother, and personifies the amalgamated America that makes the US so wonderful. But Trump saw that as an opening. Instead of challenging Harris over her record as ‘border czar’, as she was described in the early days of the Biden administration, he went for what he thought was jugular – her mixed ethnic heritage.At a spectacularly churlish and inept performance before a convention of Black journalists, Trump asserted that Harris claimed her Black identity only recently. (Not true. She had been a member of a Black sorority at Howard University, known as a historically ‘Black college’). He also insisted that she had seen herself as an Indian first (while Harris’ mother Shyamala was born in India, and her father in Jamaica, Kamala had never projected herself as ‘Indian’). In fact, in the US Senate, she was a member of the Black caucus, although when elected, she was heralded as the first Indian-American senator – and 10th Black senator.Trump’s failure to understand multiplicity of identities may have been deliberate. It would rile one core component of his supporters – the racist core. Or, he was being deliberately provocative.
Harris’ candidacy has confused Trump. She has raised more money in days than Trump has in months. She now has the support of virtually every Democratic constituency and leader. Pointedly, no former Republican presidential or vice-presidential candidate – except Sarah Palin, John McCain’s running mate in 2008 – has supported Trump. Many Republican lawmakers, in fact, are distancing themselves from Trump.
Many sub-groups within the US are now embracing Harris, because she represents the multiplicity of America – Black, Indian, woman, minority, pro-choice, etc. All those are good reasons to elect the right candidate. But larger issues are at stake this November.
The story goes that as Benjamin Franklin was exiting Independence Hall on the final day of the constitutional convention in 1787, Elizabeth Willing Powel, a leading Philadelphia socialite, asked him, ‘Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?’ Franklin’s response was, ‘A republic, Madam, if you can keep it.’
It may sound bizarre. But that’s what this election has come down to, where Americans have to choose if they want a republic as it was intended to be. Or turn it into a monarchy with what might look closest to the ‘divine right of kings’. Because the Supreme Court, now packed with Trump-appointees, has ruled that the president has sweeping immunity. While Biden intends to strip some of those powers, he’s a lame duck president. Whether he can succeed in making the changes he intends remains to be seen.
Seeing Harris’ candidacy in ethnic terms is puerile. Whether or not she comes from a privileged background in southern India is irrelevant. How Black she is, or whether she cares about India, are both irrelevant because far bigger issues are at stake. This is the time for Americans to preserve, protect and defend their republic, so that the US remains what it believes itself to be – open to all, the land that beckons the ambitious and the persecuted.
Rights are at stake in America, as well as its reputation. America is far from perfect in its support of democracy and freedoms at home or abroad. But it talks the talk. It does sound hypocritical. But it also inspires those in worse conditions. But if America itself mirrors those societies, it ceases to be relevant. It no longer has the ‘moral monopoly’ it claims.
As the November election comes closer, it will get worse. Harris will get more abuse. There will be racist and misogynistic attacks. She will be ridiculed for her walk, her talk, her laughter. They say she is there because she’s a ‘DEI’ – diversity, equity, inclusion – candidate. But that’s what Americans want to believe their country is all about – diversity, equity, inclusion.
Vance has already ridiculed ‘childless’ women like Harris. But none of the past 46 American presidents gave birth to a child, because they were incapable of doing so: they were all men. A resounding defeat for Trump and Vance would be good not only for America but also for the Republican Party.
The writer is a New York-based journalist and author of the forthcoming The Gujaratis: A Portrait of a Community