DC Edit | Kamala takes on Trump: A race too close to call
The race to the White House may be intriguingly close and, as 72 days remain to the finish line, the Democrats are up and running, fully energised and totally united after a resoundingly joyous convention in which their articulate candidate Kamala Harris was anointed after inspirational speeches from the Obamas and the Clintons.
Ms Harris’ path to the nomination has been such a breeze after the withdrawal of the White House occupant Joe Biden that Donald Trump and the Republicans, despite having a member of the Kennedy clan in their corner now, are plain rattled. Needing a reset from days of roasting ‘Kamala’ in misogynistic and racist terms, Trump is now labelling her as a fascist and Communist conspiring to take over the United States.
On the other hand, Kamala Harris’ acceptance speech wove a compelling story of an American journey and success story fashioned by “a five-foot tall brown woman with an accent” who taught her kids to never complain about injustice, but to do something about it, like protecting people as everyone has a right to safety, to dignity and to justice as the Democratic nominee put it.
Accepting the nomination on “behalf of everyone whose story could only be written in the greatest nation on Earth,” Kamala Harris went on to demolish Trump, going after him for the January 6 riots, and his well-documented support for every authoritarian leader and dictator in the world. In Chicago, she made a case for herself more than winning a case against Trump in this contest to occupy the Oval Office at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
On the front lines of a divided America as one of the most consequential elections for the US looms, it is the Americans who must choose their leader in an election system that was hotly contested in 2020 by the loser Trump. Their choice will, however, be of great import to the world in which divisions are more sharply marked and when wars are being fought in the Middle East, Europe and elsewhere.
The return of Trump, an “unserious man” as Kamala dubbed him, in a battle that he is thought to be fighting for himself more than his nation, has latched on to Bobby Kennedy’s offer to remove his name from ballots in about half a dozen swing states to try and smoothen his path. As he has offered to open all the JFK assassination files if elected in November it goes to show how transactional Trump can be when it comes to this power game.
Robert Kennedy prospered as a patron of misinformation on Covid vaccines, but such happenings only reinforce the argument that in modern US it is not just reality and hard facts that prevail. And Trump has symbolised that, most of all in ridiculing the very system that brought him to the White House in 2016 despite his not winning the popular vote, which favoured Hillary Clinton.
In this intricate race of several dimensions in which Kamala Harris is the current leader in popularity polls, it may take very little to tilt the precarious balance. All the rhetoric from both sides — making America great again versus filling the multiracial, multicultural America with joy — is aimed at winning the highest stakes battle ever for the White House.