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Former US president Donald Trump (L) and current Vice President Kamala Harris (R).
Credit: Reuters File Photos
Kamala Harris’s entry into the presidential race in the United States has galvanised the Democratic Party. Contrary to the belief that she was no match for her Republican rival and former president Donald Trump, Harris has now effectively opened up the contest so much that it has left the Grand Old Party floundering to find the right campaign strategy and talking points against her.
Trump’s own confusion was apparent at a press conference with the National Association of Black Journalists, where he hoped to create the top line that Kamala Harris had “turned Black” from self-identifying as South Asian. His shock at being rebuffed and jeered right there may go down as the moment in his campaign at which he looked quite obviously like a candidate with a lost plot.
Trump’s running mate J D Vance, whose wife is an Indian American, has biracial children. While picking Vance seemed at first to bring money and energy into the Trump campaign, his involvement in Project 2025, a right-wing manifesto for constitutional change, has turned him into a liability for
Trump, who has distanced himself from it, at least for now. The flailing Trump campaign is a far cry from the triumphal fist pump with which he rose from the attempt to assassinate him just three weeks earlier. That purported election-winning image has faded.
Just days ago, the world wondered what a Trump repeat in the White House might bring. Now, governments across the world are considering a potential Harris presidency.
For India, which has pursued ties with the US over the last five years as its most consequential foreign engagement, a President Harris may not spell substantive disruptions. Since 2021, Harris has not strayed from the Biden administration’s foreign policy, and has represented the president in many foreign policy engagements across the world.
Her main mandate in the Biden administration was to tackle the touchy issue of immigration from Central America, an important issue with voters on both sides of the political divide. Her remarks to Israeli president Benjamin Netanyahu, expressing concern at the “dire humanitarian situation” in Gaza, may suggest that she has a far stronger view on Israel’s war than Biden and his secretary of State Anthony Blinken have articulated so far.
Given the compulsions of US interests in the Middle-east, how this will change if Harris is elected can only be guessed. India’s growing importance to the US has been defined a lot by US-China relations. Despite her left-of-centre Democrat profile, Harris, who criticised the Modi government over Kashmir in 2019, has remained silent on that as well as other perceived democracy deficits in India. What Delhi and India should not expect is that her Indian origins will make her their President in Washington DC.