2024 US Presidential contest seems evenly matched

Overall, Kamala Harris is a much more formidable candidate than Trump, but may yet be defeated unless she moves out of Biden’s shadow, writes Prof. Madhav Das Nalapat

The 2024 US Presidential poll between Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance on the Republican Party side and Kamala Harris and Tim Walz on the Democratic Party side appears to be an evenly matched contest. Both sets of candidates have strong points as well as vulnerability issues. In the case of Trump, he was defeated by himself during the 2020 poll.

During 2017-21, he demonstrated an inability to understand that the US Government was not the same, albeit on a larger scale, than the Trump empire. His peremptory, insulting manner when speaking to subordinates turned most individuals who worked with him off. His greed for publicity made him give daily press conferences, including on the Covid-19 pandemic, a subject in which he was totally out of his depth and out of sync with experts on the subject.

Gaffes were many, such as his suggestion to inject folks with bleach to get immunity from what ultimately turned out to be a virus with low mortality. A deliberate effort was seemingly made by Covid-19 experts to cause panic within the populace about the disease. A sense of fear and anxiety gripped hundreds of millions across the world as Dr Doom (alias Dr Fauci) and his cohorts, including citizens of the US who worked together with the Wuhan Institute of Virology to create the Covid-19 virus, did one scaremongering press briefing after another about the virus.

The impact of such briefings seemed less to educate than to frighten people into getting themselves vaccinated once Covid-19 vaccines got rolled out at speed. Whether it be polio, smallpox or several other once common diseases, vaccines were developed not in the manner of a racing contest between manufacturers but stage by stage and professionally. As a consequence, vaccines against such diseases have been effective in controlling the spread of these diseases. As for Covid-19, this columnist is among those who got infected with the virus despite getting a double dose of the locally available vaccine.

Herd immunity eventually rendered the ailment as harmless as the common cold in India, so much so that after some time few bothered to test for Covid after developing symptoms. Meanwhile, draconian restrictions on the unvaccinated were placed in several countries in a manner reminiscent of an authoritarian state. Even after vaccination, tests had to be carried out for Covid-19 before and after air travel before being allowed to board a flight or enter a country.

This columnist had the misfortune to arrive in Taipei on 12 October 2022, a day before the stipulation that all international passengers arriving in Taiwan had to go to a designated isolation hotel at their own expense for a week. It was an unpleasant experience being confined to a hotel room for so many days, with food being left outside the door, and self-testing both on entering as well as leaving the hotel. When he left, this columnist asked the hotel staff how many of those staying in the hotel had tested positive on leaving. The reply was nil.

Even now, the aftershocks of the job losses and isolation of 2020 and 2021 remain. In India, fortunately, Prime Minister Modi saw to it that there was no vaccine mandate, unlike in several western democracies who during the onset of the Wuhan virus enforced restrictions on citizens comparable to those carried out by an autocracy. Unfortunately, the habit of relying on government to make choices seems widespread. Even Republican Party in the US would rather leave it to state legislatures rather than to individual lady citizens the right to take decisions on abortion, a stance which may cost them not just the US Presidency but control over the House of Representatives as well in the November polls.

Trump refused to participate in the 3 September (now 10 September) debate with Kamala Harris, unless the mics got muted after a speaker had her or his turn. In 2020, Trump would have not been as cautious. As for Kamala Harris, she is slowly coming out of the straitjacket she was pushed into for nearly four years by the White House. Her loud laugh of those days seems less a sign of joy than of attempting to conceal how suppressed she was as Vice-President.

Now she is free of such constraints, and it shows in mannerisms such as the avoidance of a nervous laugh. Overall, Harris is a much more formidable candidate than Trump, but may yet be defeated unless she moves out of Biden’s shadow and shows she is different, from him, and that she is free of the Biden bonds. A difficult but not impossible ask. All of which go towards what is making the 2024 US Presidential contest such a cliff-hanger at present.

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