By Kenneth Tiven
At his home in Delaware, President Joe Biden, who is not seeking re-election and remains in power until mid-January 2025, hosted Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the leaders of Japan and Australia for a meeting of the Quad alliance. This four-nation group has Pacific Ocean interests and maritime-related concerns about China’s military behaviour in that region. Delaware is America’s smallest state, nestled under the southeast corner of Pennsylvania, due to boundaries drawn in the 17th century by England and Sweden.
Modi’s arrival brought him together with an enthusiastic gathering of the Indian diaspora, many dressed in traditional clothes and waving Indian flags. He mingled and signed autographs before meeting with Biden individually at Biden’s house. The Quad Summit met at a campus-style private high school where Modi said the Quad is here to stay and is not against anybody, a euphemism for China.
From Wilmington, it was on to New York for the Summit of the Future at the UN General Assembly, the next day. Biden gave a strong and emotional speech about his 50-year career in politics, focusing on peacekeeping efforts, all of it against a backdrop of American weapons support for wars between Ukraine and Russia and in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinians living in Lebanon and Gaza.
However, all of this received scant media coverage in the USA because of the election campaign. The Harris campaign is receiving positive polling and fundraising from her success against Trump in their TV debates. That vibe was amplified at a Zoom national meeting hosted by Oprah Winfrey, with a dozen celebrities and high-profile guests pitching up to support Harris.
In contrast, the past week of the Trump-Vance campaign made clear that immigration is a primal issue—not just at the border, but focused on the idea of forcibly deporting millions of people it claims are here illegally, many of whom have children and family members who are citizens. His false claim that Haitians with legal standing to be in Springfield, Ohio, are eating local pets for food is now understood to be the kick-off excuse for discussing deportations. The Republican governor of Ohio, who is from Springfield, was outraged at JD Vance’s fake story, especially as Vance, Trump’s choice for vice-president, is one of Ohio’s two US senators.
On October 1, Vance debates the Democrats’ vice-presidential pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. It will be a study in contrast as Walz is a salt of the earth person with verbal tenacity. Vance has so far seemed to be inarticulate, although he clearly loves the statements he makes. He has criticised childless women as “cat ladies” who should have fewer rights than women who have given birth.
On a personal level, Trump is obsessed with the fact that Harris has outraised him for campaign funds. Every day, his emails demand people give him more contributions. He just launched a collectible memorial coin for $100, which apparently contains just $30 worth of silver. Concurrently, the value of his Trump media social networking company has collapsed to a single share price barely above $12. When it was launched in March at nearly $100 a share, Trump and other company insiders received free stakes, which they could not sell for nine months, Yet, if Trump sells millions of his shares to MAGA fans, even at $12 a share, it will be a taxable gain.
The Trump campaign’s reality is that Harris has united the Democrat Party factions, attracted independent voters and prominent Republicans who abhor Trump’s behaviour, as well as extraordinary funding. She leads in the most reputable polls.
Trump has begun to comprehend the impact of Biden’s departure, which has left him looking like the elderly man, who seemingly has diminished mental and physical capacity while seeking a high-pressure job. Massive legal fines, felony convictions, and impending trials in state and federal courts add to his increasingly dark mood. Trump’s current email pitch reveals his fear of losing: “The most important reason of all to chip in $5 before my deadline? Kamala has more than $650,000,000 in the bank, and as you’re reading this she’s making MILLIONS MORE!”
Moreover, it seems Harris is winning the metric he craves most—the size and frequency of campaign rallies. For example, Trump has about one-third of the numbers that he did in 2020. His campaign managers say this is because he is such a well-known quantity. Clearly, they don’t want to spend money organizing rallies. He’s older and appears content to play golf in the morning and rally in the evening, which is what he did in New York State this past week.
Trump’s lack of commitment to campaigning draws ridicule from Democrats, stressing what they consider are his failing cognitive capabilities. Harris has raised more campaign cash and volunteers than Republicans, or anyone imagined possible, is better organized, and has a strong break-the-glass-ceiling appeal to women. American families outraged at the Supreme Court’s partisan 6-3 decision to end the right to abortions on a national level know Harris is a strong supporter of a woman’s right to control her own body. The core of anti-abortion voters supporting Trump is thought to be about 30 percent of the Republican voters. Republican male candidates do not appear to understand women. The best example is Bernie Moreno, a car dealer who is the US Senate candidate in Ohio. He told a rally crowd he did not understand why women over 50 years of age were concerned about abortion.
Really? Because many of them have sisters, sons and daughters, nieces and nephews. Attitudes like Moreno’s ignore that abortion is a family planning issue, which the Trump Project 2025 manifesto makes clear it wants to restrict. America’s choice is increasingly between chaos from a male authoritarian or a woman who has spent her entire adult life in public service. Because Harris is the daughter born in California to an immigrant Indian mother and is married to a Jamaican immigrant, she gains added credibility talking about immigration and economic policies to help low and middle-income families. Conversely, this frightens voters who believe in Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan, which is what the deportation of immigrants is all about.
Plato, the ancient Greek philosopher, is credited with writing: “Necessity is the mother of invention”. This describes Republican party’s behaviour as it appeals to groups that it historically avoids—non-white voters. However, when minority members want to run for office, enthusiastic Republicans ignore any careful vetting of their backgrounds.
Two years ago, George Santos re-invented himself as a successful Republican businessman, winning a Long Island Congressional seat. Reality took two years to bring his expulsion in December, 2023. He now faces felony prosecution.
This election’s poster-person for unacceptable behaviour is Mark Robinson, a Black-American in his first term as lieutenant governor of North Carolina. He seeks to replace a popular Democrat who is term-limited. Robinson is an unabashed right-wing torrent of hate, despite which he was warmly endorsed by Trump. Publicly he has said and posted things like calling homosexuality and transgenderism “filth” and arguing that abortion “isn’t about protecting the lives of mothers”, but about “killing the child because you weren’t responsible enough to keep your skirt down or your pants up and not get pregnant by your own choice because you felt like getting your groove thing on.”
Even with that, he was only about 10 points behind his Democratic opponent when the roof fell in with an investigative report revealing his postings on a pornographic website where he enjoyed looking at the very transgender women he castigated in his political life. He referred to himself as a black nazi in one posting. Almost his entire campaign staff resigned and in a visit to the state, Trump avoided mentioning Robinson.
North Carolina’s 16 electoral votes are a must-win for Trump. In the US presidential election, the winner of a state’s popular votes determines the allocation of a state’s electoral votes. In turn, the electoral votes are based on the size of the congressional delegation, which is population-related. California has 54 of the 538 votes available. This system was created at the formation of the nation in the 18th century to pacify the fears of southern slave-owning states that had modest numbers of white people and would lose control to urban states with greater voting populations.
If the Robinson issue in North Carolina reduces Republican interest in voting for Trump or voting at all, those 16 votes could determine who wins the presidency. A critical point is that the popular vote within each state only determines the state’s role in the electoral college. The best way to understand the issue is to consider that in 2016 Hilary Clinton beat Donald Trump nationally by 2.9 million votes, but lost in the electoral college, 304-227.
Unlike India and most nations that have electoral organizations to run elections of national importance, the individual states manage the national election taking place within the state. Despite some national regulations the majority of all election law results in 50 shades of elections.
If there is a surprise for the last few weeks, it may be what is contained in a new 180-page motion that Special Counsel Jack Smith is filing with regard to presidential immunity in Trump’s Washington DC federal court election interference case. Trump faces four felony counts over his effort to subvert the 2020 election. In July, the US Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity threw the case into confusion when the justices ruled 6-3 that the president had immunity from prosecution for virtually all official acts. Subsequent reporting revealed that Chief Justice John Roberts had forcefully suggested that decision to the other justices and then wrote the decision that protects Trump in ways no president has needed in the past 235 years.
Judge Tanya S Chutkan had asked Smith to refile and he was granted permission to exceed the usual 45-page limit. It could provide additional insight into Trump’s efforts to throw out election results. In green-lighting prosecutors “request to file an unusually sizeable motion”, Chutkan noted the Supreme Court’s direction that she needs to engage in a “close” and “fact-specific” examination of this indictment and related accusations.
In court filings, prosecutors said that they are filing their brief under seal, given the “substantial amount of sensitive material,” but will later file a public version that has been redacted. Trump, assisted by a long list of defense attorneys, has managed more financial and legal escapes than Harry Houdini.
In just five weeks, the world will learn which USA will exist after the November 5 election. Will it be Indian-American Kamala Harris, as its first female president, or the chaos of retribution that Trump says will be a part of his return?
We will know when an estimated 160,000,000 votes are counted. Perhaps longer based on legal efforts to prove again what never happened in 2020 when Trump claimed his election victory was stolen.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABCand CNN and also consults for several Indian channels