The United States Presidential election is scheduled to be conducted on November 3, 2020, with current President Donald Trump of the Republican Party and Joe Biden of the Democratic Party as presidential candidates. This is going to be quite the event, with the nation divided over Donald Trump’s rule as President and the world in the grips of a pandemic of epic proportions. Voters will decide whether the right-wing nationalist Republicans led by Donald Trump will run the administration of one of the most powerful nations in the world for another four years, or whether the more liberal and left-leaning Democratic Party will return to power with Biden at the helm.
DONALD TRUMP AND MIKE PENCE
Long before he contested the Presidential elections and won, Donald Trump was a well-known American personality. His career in politics was preceded by his career as one of the wealthiest businesspersons in the USA and as a television personality. Born and raised in Queens, a borough of New York City, Trump attended Fordham University for two years and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He assumed the mantle of his father’s real-estate business in 1971, becoming its president and changing the name to The Trump Organization. Trump also started a number of side ventures after this by licensing his own name. In fact, Donald Trump is known for putting his name on a number of business ventures that were successes as well as failures. Trump’s political positions have been described as populist, protectionist, and nationalist. He entered the 2016 presidential race as a Republican and was elected in a surprise victory over Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, although he lost the popular vote.
Trump has made a number of false statements during his campaigns and presidency, and many more statements that can be construed as being racist. During his presidency, Trump ordered a travel ban on citizens from several Muslim-majority countries, citing security concerns. He has always been vocal about and followed a nationalist America-first agenda – withdrawing the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, the Paris Agreement on climate change, and the Iran nuclear deal. He also imposed trade tariffs which sparked a trade war with China, recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and withdrew U.S. troops from northern Syria.
Mike Pence is the current Vice President of the USA and Trump’s running mate for the 2020 elections. Pence was born and raised in Columbus, Indiana and graduated from Hanover College and earned a law degree from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law before entering private practice. A strong endorser of Republican ideas and conservative politics, he is known for his stance on supporting the National Rifle Association, influencing gun laws and promoting gun ownership, as well siding with industrialists. Pence had stronger connections during the 2016 elections to the politically influential big donors, the Kochs, than Trump did. On November 8, 2016, Pence was elected vice president of the United States as Trump’s running mate. Soon after the election, he was appointed chairman of President-elect Trump’s transition team.
During the transition phase of the Trump administration, Pence was reported as holding a large degree of influence in the administration due to his roles as a mediator between Trump and congressional Republicans, for reassuring conservatives about Trump’s conservative credentials, and his influence in determining Donald Trump’s cabinet. Pence was a key player in the Trump-Ukraine scandal and the Trump impeachment inquiry. Pence had at least two phone conversations and an in-person meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine. Pence met with Zelensky in Poland on September 1, 2019, during an unexpected delay in U.S. military aid to Ukraine. Pence later told the press that he did not mention 2020 presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden to Zelensky, but raised issues regarding Ukrainian corruption.
JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS
Joe Biden served as Vice President of the USA during the Obama administration. Biden was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and New Castle County, Delaware. He studied at the University of Delaware before receiving his law degree from Syracuse University. While clerking for a law firm in 1968, he grew a liking for Republicans since the incumbent Democratic governor’s conservative racial policies irked him, although he did not register as a Republican since he disapproved of Nixon, registering as an independent instead. Tragedy struck when his wife and infant daughter were the casualties of a road accident. His sons, however, survived. For the next 5 years, he did the best he could to take care of his family all by himself as well as carry out his official duties. Biden met his second wife, Jill, in 1975. They married in 1977. During his first years in the Senate, Biden focused on consumer protection and environmental issues and called for greater government accountability.
He ran for president in 1988, but did not win. Soon after the 2008 election, Biden was appointed chairman of president-elect Obama’s transition team. Biden chose veteran Democratic lawyer and aide Ron Klain as his chief of staff and Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney as his director of communications. Delaware newspaper columnist Harry F. Themal wrote that Biden “occupies the sensible center of the Democratic Party”. Which is exactly what he is basing his campaign on. He actively opposes Trump’s racial rhetoric and antagonism against immigrants, promising a better future for those wishing to achieve the American dream. His running mate, Kamala Harris is a woman of Indian descent – and that makes this election especially important to us Indians. Having an Indian-American in the heart of the American federal administration will hopefully shape American policies in favor of India over the next four years.
Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican-American father. Her mother, Shyamala Gopalan, was a biologist whose work on the progesterone receptor gene stimulated work in breast cancer research. Her father, Donald J. Harris, is a Stanford University professor emeritus of economics. Born in Oakland, California, Harris graduated from Howard University and the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. She began her career in the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office, before being recruited to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office and later the City Attorney of San Francisco’s office. In 2002, she ran for district Attorney of San Francisco, winning by a 56% margin. Just prior to Harris taking office, the felony conviction rate was 50% and by 2009, it was 76%. Convictions of drug dealers increased from 56% in 2003 to 74% in 2006. She served as Attorney General of California for two terms – 2011 and 2014. As District Attorney and Attorney General, Harris has been outspoken against corporations who flaunt environmental safety laws, trans-national criminal organizations and financial groups who prey on the common folk. She also championed consumer protection and privacy rights, criminal justice reform as well as LGBTQ rights.
In February 2016, the California Democratic Party voted at its convention to endorse Harris for the United States Senate, who received nearly eighty percent of the vote. Three months later, Governor Jerry Brown endorsed her, followed by President Obama and VP Biden on July 19. In the November 2016 election, Harris became a US Senator, capturing over sixty percent of the vote. Following her victory, she promised to protect immigrants from the policies of President-elect Donald Trump and announced her intention to remain Attorney General through the end of 2016. As Senator, she actively opposed Trump’s “Muslim ban” policy and voted to convict him on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. As a person and as a politician, Kamala Harris has proven herself time and time again to be leader well deserving of the American people’s support and trust.
WHAT IS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE?
When Americans go to the polls in presidential elections they’re actually voting for a group of officials who make up the electoral college. These people are electors and their job is to choose the president and vice-president. The electoral college meets every four years, a few weeks after election day, to carry out that task.
There are a total of 538 electors, with the number of electors being proportional to the population of each state. California leads the country in the number of electors with a total of 55, while some smaller states like Alaska satisfy the minimum requirement of 3. Each elector represents one electoral vote, and a candidate needs to gain a majority of the votes – 270 or more to win the presidential race.
SO WHO WILL WIN THE 2020 ELECTIONS?
As election day approaches, polling companies are trying to gauge the mood of the nation by asking voters which candidate they want to vote for. National polls are a good guide as to how popular a candidate is across the country as a whole, but they’re not always an accurate way to predict the final outcome of the election. In 2016, for example, Hillary Clinton led in the polls and won nearly three million more votes than Donald Trump did, but she still lost – that’s because of the electoral college system, so winning the most votes doesn’t necessarily mean that the candidate will win the election. Joe Biden has been ahead of Donald Trump in most national polls since the start of the year. He has hovered around 50% in recent months and has had a 10-point lead on occasions.
On account of the electoral college system, some states have more importance as compared to the others. Certain states almost always vote the same way, while there are a few swing states which are the grounds for the final battle. These states are called the battleground states, and this is where elections are won or lost. Some battleground states have a lot more electoral college votes as compared to others so candidates often spend a lot more time campaigning in them.
The coronavirus pandemic has dominated headlines in the US since the start of the year and the response to President Trump’s actions has been split predictably along party lines. Support for his approach peaked in mid-March after he declared a national emergency and made $50 billion available to states to stop the spread of the virus. At this point, 55% of Americans approved of his actions, but any support he had from Democrats disappeared after that, while Republicans continued to back their president. By July, the data suggests his own supporters had begun to question his response – but there was a slight uptick in August and September. Experts claim that the death toll may rise to around 230,000 by election day. The pandemic is almost guaranteed to cause Trump’s numbers to drop even more over the course of the next month.
Apart from the pandemic, the Trump administration has also been in the limelight for Donald Trump’s hardline approach to immigration, foreign relations and Trump’s personal shenanigans. In response to an interview, he subtly hinted that should he lose the election, there might not be a peaceful transition of power. To this, Joe Biden replied that his team is ready for any such troublesome behavior on the part of the president, and that White House personnel are perfectly capable of removing trespassers from the compound. Mr. Biden has himself been accused by conservatives of stoking unrest over the election by saying in August: “Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is re-elected?”
IN CONCLUSION…
With the rise of nationalist sentiment in major countries like India, China and the USA, the support for Trump is high among Americans. But his failure in containing the coronavirus pandemic, disinclination to go against right-wing militias and racist outlook may turn out to be his undoing. Joe Biden is a veteran Democrat who has always been anti-gun and anti-racism, having contested the presidential elections before. With Trump’s dwindling support, Biden is currently enjoying a significant lead in the polls. With the election still more than a month away, it’s hard to say who will emerge victorious, as a lot can happen over the course of this time. If Trump does retain his presidency, however, chances are he will finish what he started in 2016 – undoing the American open-mindedness and acceptance that took years to achieve, creating rifts on the basis of race, religion and political ideals across the nation and running the American economy into the ground.
