On November 5, voters in the United States will elect their next president and vice president.
Two expressions are used inconsistently in relation to the US – ‘contiguous’ and ‘continental’. ‘Contiguous United States” refers to the lower 48 states that share land borders, including the District of Columbia, while ‘continental United States’ all the 50 states except Hawaii.
I have been privileged to travel to North America on a number of occasions. Since 1999, when I first visited the US to be garlanded as one of four winners of a human rights award at the prestigious Columbia University in New York City, Americans have been kind to me, granting me five-year multiple entry visas whenever I applied for the vital clearance document at their embassy in Nairobi.
And I have never disappointed, always returning to my humble abode in Kenya after accomplishing every mission that prompted my visit on every occasion, to the annoyance of kin and kith who have never understood why a poor African should perpetually return home after gaining entry to capitals that stowaways freeze to death in feckless bids to escape to.
During the 2000 presidential elections, in which Republican nominee George W. Bush, then governor of Texas and eldest son of George H. W. Bush, narrowly defeated Democratic vice president Al Gore, I was at the Highlander Research and Education Centre, formerly Highlander Folk School, a social justice leadership training school and cultural centre in New Market, Tennessee.
It was enlightening that though Tennessee was Gore’s home state, Bush beat still him, confirming to what extent parochial kinship has no place in advanced democracies.
This year’s presidential election will be the 60th. The ever exultant Democratic nominee Kamala Harris will face off against former president Donald Trump. Harris is the current vice president, having received the baton from outgoing President Joe Biden, who heeded calls to withdraw his re-election bid due to persistent concerns about his chances of success. Biden performed poorly in the first presidential debate, to the chagrin of party supporters and financiers.
Not new to the rigours of presidential campaigns, having been a contender for the ticket alongside Biden and other Democrats ahead of the 2020 presidential polls, Harris’s entry into the race injected a breath of fresh air, easily catapulting her ahead of Republican competitor Trump in what’s turning out to be one of the closest elections to the tenancy of the most powerful seat in the world – the White House.
But as poll date draws nearer, the hitherto wide margin between the two protagonists has been narrowing, with successive opinion polls signalling a situation of uncertainty until all the votes, more so those of the Electoral College, are cast and counted.
This is particularly troubling for Harris’ supporters in the diaspora. As the Philadelphia Inquirer observed in its endorsement of Harris on October 25, Harris’ diaspora supporters thought that “while the baker’s dozen list could go on and on, those eligible to vote in this historic polls face an easy but tectonic choice in the race for the White House, and the choice is clear and obvious”.
But this seems not to be the case. An ABC News/Ipsos poll released on October 27 gave Harris a 51 percent lead over Trump’s 47. Registered voters, Ipsos reported, trust Trump more than Harris on the economy and inflation. Harris has narrowed Trump’s advantage on the economy in the months since April.
“Registered voters see Harris as better at protecting democracy, abortion, and looking out for the middle class than Trump,” according to the pollsters. But the rider is that “it’s the Electoral College that holds the cards”.
Promotion and protection of democracy and human rights are the “principal” and “fundamental” goals of US foreign policy. Based on Kamala Harris’ impressive human rights credentials, I join her supporters in the diaspora to wish her success in this year’s presidential polls.
— The writer is the Executive
Director of the Kenya National Civil Society Centre;
[email protected]
