Joe Biden cried as he bid farewell to his party at the convention in Chicago just weeks after he took the significant decision to withdraw from the US presidential election. His decision to step down over concerns about his age and declining control of cognitive functions, has transformed the race to the White House so much it is unrecognisable from the post-debate days in which it seemed all Donald Trump had to do to win was to stay in the November 5 poll.
It is quite remarkable how Joe Biden’s vice-president and Democratic Party nominee, Kamala Harris, has changed the scenario to the extent it is being said now that it is her election to lose. Not even the Democrats may have envisaged such a transformation that all the popularity polls are suggesting Kamala Harris is ahead of former president Donald Trump in a tight contest.
The polls may still revolve around how the swing states vote, specifically what mandate Georgia and Pennsylvania voters give their electoral college representatives. And yet it is Harris’ candidature, as the first person of Black and Indian and South Asian descent, that may give a woman the best shot at breaking the glass ceiling that Hillary Clinton just failed to do.
The run-up to the polls, now only 77 days away, has had more show than substance, more invective than reasoned debate, more talk around the economy than management plans. But then this is the most modern United States, politically polarised and tending to be more impressed with social media messaging than facts.
Donald Trump seems to have lost his stride after the change in the Democratic candidate, his obsessive hate for Joe Biden perhaps not matched by a zeal to beat Kamala Harris to the White House. All he has had to contribute to the campaign — some of which has not impressed even his party seniors — has been his switching on his racial hatred towards his opponent and throwing such tired tactics as “birthism” at her.
The campaign has descended to such depths that Mr Trump even promoted a fake AI image of a Taylor Swift endorsement of his candidature that stands exposed. But the lure of the still most powerful seat in the world today is such that he is willing to risk alienating women and the young voters who may not be mesmerised by his white supremacist and racist stance, which the pop diva had pointed out four years ago when she endorsed Mr Biden.
