Indian Americans throw 2020 “challenge” at Trump
By Ashok Dixit, Editor (Foreign Affairs)
New Delhi: This has been a week high on celebratory optics for the Indian Diaspora, and particularly for Indian Americans, a majority of whom are desirous of their voices and views being heard globally.
Well! That appeal or demand has finally been answered, not singularly, but doubly, in the unique form of two pretty well known Indian American women politicians – Kamala Devi Harris and Tulsi Gabbard – separately announcing themselves as aspiring candidates for the Office of the President of the United States (POTUS) in election year 2020.
California Democrat Senator Kamala Devi Harris announced her presidential candidacy on Monday (January 21). Thirty-seven-year-old Gabbard, also a Democrat in the US House of Representatives from Hawaii, announced her White House bid on January 11, while a third Indian American, Nikki Haley, a former Republican governor and US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, is reportedly seriously weighing pros and cons of whether to or not to join the race for being elected to the most powerful political position in the world.
Harris is widely seen as a serious contender for presidential nomination by the Democratic Party, though she, as do many others, know that she is not the first Indian American to make such an announcement for entering the Oval Office.
These three Indian American women have seemingly or inadvertently thrown a very strong challenge at incumbent White House occupant Donald Trump, who has confidently bragged about bagging a consecutive second term as president in the not too recent past.
The Indian American population is desperate to shake off the tag of being called “model migrants”. It believes that it has over achieved and delivered in their “adopted country”, especially, as one newspaper editorial has put it, in terms of “education, prosperity and integration”.
This community is now aggressively breaking into new ground i.e. American politics. The recently held mid-term Congressional elections revealed that in ample measure, where apart from Harris and Gabbard, 35 other remarkable Indian Americans broke through the political glass ceiling with some outstanding electoral runs and performances. Harris was the first Indian American to become a Senator, a clear signal that America’s five million strong Indian American community, which arrived in North America in the past century, is determinedly gung-ho about making a positive and significant political impact, and with speed.
History beckons a formidable Harris as she would be the first African-American woman and the first person of Asian heritage to be a major party nominee should she prevail in Primary season 2019-2020. This Friday (January 25), she will be making her first campaign stop in South Carolina, where African-Americans make up a majority of the electorate in that state’s early primary. Thereafter, according to a New York Times report, she moves to Iowa and New Hampshire, Nevada (which has a large and favourable Latino population) and South Carolina. Next week is “Super Tuesday”, when California will be among the four southern states casting their votes.
The NYT states that if there is anyone that has the potential to snare a majority share of the Democratic African-Americans; Hispanic and Asian-American vote, it is Harris. Other Democratic contenders - Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand and Tulsi Gabbard can be expected to be given a run for their money by Harris.