New Delhi: Visuals of private and commercial buildings boarding up in large cities of America fearing large scale violence as elections are underway are unprecedented.
Former Indian Ambassador to US Meera Shankar says this unprecedented situation in the world’s oldest democracy with institutional credentials stems from the unprecedented presidency of Donald Trump and his calls to his followers to reject election results if they do not announce a second term win for him.
Speaking to Senior Journalist Smita Sharma, Ambassador Shankar also underlined how American society has been polarised like never before and the centrist voices in both the mainstream parties which would earlier work on national consensus on foreign and economic policy have given way to the extreme right of centre or left of centre voices. In this exclusive interview, the former diplomat also spoke about the different views of Trump and Biden, why multi-party system has not been favoured in the US, how to look at the poll predictions and swing states among other issues.
Q-Your views on apprehensions of large scale violence and tensions on the ground on Election Day in the world’s oldest democracy?
Clearly, it is something which is unprecedented. Nobody would have thought that which such institutional democratic credentials the US could be facing a situation like this. But a lot of it flows from the almost unprecedented presidency that they have had. And from President Trump’s own statements saying that he is not going to accept the results of an election if it is fraudulently taken by the Democrats and mail-in ballots are a source of fraud and so on. So basically because it is one of the political players who sees himself as behind in the race is raising questions of the legality and the authenticity of the elections in advance.
Therefore his supporters are also whipping up this kind of frenzy, you have had right-wing militias oiling their guns, things like that, so the impetus is not something that has descended from the heavens. It has descended to this point because one of the candidates has made this a key part of of his electoral strategy.
Q- There have been bitter contests in the past but is the 2020 election going to be a real turning point in US history?
Yes. There are two very different approaches and visions that the two candidates have put forward. Be it on economic policy, on issues of health, be it on issues of climate change and energy policy or on foreign policy. You have two candidates with very very different approaches.
Each one has been trying to convince the American public that theirs is the right approach. It is also a reflection of how polarised America has become in recent years.
In the past, you always had a group of centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans who could work with each other across the aisle to shape a consensus on foreign and economic policy.
Now that central ground where this national consensus could be shaped has evaporated. You have the two parties pulling in very different directions. On the one hand, the Republican Party has been captured with the Tea Party movement which presented a kind of right-wing anti-state fundamentalism. On the other hand, in the Democratic Party, you have the left-wing which has become quite assertive and many of the youngsters who have come in from the Democratic Party to the Congress and House of Representatives are from the left-wing. So both sides in a sense seem to be pulling in different directions.
Vice President Biden is a centrist. As of now, the Democratic Party is united in their effort to keep Trump out. Even the left-wingers, Bernie Sanders, have given their support to Biden wholeheartedly for his candidature. But once the election is over, in case Biden wins, then he is going to have the challenge crafting a consensus and carrying his own left-wingers along with him as well as the moderate wing of the Republican Party which has been very vocal against Trump.
The traditional Republican establishment be it those who worked with Reagan or George Bush Sr. Or George Bush Jr., many of them have come out openly against Trump and have been running what they call the Lincoln Project named after Abraham Lincoln. There they are openly canvassing, taking out advertisements against Trump and saying Vote for Biden in these elections.
Trump’s own constituency which is solid right constituency remains very firm in his support. So he has 42 per cent approval ratings even at the worst of times. His approval ratings have remained pretty steady around this point. He is playing this card of law and order, fear of turmoil caused by bad race demonstrations and so on to try to win back some of the white voters who have deserted him. And making an economic pitch for African or Latino voters saying that their unemployment was perhaps the least during my term prior to Covid.
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Q- Why has a multiparty system not evolved in America?
I think they are finding it difficult to handle the two-party system. They do have independent candidates who stand for the Presidency. You have seen that earlier in Al Gore’s time. Even last time you had an independent candidate with the support of the greens who stood against Hillary. But mainstream American politics has really revolved around these two parties and others have not made much of a dent. Both parties encompass different streams of opinion. So that kind of reflects the diversity of opinion. The Tea Party is not separate. It is part of the Republican Party. Just as the Progressives in the Democratic Party, the Left-wing, they are not separate.
Q- What are the odds of American pollsters and pundits getting it wrong for the second consecutive elections with national polls giving significant leads to Joe Biden?
Most of the polls are showing Biden in the lead at the national level. If you look at the polls which average all the polls that have been conducted the previous week or in last 15 days, then the lead is anywhere between 7.8 to 10 per cent they are giving to Biden at the national level. Question is it is not the majority of votes which determines who the President will be. It is the majority of the electoral college votes and these are state-wise elections.
Last time Hillary lost even though she got more of the popular votes by almost 3 million than President Trump. But she lost because she got fewer of the electoral college votes. She lost the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin which had been traditionally considered to be firmly and solidly behind the Democrats. But Trump succeeded in flipping the white working class which had traditionally been with Democrats to his side by his message fo America First, Economic Protectionism and bringing jobs back to America.
There is a constituency in America which feels left behind by globalisation and it has not worked to their advantage. That it has led to the transfer of manufacturing jobs to China and lot of other IT or software jobs to India, And this is also exerting downward pressure on wage rises in America because if workers ask for a wage rise then the company says we become uncompetitive so we will just shift manufacturing overseas.
There is a whole constituency in America which feels badly hit by globalisation. So they flipped and went to Trump. Here Biden has an edge over Hillary because his own background is working class. So right now polls show him comfortably ahead in Michigan, Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, the lead is down to 5.5%. Then if you take Florida and Georgia, the lead that Biden has is 2%. So it is well within the margin of error and these are the states that Trump is focusing on.
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