Biden has 90 percent chance of winning- Kamala Harris’s Uncle

A former journalist, academician and scholar and Kamala Harris's maternal uncle Dr. Balachandran spoke to senior journalist Smita Sharma at her house in South Delhi. Asked about the 2016 election surveys that got it wrong, he argues ‘2016 was an aberration for a variety of reasons’.

New Delhi: As America goes to vote, the big question is-- 'will it elect its first woman Vice President four years after it denied Hillary Clinton the chance to be the first woman in Oval Office? As the first Indian-American, Afro-American and South Asian woman on a vice-presidential ticket Kamala Harris has several milestones in her career already. But the biggest ones are yet to happen. Her elderly maternal uncle Dr. G Balachandran feels Biden has a 90 percent chance to win the race.

A former journalist, academician and scholar, Dr. Balachandran spoke to senior journalist Smita Sharma at her house in South Delhi. Asked about the 2016 election surveys that got it wrong, he argues ‘2016 was an aberration for a variety of reasons’. “Not many people knew Trump, he had not done any public service. There was a certain degree of unease with the policies of Democrats for Working class Whites,” he says. He further adds that ‘Trump has not done anything substantial and his biggest failure is the way he tackled the Covid situation’.

The family is proud of Kamala Harris’s achievements but with close blood relatives on her mother’s side, now spread out in different countries, there are no celebration plans afoot. However, prayers are being held for her victory by the locals of her Chennai based village, says her uncle.

Recalling Kamal Harris’ strengths as a public figure, Dr. Balachandran calls her competent and incisive. He adds these strengths have been visible in her two-decades-long career including as the Attorney General of the biggest state of California to being a Senator.

“She is very strongly committed to civil rights and Afro American movement because she has been imbibed in it since she was two years old when my sister used to take her. Those days it was very uncommon for the Indians to be in the civil rights movement. She has grown up in her Afro American community,” her uncle recalls. “She will bring a lot even from point of domestic legislation,” he adds.

Balachandran’s daughter Sharada Balachandran Orihuela, a professor of English at Maryland University in Washington, is currently with her first cousin and contender Kamala Harris in the last hours of the campaign. Asked if there has been some shift in the diaspora which was considered as a traditional supporter of Democrats, Dr. Balachandran says, “Some of them, somehow think trump and Modi are buddies. They might have shifted to Trump. But, by and large, 60-70 percent or two-thirds of Asian and Indian Americans are still democrats.”

Wishing his niece success in this election the proud uncle recalls that in the 90s when she first ran for District Attorney and stood up for her convictions particularly her opposition to the death penalty, her uncle who was visiting his sister and Kamala’s mother, knew she had the firm potential for bigger political fights. And today, Harris is hoping she will make history as the first woman Vice President of the world’s oldest democracy. This would also increase the possibilities of her being the first woman Presidential resident of White House in 2024. But the million-dollar question is whom will America vote for? The jury is still out.