A spirited campaign

It was an all-out last battle for Joe Biden, but it is just the beginning for Kamala Harris

- VAISAKH E. HARI

On election day in the United States, the people of Thulasenthirapuram town in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruvarur district held special prayers for Kamala Harris. This is the ancestral town of her maternal grandfather P.V. Gopalan.

Hopes had risen in their hearts, and across India and America, that Kamala would script history as the first American vice president of South Asian descent. She looked the part throughout the campaign and it was a spirited fight.

Their joint campaign began on August 12, when they walked hand-in-hand on to a podium in a high school gym in Wilmington, Delaware. The weight of history fidgeted over the moment, overshadowing social restrictions caused by the Covid pandemic. It was their first public appearance together, in the former vice president’s hometown, and here he would announce her as his running mate.

Dressed in navy blue, Kamala sported her all-weather “power pearls”. As Biden approached the microphone, she sat cross-legged in a seat behind him, exuding supreme confidence.

Whom Biden would pick as his running mate was as great a matter of public interest as how he himself would fare—the gregarious, all-American, Ray-Ban wearing Amtrak evangelist was prone to gaffe. Who could forget him complimenting the 2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama as the “first clean and nice-looking mainstream African-American”!

Atop the school podium, Biden promised his listeners on camera: “We will rebuild this country once we are elected, God willing.”