As box after box of ballots are counted, the United States, and the rest of the world, hold their breaths. By late evening Indian time, the broad contours are clear: final results in the 2020 US presidential election teeters on the finishing line. As we went to press, Republican President Donald Trump was lagging behind his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, but only just. Loud cries resound across newsrooms: it’s still too early, and close, to call.
Republican and Democratic strongholds like Florida and Texas, and California and New York, respectively, have played true. The electoral photo finish is playing out in key battleground states like Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. And counting in Arizona and Nevada are projected to go on till November 5. Of particularly crucial importance are the votes cast by millions—largely due to concerns over the raging pandemic—over postal ballots. It’s a bitterly divisive issue too—with Democratic supporters taking to postal ballots with gusto, Trump has already cast his doubts on their genuineness. With the election on knife’s edge in the swing states, it’s likely to be contested by both parties. A battery of lawyers is at the ready for both to take the challenge to court.
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Speaking from the White House hours after the counting began, President Donald Trump—continuing with his practice of traducing decorum and tradition—declared himself the likely winner, cried ‘fraud’ and announced he would go to the supreme court to ensure that the elections were not ‘stolen’ from him. He also falsely claimed that voting was continuing in some states (implying those ruled by Democratic governors). By doing so the president has called into question the efficacy of the US election. All it has done is energise his support base to fight for imagined discrepancies in the counting.
With millions of mail-in votes, counting takes time, and various states have different rules on counting postal and early votes. Much ahead of the polls, Trump had insisted that mail-in ballots paved the way for election fraud, questioning their validity knowing their popularity with many Democratic voters.
This has been an extraordinary election held under the shadow of a pandemic. It is also a period of unprecedented racial tension that began with the death of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement, sharply polarising the nation. The economic slowdown and the movement for racial justice have all coalesced to play a part in the elections. Trump’s playing up a bogey of Biden de-fanging the police force and Black youths on the rampage has frightened his staunchly White constituency, leading to shops and businesses across the US boarded up and increasing gun sales. If Trump does win, it would be because of the consolidation of White votes under his extremely divisive campaign, with a nod and a wink to White supremacist groups.
The system of the electoral college makes US presidential polls complicated. They are not won by winning the majority of the popular votes. The one-man one-vote for every adult holds little meaning here. The winning candidate has to win 270 of the 538 electoral college votes. An electoral college is a number of people chosen by each state to vote for the president, and the strength of the college varies according to the population. The battleground states for 2020 all have large electoral collages—Florida (29), Pennsylvania (20), Michigan (16), North Carolina (15) and Wisconsin (10).
With US foreign policy decisions affecting many countries, interest in US polls are all-pervasive. Iran and China will not be pleased if Trump returns; Israel, Saudi Arabia, Russia and UAE will be delighted. For India, it makes little difference whether it is Trump or Joe Biden who makes the cut.
Ballots cascade out of a box in a counting station.
The broad parameters of American policy towards India will not change—there is rare unanimity on India between Republicans and Democrats. One reason for the consensus is to curb China’s growing assertive posture in the South China Sea, Taiwan Straits and in the eastern Pacific. The idea was first articulated by the ‘neocons’ in the Bush administration, who wanted to balance China by promoting another Asian power. That has remained a constant in US strategic thinking.
“There has been bipartisan support since 2000 across the political spectrum in the US to shape the environment around the rise of China. India, as a large democratic country, fits the alternative option other than China,’’ says Arun Singh, a former diplomat. He explains that purpose of the US-India defence cooperation is to show other Asian countries that their security can be best assured by a loose coalition of countries headed by the US that believe in ensuring a rule-based order in the Indo-Pacific.
Democratic president Bill Clinton led the way to repairing ties with a March 2000 visit to India in his second term. Republican George W. Bush carried forward the thaw with the landmark India-US civil nuclear deal in 2006. It was during Democrat Barack Obama’s visit to India in 2015 that India and the US called for a rule-based Asia Pacific. Donald Trump went a step further and changed the nomenclature from ‘Asia-Pacific’ to ‘Indo-Pacific’, roping in India and extending the term to include the Indian Ocean.
New Delhi, including foreign minister S. Jaishankar, who was involved in the civil nuclear deal, is well aware that as chairman of the senate relations committee, Joe Biden played a bipartisan role to get the 123 Agreement (the domestic legislation needed to sign the nuclear agreement) passed in the US Congress. A Biden administration would give “high priority” to US-India ties.
On China, too, Trump and Biden have similar views. In fact, the entire American establishment agrees on Trump’s tough China policy. He has correctly drawn the world’s attention to China’s predatory trade practices and called out China on several counts, not least for its aggressive behaviour in Asia. As Biden cannot afford to be soft on China, the 2+2 dialogue, the Quad, the Malabar exercises as well as the Indo-Pacific policy will continue.
On trade issues, Biden will be much easier to deal with, as he is not a disruptor or transcational politician like Trump. A trade pact promised during Trump’s tenure is not yet on the table. But negotiating a trade deal with Biden would be smoother. H1B visas—of vital concern to India, will no longer be a problem too.
But there is one problem with a Biden White House, as Observer Research Foundation’s Harsh Pant points out. “Much will depend on how well Biden is able to manage the Democratic party, which has several strands. The progressive elements will hope to assert themselves…. They will want Biden to take a tough stand on human rights, labour laws etc.’’ For India, this may mean a tough stand on Kashmir, the CAA-NRC and minorities issues. Biden himself had already mentioned Kashmir earlier, but is unlikely to publicly ruffle India’s feathers.
“There will be a greater discussion of the need for India to live up to its democratic ideals (religious freedom, democracy, Kashmir) even if these issues are not allowed to derail the relationship. Democrats truly believe that the relationship with India is values-based and democracy, pluralism and religious freedom lie at the heart of that belief,” says Aparna Pandey of the Hudson Institute.
