Seeing Harris’ candidacy in ethnic terms is puerile — bigger issues are at stake for the American republic
Trump was on an unstoppable march, about to return to power, taking over from incumbent Joe Biden, who looked weak and hesitant.
Then, a deranged individual shot at Trump, offering hundreds of memes, including one that said, 'Man shoots, misses Trump, wounds Biden'. For that's what happened. With a halo around him, Trump's return seemed inevitable.
In Milwaukee, he spoke of unity and then reinforced divisive tones at the Republican convention. He paraded his vice-presidential nominee James D Vance, with his 'exotic' Indian wife, the Yale-educated Usha Chilkuri. Like her husband, she once hated everything Trump stood for, but was now going to support him.
But then, Biden finally stepped aside. Trump was caught gearing up for the wrong battle. Democrat leaders paid ritual tributes to Biden, but quickly — remarkably quickly — regrouped behind Kamala Harris. Instead of fighting an 81-year-old man, Trump would have to deal with a prosecutor not yet 60, and a woman.
Yes, as former British PM Harold Wilson once put it, a week is a long time in politics.
Harris has a Black father, an Indian mother, and personifies the amalgamated America that makes the US so wonderful. But Trump saw that as an opening. Instead of challenging Harris over her record as 'border czar', as she was described in the early days of the Biden administration, he went for what he thought was jugular — her mixed ethnic heritage.
At a spectacularly churlish and inept performance before a convention of Black journalists, Trump asserted that Harris
