The U.S. Presidential elections on Tuesday, November 5, barely two days away, is still too close to call. In India, the odds increasingly seem to be on Donald Trump beating Kamala Harris to the White House.
In this free-wheeling chat on The Gist, academic, journalist, and digital evangelist Sree Sreenivasan, who’s probably among the best known Indian-Americans in the digital domain, takes us on a spellbinding tour of the U.S. election system, explaining how social media and modern day journalism have turned it into a totally different ball game when compared to earlier elections.
Along the way, Professor Sreenivasan, (‘Sree’ to his friends), who, apart from being one of the founders of the South Asian Journalists Association, has also served as chief Digital Officer of New York City and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, delves into little known nuances of the U.S. electoral system. He also examines how the South Asian community too has changed its traditional voting patterns, and tries to explain why over 40 per cent of married women who voted in the 2020 presidential elections rallied behind Trump, despite his reputation as a misogynist and the Republican Party’s position against abortion.
Former President “Bill Clinton had this good framing. He said abortion should be safe, legal and rare,” says Prof. Sreenivasan. “And so it’s a matter of the mother, the father, the doctor…” he says.
“I totally believe that. But here in this country, it’s become a political litmus test, a political fireball. You can pick anything you want, and it dominates the conversation. And it’s hard to for outsiders to understand why it is so. And the reason is that the conservative lobby, that believes in the sanctity of life as they see it. By the way, they also believe in capital punishment,” he notes.
As for putting abortion on the ballot, “They (the Republicans) want to end all abortion. And therefore, if Kamala Harris, will make sure she will sign it into law, codify the right to abortion, whereas Donald Trump will make sure it’s gone. That’s what they mean by that.”
He also speaks of Project 2025, a document which, in its own words, maps a “plan to unite the Conservative movement and the American people against elite rule and woke culture warriors.”
“It says things that you’d be shocked to hear, including the fact that they want to abolish the Department of Education.,” says Prof Sreenivasan. “In India, people know that government matters, that the different ministries, the health ministry, civil aviation, all of those things, railways, all of those keep India going.”
But “in America, upwards of 40% of the country believes that the government is bad,” he explains. They believe “all government is bad. The best thing you can do is get rid of the government, and that if you abolish the Department of Education, that’s a good thing. The Civil Aviation Ministry too, which keeps the planes in the air. But that’s the world we’re in now,” he says.
“I will say, on the election night, don’t just watch for the presidential race. This country is run, not at the presidential level. It’s a run down ballot, as we call it. The other races, the congressional races, the senator race, the Senate races, governors, all of that matters as much as the presidency. So, check that.”
To get more intriguing and interesting insights into the American elections and what this particular one means for the world in general and India in particular, watch the full interview.
