This US election could be the starting point of a much-needed reset for the USA and the entire world, but just being better than Trump will not be enough. 

Over the last weeks, the American political scene -and by extension the rest of the world- has been processing the news of Joe Biden dropping out as a candidate to the presidency in favor of his vice president Kamala Harris for what would have been his second term as president of the United States of America.

While this is something that had not been seen in American politics in nearly 50 years, it was not totally unexpected. And judging from the initial reactions, it was a very welcome development by most voters, who had become weary of Mr Biden’s ability to defeat Donald Trump at the ballot for a 2nd time in November. The democrat incumbent’s age and declining acuities had become the main talking point surrounding him for the better part of the last 2 years, and every single gaffe, slip-up or moment of hesitation was scrutinized ad-nauseam on every single media platform, political or not.

Whereas most of the United States seems relived, if not excited that Joe Biden is out of the race, a very different tune is coming out of the Donald Trump campaign headquarters and from the Republican Party at large.
Trump’s team was relishing the opportunity to face Biden, and badger him with childish but effective attacks like “sleepy Joe”, assured that Biden isn’t witty or sharp enough to verbally joust with the Manhattan billionaire. The recent upheaval now leaves their man as the old and frail candidate with memory issues and criminal convictions. 

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With the mood generally on the upswing, Kamala Harris is surfing an enormous wave of positivity ahead of perhaps the most challenging times since the early 2000s for a US president. However, there are very legitimate questions about her ability to navigate through the looming crises.

Whether the current Vice-President possesses the political chops to captain the ship remains a pointed question in many people’s minds. It is one thing to run as the anti-Donald Trump candidate, but it is an entirely different thing to occupy the White house and govern with a downright hostile congress looking to obstruct your agenda at every turn. While there is no doubt that she has a proven track record as a prosecutor and Attorney General, she has not exactly demonstrated that she was a political force in her previous failed bid at the presidency. Indeed, Mrs Harris has been of several minds on very important topics to the American public. 

 

On healthcare, she started off with support of Universal Healthcare (something that every developed nation on earth has except for the United States), but she has since backed off from her position in favor of the expansion of the current health care system which most Americans access through their employers. It should be noted that of all rich nations on Earth, the US spends more per capita than any other country, yet has the worst health outcomes than its counterparts by nearly every metric. Will a President Harris have the courage to take on a sector that has revealed politically toxic for her predecessors? The jury is still out on that front and on many other issues that have been at the forefront of American society like gun safety and access to affordable education and housing.

If domestic matters are guaranteed to be a mine field for Harris, foreign affairs appear to be an equally daunting task to manage. Following the US exit from Afghanistan in 2021, the Biden Administration has made several press releases boasting of it being the first time the country hasn’t been at war in decades. However, a closer look will reveal that the country is, even if indirectly, heavily involved in two of the most prominent armed conflicts on Earth in Ukraine and in Palestine. Beyond just the hundreds of billions of dollars that have been spent in the form of direct military aid, a much more important thing is a stake in those two theaters: it is the role of the US as a leader in the world. If elected, Kamala Harris will have a tremendous amount of work to do to restore the global community’s faith in an American leadership that has been left in tatters after a decade of Trump isolationism and Biden’s total capitulation to a leader currently facing charges of crime against humanity in Israel’s Benjamin Natanyahu.

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Though it’s easy to see how daunting these challenges are, I believe they are also opportunities. They are opportunities for Harris to not only be the first woman/black/Asian president of the United States, but to also be the most consequential president since Roosevelt. She has a chance, through her policy choices, to re-introduce Americans to their neighbors after a period where political polarization all but eliminated trust, civil discourse, and friendly disagreements. She could re-define how new generations of people around the world view America by curbing the incessant militarism that has led to despair and anger in so many parts of our planet. 

To do so, she would have to be willing to do something that doesn’t come naturally to politicians, and that is spend political capital instead of hoarding it to bolster eventual re-election plans.

As a Senegalese, I couldn’t help but think about what this means for my birth nation, and though her election could not mean much in terms of material change, one question persistently remains at the top of my mind: What if Macky Sall, a year or two ago, had done the sensible thing, and removed himself entirely from the 2024 election controversy and had thrown all his political capital behind another candidate? Could we have had a different situation and president as we do now? Perhaps it wouldn’t have made a difference in terms of who won the elections, but I firmly believe it would have prevented the massive unrest and tragic loss of life we have witnessed over the last couple of years. Kamala Harris faces different challenges, but one can only hope she’s willing to spend the political capital she’s accrued since she obtained the Democratic Party’s nomination to the highest office in America.

By Déma SANE