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Event Report

Every time there are elections in the US, or for that matter in India, Nepal, or any other democratic nation, we are aware that it is the most important and historic election in history. This is so because the world is at a crossroads right now, with a health crisis confronting us and an economic slowdown—not meltdown, but deep recession—affecting the entire planet. And then, there is an expansionist power in the Indo-Pacific region, which wants to introduce a new paradigm of relationships, not by rule or not based on relationships but based on the rule of force. So that is a background in which the world is at a crossroads. Moreover, we are waiting and looking very closely at the American elections. We have had a fascinating period of having a colorful president who has introduced a new norm, something very new to the diplomatic world called the alternative facts. The kind of rhetoric we see in the elections is quite unusual. Now, whether the democratic voter will come out to vote as he or she is doing at the moment is a big question. What will be the disposition of the next incumbent of the White House towards China, Iran, and Russia are important questions! Will we see continuity, or will we see a change because international relations are based on continuity?

Speaker David Sir was further introduced as the head of the Department of Public Affairs at the American University in Washington, a renowned author, and a subject matter specialist in security and international relations. Followed by his brief goes this way: He says that the incumbent president is in the wrong place. He is at about 42% of the vote as opposed to former Vice President Biden is about 52% of the vote. In the past month, it has gone up from about 7% lead to a little over 10%, which has held two events that have driven the increase. First, the first debate was a disaster for Mr. Trump. He essentially tried to dominate the debate by constantly interrupting.

The second thing that happened not too long after the debate is that he caught Coronavirus and since he has been endlessly telling the American people that it is going away and getting better. The fact that he proved unable to protect even himself against it is another factor that harmed him. Another thing that's ultimately going on is the number of cases of Coronavirus here in the US which remains a central issue is rising again and rapidly hitting as high a level as its hit previously in the United States, and just that, among the advanced industrialized nations, and he thinks he had signally failed to deal with the pandemic.

The other major issue is related to the economy. The economic effects have exacerbated an ongoing problem in the United States, which is the increasing bifurcation between the better off and the less well-off, which we see increasingly sort of the middle class shrinking with more going into what we might call the upper middle class. The inability of our Congress and the president to agree on a new stimulus package has been another fundamental problem.

The virus and the economy are very dominant issues for voters. Other voters have their specific concerns, depending on what they are interested in. Issues related to the Black Lives Matter movement.

If elected, Biden's foreign policy issue is to re-establish stronger ties with US traditional allies. Raise the issue of human rights, need to stabilize ties with China and put them on a more routine basis, conflicts over some fundamental differences, including human rights, including Taiwan, and particularly Hong Kong, and the treatment of the Uyghurs, which President Trump has ignored.

Vishnu Sir further Questions Relating to the American economy, inequity is increasing, and the middle class is shrinking. However, Trump scores more with the people; according to opinion polls on the economy, there seems to be more confident that the people have in him to handle the economy over Joe Biden. How do you explain that? Well, he inherited a good economy from President Obama. Moreover, he spent a ton of money, which helped keep the economy going. All right. So, the confidence in the two is roughly the same; Trump may be slightly ahead. A lot of the differences in the economy also increasingly what is interesting is, he is supported by the sort of lower-class white voters increasingly, and that has to do with more identity issues than the Democrats because they appeal a lot to racial minorities. I think a lot of white lower-class people feel like they are ignored.

Moreover, they may also feel that the rise of other minority groups challenges their status and that historically, whites were the dominant group in this country. Moreover, you know, they are both white and not successful. Moreover, thus, some of it is racism, and some are just discontent that way. Trump, however, has played directly on racist sentiment.

In response to this, Speaker Namrata Goswami thinks about the economy and says, according to the Pew Research survey, which looked at the issues that voters think is important. Thus, what came out were registered voters from the Democratic side and the Republican side. They said that the Republican Party, not just Trump, has scored better in terms of the economy. They see the Republican Party as better on taxes in terms of regulation. Moreover, it holds a nine-percentage point over the Democratic Party on the issue of handling the economy better.

Miss Kim Nazareth has just submitted her thesis on JCPOA. She is with the Centre for Medical studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. 1) Trump's foreign policy, or President Trump's foreign policy, is what Tip O'Neill, the Speaker of the House in the 1980s, said: all politics is local. Everything you do on the world stage is mainly geared towards something happening on your domestic front. 2) In most cases, he is tried to pander to his domestic base off of the Midwest of the south of those purely red states and has no chance of changing blue. So, for instance, his victory in 2016, with the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin and, and all of that, which was the blue wall, which the Democrats all their blue wall. It was only in that offshoot election that we find President Trump winning, primarily Democrats, and always took that right from Bill Clinton, through Obama, even though George Bush. Even in all that, you have the blue wall firmly behind the Democrats. Moreover, there was this offshoot election, the strange election that all of us felt went haywire for everybody for all the whole world inside. 3) The feed about Hunter Biden's Chinese business and Hillary Clinton's emails were being looked at, so these are all how President Trump loves to ignite his base even on the foreign policy side. 4) Look at Trump and how he speaks about Russia, NATO, and China! 5) On One side, he says Putin has no involvement in the presidential election of 2016, and on another side, he criticizes Russia.

Vishnu was introduced by mentioning his diplomatic and career achievements in the life span of 30 years of diplomatic services to give concluding points which are: Never underestimate Trump and neither Biden nor the American elections. On a lighter note, he made the academicians under the grab of court bar that it is for sure the academicians will not vote for Trump.

Prepared by Om Ranjan, Intern at NIICE, Nepal