Nominees who could dent Trump, Harris votes in the race for White House

Washington: More than 78 million American voters had already cast their ballot by Monday morning, on the eve of Election Day as Vice-President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump crisscrossed the seven battleground states with their closing remarks.

Harris, 60, and Trump, 78 are the main nominees representing the two largest political parties in the US — the Democratic and the Republican parties respectively.

The White House race is essentially between these two, but there are others, who have no chance whatsoever of winning but who can spoil it for the two main nominees in the contest that has been called closed in recent decades. They both stand to make history if they win.

Harris will become the first woman elected President, the first African-American woman, the first Asian-American woman, and the first Indian-American elected to the top office.

If Trump wins, he will become only the second former President to lose his re-election bid and then win on this third again, Grover Cleveland was the first.

They are Robert F. Kennedy, 70. The nephew of President John F Kennedy and son of presidential nominee Robert F. Kennedy, he tried to challenge President Joe Biden in the Democratic primary but declared himself to be an independent later. Although he has suspended his presidential campaign and endorsed Trump, he remains on the ballot in certain states and may be able to transfer his voters to Trump.

Cornel West, a 71-year-old progressive academic, is also in the fray as an Independent.

Jill Stein, 74 of the Green Party is running yet again; she has been partly blamed for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s narrow defeat to Trump in the battleground states in 2016 and the race.

Both West’s and Stein’s appeals overlap with certain sections of the progressive liberals who generally belong to the larger tent of the Democratic Party.

Chase Olivier, 39, belongs to the Libertarian Party is the other nominee. He, and earlier Kennedy, could cut into the libertarian votes in the Republican Party.

–IANS