Barack and Michelle Oba­ma have joined the ef­fort to have a woman of “mixed race,” the way Amer­i­cans de­scribe the woman of a Ja­maican (Black) fa­ther and an In­dia born moth­er, elect­ed as the next Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States.

It is most ap­pro­pri­ate that both Barack and Michelle, even ap­pre­ci­at­ing the fact they re­main very pop­u­lar mem­bers of the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, Bar­rack hav­ing been the first man of “mixed race” to have been elect­ed and re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent of the pre­dom­i­nant­ly and his­tor­i­cal­ly “white” civil­i­sa­tion, in which black, brown and non-white cit­i­zens have been rel­e­gat­ed to the fringes, are part of the process to cre­ate his­to­ry in that coun­try.

The im­me­di­ate cir­cum­stances are well-known. Af­ter a dis­as­trous de­bat­ing per­for­mance against Re­pub­li­can for­mer pres­i­dent, Don­ald Trump, in­cum­bent De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pres­i­dent, Joe Biden, looked all of his 83 years. Through­out the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, the call for re­mov­ing Biden from the tick­et was loud and con­tin­u­ous. The ques­tion arose as to who to re­place him with.

Soon enough the clam­our was for Ka­mala Har­ris, Biden’s vice-pres­i­dent, to be the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date to take on Trump.

Shock fol­lowed. The for­mer pres­i­dent, known for his bit­ing and sav­age coun­ters, has been rather sub­dued in his at­tacks against Har­ris. In fact, if it were any­one but Trump, it would be tempt­ing to say he has not on­ly gone in­to a shell since Mrs Har­ris has been named as the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date, he even seems a bit in­tim­i­dat­ed by her. What hap­pens over the next three-plus months will be in­ter­est­ing re­gard­ing the di­rec­tion Amer­i­can pol­i­tics will take to elect a pres­i­dent.

At stake in the elec­tion are is­sues of gen­der and the right to abor­tion. At hand is whether the ma­jor­i­ty of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion can over­come a va­ri­ety of his­tor­i­cal, so­ci­o­log­i­cal, racial and gen­der bi­as­es to elect Har­ris as the first-ever fe­male US pres­i­dent.

One must al­so take in­to ac­count that in con­sid­er­ing elect­ing Mrs Har­ris, the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion will be ef­fec­tive­ly trust­ing the present vice-pres­i­dent with con­trol of the great­est quan­ti­ty of eco­nom­ic and mil­i­tary pow­er in the world.

The irony of this be­ing that the USA re­mains a so­ci­ety in which non-white peo­ple have and con­tin­ue to be sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly and gen­er­a­tional­ly dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. So too, while a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of women have leapt over the gen­der bar, there re­main ceil­ings which women can­not go be­yond.

So what then are the fac­tors which are at work, those which have cat­a­pult­ed Har­ris with all her po­ten­tial lim­i­ta­tions as as­cribed to her, by cul­ture, race and gen­der, in­to the White House? Is it be­cause of her smil­ing non-threat­en­ing self? Is it the fear that Trump back in the pres­i­den­tial seat will un­leash may­hem in the so­ci­ety, as he gets even with his op­po­nents and avoids the re­al pos­si­bil­i­ty of serv­ing jail time?

Is it that a sec­ond term for Trump as pres­i­dent can bring a sharp end to Amer­i­ca’s ex­per­i­ment with democ­ra­cy? Is it that large and var­ied groups of Amer­i­cans are ready to trans­form the his­tor­i­cal na­ture of the so­ci­ety? Can the pos­si­bil­i­ty of elect­ing the De­mo­c­ra­t­ic vice-pres­i­dent be a re­sult of the fright of the far right’s ar­tic­u­lat­ed in­ten­tions? If Trump is re-elect­ed, will it be that the US wants to re­main with its his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ter? Ei­ther way, a high stakes race is now un­fold­ing.