Why this fascination with an US election? - EDITORIAL

On Tuesday 3 November 2020, Americans will vote for their next president, with a choice between Donald Trump, the Republican incumbent, and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.   
National polls show Biden the Democratic candidate is leading Trump the incumbent president at the moment. And the eyes of the world are riveted on the possible outcome of the US election.  

A glance through ‘rt.com’ - a Russian-government-backed website - shows the site is biased, backing one US candidate over the other. Britain’s ‘Guardian’ ‘The Telegraph’ all publicly back one of the US presidential candidates over the other.   
The present Indian premier was at one time barred from entering the US, for his alleged lack of action in controlling the Post Godhra riots in Gujarat. Mr. Modi was the then Chief Minister of that state.  

No legal charges were ever brought against Mr. Modi, with even the India’s Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) and Supreme Court monitored Special Investigations Team (SIT) not able to prove allegations of his (Modi’s) involvement in the alleged crimes. But the US continued to bar him entering the country.  
After Mr. Modi’s election as Indian premier however, US presidents were seen embracing the self-same Mr. Modi who despite all evidence to the contrary the US had continued to accuse .of human rights violations.  
So why is the US presidential election so important, that from Russia to the UK media institutions the world over give headline coverage?  

Is it fear that keeps so-called strong and developed nations fixated on the US presidential election? Or is it love of the US, which considers itself the Mecca of Human rights preservation, that keeps us transfixed to the presidential election?,   Perhaps the not-so-distant US involvement in the affairs of  ‘sovereign’ nations may help ‘the common man’ understand particular fears among some states of the personally elected president of the US.  

In March 1965, US President Johnson launched a three-year campaign of sustained bombing of targets in North Vietnam - a State 13,789 km away from the US - to help its ally in South Vietnam in what was essentially a Vietnamese civil war.  
More than 3 million people were killed in the aftermath of the US involvement in the problem now referred to as the Vietnam War. More than half the fatalities of that war were Vietnamese civilians. In Iraq the US charged Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein with possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WDMs) and invaded that country to overthrow the regime.   

No weapons of mass destruction were ever found, but ‘Project Iraq Body Count’, documents the US intervention led to 185,000 - 208,000 violent civilian deaths through Feb 2020.
Similarly, during the final days of World War II, the US under a Democratic president atom bombed the civilian population of Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killing between 129,000 and 226,000 people within minutes. Most of those killed were civilians. To date the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only use of nuclear weapons by any State.   

So why is the world so interested in the US presidential election? Fear? Love for the protector of Human rights? Or perhaps the quaint US electoral system where the US president is not elected by the popular vote. The current US president has shown himself not to be supportive of persons of people of colour. He promised to pull US troops out of what he called wasteful foreign wars. Instead he sent in more troops to foreign soil. He also refers to people of non-white non US origin in derogatory terms. Democrat Biden has been charged with covering up his son’s wrongdoings using his position as a Vice President under a different administration.  
Both candidates have been accused of sexual harassment of women. Today according to polls presidential challenger, Biden is a clear favourite to win the popular vote, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll. Democrat Joe Biden has in fact taken a double-digit lead over President Trump.   

But that doesn’t guarantee the Democratic candidate’s victory. Hillary Clinton also had a clear lead over Trump in the polls for almost the entire 2016 campaign. She also won a majority of the popular vote, but ended up losing in the electoral college and her bid for the presidency.   
Under the US presidential voting system which assigns each state a number of electoral college votes, which go to the state’s victor regardless of the margin of victory, a  handful of swing states will probably decide the election.  So why does the US presidential election hold the world in thrall?