After losing the White House to a racist-cum-bigot (or whatever Hillary’s supporters call Trump for exploiting the majority-community angry perception of being overlooked in their own country where they account for 70% of the electorate, 40% of which is white working-class), and failing to regain both the Senate and the House of Representatives, the Democrats look down and out. The Supreme Court vacancies for the next four years will be filled up with anti-abortion, pro-gun-rights judges, Obamacare could be dismantled and the White House will be occupied by a hotelier and real-estate baron who, some three to four decades ago, was sued for discriminating against Afro-Americans in his projects.

However, American political careers are planned well in advance and the Democrats could rise like a phoenix from the ashes of today. The next Democrat nominee for the 2020 presidential election may throw her hat into the ring in 2019 but someone in the running will be making the moves right from now.

It could even be Tammy Duckworth, a war heroine who lost both her legs while flying a Black Hawk helicopter which was shot down in 2004 by an RPG (rocket-proplelled grenade) during the insurgency in Iraq. Despite the almost fatal injuries, Duckworth and her co-pilot managed to successfully land the helicopter. After a prolonged stay in hospital where she was fitted with artificial legs which made it possible for her to walk again, Duckworth won election to the US House of Representatives. Not satisfied with that, she challenged the incumbent Republican Senator Mark Kirk and was elected this November by 54% to 40% at a time when, elsewhere in the country, the Republicans were forging ahead with the overwhelming support of the white working class whose anger Trump had channelized..

Duckworrth is not all white since her mother is a Thai of Chinese extraction. Her white father is also an World War Two US marine veteran whose ancestors all fought for the USA, going back to the American Revolution in 1776. Duckworth, who was born in Bangkok in 1968 (her parents met in Thailand when her father, a World War Two Marine veteran, was working for a UN development programme), was always interested in a military career. She excelled in school and college and could have focused on a safe academic career as a PhD scholar in political science but preferred to leave all that to serve in Iraq when she was called up for duty as a member of the US Reserve Officers’ Training Corps.. It was after the formal end of Gulf War Two and during the insurgency when most American servicemen lost their lives that Duckworth’s helicopter was shot down. The helicopter wing was the one place where American women could volunteer for a combat role and Duckworth left service after being promoted from captain to major.

Duckworth has demonstrated her toughness even in politics. She has fended off several challenges, even legal ones questioning her post-Iraq role as someone appointed to look after veterans in first Illinois and then the USA. At one stage, she was even sued for using a government-owned van fitted with conveniences for the disabled while campaigning for another Democrat. She paid back the entire cost of using a government vehicle while campaigning. As a member of the US House of Representatives, she introduced a bill to facilitate the awarding of government contracts to those employing military veterans. She also helped set up programmes to study PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorders) among war veterans, something she herself experienced and overcame.

Duckworth is 48 years old and is married to another Iraq War veteran Bowlsbey, and the couple’s first child, a daughter, was born in 2014. Her determination to transcend her war injuries has evoked the admiration of Republicans like the 1996 presidential nominee Bob Dole who even dedicated his biography “A Soldier’s Story” to her and others who had, like him, overcome almost fatal injuries and made a difference in public life. In 2011, the Daughters of the American Revolution funded a project to build a likeness of her along with that of the 1776 Revolutionary War heroine Molly Pitcher in a statue meant to honour American female military veterans.

Duckworth will be 52 at the time of the next presidential elections.She is the antithesis to Trump in that she is for women’s rights when it comes to deciding on abortion. She is also in the forefront of the move to have reasonable restrictions placed on the purchase of weapons, which means the gun-lobby, including the very powerful National Rifle Association, will be against her. However, given her status as a war heroine (the first female double-amputee in US military history), the gun-lobby will not find it as easy to question either her patriotism or her commitment to the USA as they did while campaigning against Hillary who was accused of scheduling appointments with foreign dignitaries who funded the charitable foundation set up by Bill Clinton. Duckworth is vehemently for Obamacare and for smoothening the path to US citizenship for those illegal immigrants who fit all the qualifying criteria. Which should again make her the antithesis to Trump.

The ultimate glass ceiling which Hillary Clinton failed to break despite winning the popular vote against Trump could be smashed to smithereens by Tammy Duckworth who could become the first woman president of the USA in 2020.. If elected as president, she will be following in the footsteps of Abraham Lincoln and Barack Obama, both of whom represented the US Congress from Illinois before entering the White House. When she is sworn in as a US Senator in a few weeks, she will be the first female combat veteran to serve in the upper house of Congress.