Barring another surprise "event," the coming US presidential showdown is likely to be a duel between former President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris.

That duel, if it goes through, will include a number of new features.

Harris is only the second woman to reach the last round in a US presidential contest. She is also the first "black" woman of Indian and Jamaican background to reach the penultimate rung of the ladder.

There are novelties on Trump's side as well.

One of the dangers that democracies face is that of the machinery of government morphing into a political party with its own culture, traditions, methods, and, needless to say, interests -- above all that of self-perpetuation. Thus, the US has a third, invisible party, besides the Republicans and Democrats. (Image source: iStock/Getty Images)

He is the second former president after Theodore Roosevelt to seek a return to the White House, in the face of opposition from his party's traditional eli...