“As for Latin America, apart from Trump’s intolerable insults and threats to migrants, it has been a marginal issue for both candidates. Perhaps because Florida, the great Latin fiefdom, is no longer a key state for electoral purposes. Kamala has limited herself to rejecting Maduro’s victory on July 28 without another proposal. If the trend of the government to which he still belongs continues: which freed Álex Saab and Cilia Flórez’s narco-nephews, and eased sanctions on oil, all in exchange for nothing, he will have the Miraflores mafia rubbing their hands,” Hernández added.
“Anything can be expected from Trump, that he shakes Maduro’s hand and immediately forgets Venezuela, or that he follows the advice of his ally Elon Musk and collaborates in overthrowing tyranny by force. Or that barks and never bites. That unpredictability could also be his strength if he knew how to use it. In short, a disappointing outlook for the most powerful nation in the world and the great defender of free societies,” the columnist emphasized.
According to Hernández, a Donald Trump government “would be impulse.” And he added: “He is a person who generates too much noise. You would need a powerful voice in Latin America in favor of democracy. There are some who love Trump. I think that neither of the two candidates is good.”
Regarding Harris, he recalled how the press destroyed her in her first two years as vice president. “After the debate, when they named her a candidate, she went up, but then she went down again and her campaign had another setback.”
See the program about the presidential elections in the United States:
Regarding the convenience for Colombia of the triumph of one or the other, the columnist pointed out that “for the Petro government it is better that Kamala Harris wins, but Trump is not going to kick because he doesn’t like Petro either. What Colombia is most interested in is a government that will make drastic decisions with Venezuela”.
According to her, she does not see any significant changes in US policy towards Colombia, whether one or the other wins. However, he stated that there is a clear affinity of the Colombian government with the candidate Kamala Harris. “I honestly don’t see a substantial change, I think the change will be in the Miraflores Palace (in Caracas, Venezuela) if Trump wins. “They don’t know which button they’re going to press, I don’t think they’ll sleep.”
“For the Petro Government it is better that Kamala Harris wins (…) but it will not be a catastrophe for Colombia if one or the other wins,” he stressed.
“Left-wing governments in Latin America will feel more comfortable with Harris,” said Salud Hernández-Mora, insisting that Joe Biden’s government — the current one in which Harris is vice president — has not meant profound changes for Latin America.
The elections
Americans will choose this Tuesday whether to make Kamala Harris the first female president or give the keys to the White House for the second time to Donald Trump, amid great uncertainty that has the world in suspense. The close race between the Democratic vice president and the former Republican president is about to end, but it is unknown whether the result will take hours or days to be known.
There is no favorite. They are tied in the polls in the seven states in which the winner will be decided: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada. The rest tend to be divided between traditionally Democrats or Republicans.
Voters lined up before dawn at some East Coast polling stations, the first to open. More than 82 million voters have already voted early.
“Very divided”
“We are very divided, she is in favor of peace and everything her opponent says is very negative,” Marchelle Beason, 46, told AFP in Erie, a city in Pennsylvania. But for Darlene Taylor, 56, the main thing is to “close the border” with Mexico to cut off migrants, Trump’s great promise.
Whoever wins, the result will be historic. He would win the second non-consecutive term of a president since 1893 and she, black and of South Asian descent, would become the first woman in the nation’s highest office. The Democrat and the Republican underlined their differences until the last minutes of the campaign. “We have a chance in this election to finally turn the page on a decade of politics guided by fear and division. “We are fed up,” Harris said in Pennsylvania, where she insisted that “every vote counts.”
With a vague but centrist electoral program to try to attract moderate Republicans, Harris proposes firmness against illegal immigration, improvements for the middle class and the defense of the right to abortion. Trump, in turn, promised in Michigan to “fix every single problem” and take the United States and “the world to new heights of glory,” to a “golden age.”
The world watches
Rally after rally, the Republican repeated the score of 2016 and 2020, presenting himself as anti-system, close to the people and very critical of Washington elites. The same creed as always: the fight against migrants in an irregular situation who, according to him, “poison the blood” of the country. He calls them “terrorists,” “rapists,” “savages,” “animals” from “prisons and asylums.”
Convicted of a criminal offense at the end of May and with four charges pending, the septuagenarian painted a bleak picture of the country during a campaign dominated by verbal violence. Trump insulted Harris by calling her a “radical left-wing lunatic,” “incompetent,” “dumb,” and a person with a “low IQ,” among other labels.
She called him “fascist.” He did the same. That’s not counting the comment by a pro-Trump comedian who said that Puerto Rico is like a “floating island of garbage” or a slip by President Joe Biden who, in reaction, called the conservative’s followers “garbage.”
The world watches anxiously for the repercussions of the result on conflicts in the Middle East, on the war in Ukraine and for global warming, which Trump considers a fallacy. In terms of trade, the tycoon has a weapon: tariffs, to “bring back” companies. And two immediate targets: Mexico and China. The first for the “onslaught” of “criminals” and “drugs” and the second for—according to him—sending fentanyl across the border.
The election night looks long. To be president in the United States it is not enough to have more votes than your opponent. You have to get the magic number of 270 votes in the electoral college, made up of 538 delegates who theoretically must respect the will of the people. Control of Congress is also at stake, with the renewal of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 34 out of 100 in the Senate.
An unknown
What will happen next is anyone’s guess. Both sides have taken dozens of legal actions. Two in three Americans fear an outbreak of post-election violence. Some polling stations have become fortresses, guarded by drones and with snipers on the roofs.
Election officials are trained to barricade themselves in a room or use a fire hose. In Washington, the federal capital, metal barriers surround the White House and the Capitol. An impressive number of businesses have protected their shop windows with wooden planks.
The images of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters attacked the headquarters of the US Congress, remain in everyone’s minds. Nothing indicates that it will be repeated, but the Republican, who does not plan to run in the 2028 elections, is already accusing the Democrats of “cheating.”
