{"id":305771,"date":"2024-07-18T19:52:09","date_gmt":"2024-07-18T23:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/?p=305771"},"modified":"2024-07-18T19:52:09","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T23:52:09","slug":"elections-in-u-s-and-dynamics-of-our-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oncubanews.com\/en\/opinion\/columns\/in-plain-words\/elections-in-u-s-and-dynamics-of-our-relations\/","title":{"rendered":"Elections in U.S. and dynamics of our relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

I lack the fortune-telling skills to know what will happen in the next U.S. elections. Furthermore, I consider that no poll can completely dissolve the prevailing margin of uncertainty, not only regarding electoral mechanics that will stretch dangerously for days, but also because of the volatile circumstances in which it will take place. To judge that the science of polls can penetrate this furious tangle of polarized interests is to grant the electoral struggle a transparency that it does not have, and attribute to science an infallibility that is strange to it. As is evident, in the belligerent America of Trump and Biden, voting intentions are not the only thing that counts.<\/span><\/p>\n

How many of those who have not voted before will actually do so now? What will be the winner\u2019s margin of victory? Which states will decide the outcome? What will be the reaction of those who lose? What role will the Supreme Court play?<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost four years ago I wrote <\/span>this<\/span><\/a>, in November 2020: just six days before the elections. Let\u2019s return for a moment to the thread of this process, clouded every day by news and characters.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 2016 elections, most experts had been wrong in their predictions, trusting in the polls, but also carried away by the common sense of \u201cwhat everyone says.\u201d Some had predicted, in 2008, that Obama \u201ccouldn\u2019t win because he was black.\u201d At the end of his term, they took it for granted that a candidate disfavored by the mainstream media (read, <\/span>The New York Times<\/span><\/i> and <\/span>CNN<\/span><\/i>), and who had prevailed over the Republican Party machine, coming from outside, had no chance at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

We later learned that, although Hillary Clinton won the absolute popular vote (48%) by 3 million, she lost it in 30 states, equivalent to 56.5% of electoral votes. Trump won with only 46.4% of the popular vote, but taking the majority of the states, which is what counts in that mechanic. It was a mistake not to take it into account.<\/span><\/p>\n

A couple of weeks before the election between Trump and Biden in 2020, some commentators advocated that \u201ca Democratic tsunami could win not only the White House but Congress.\u201d The enthusiasm, aroused by the intoxication of the polls and the enormous advantage between Biden and Trump (\u201cthe largest in the history of presidential campaigns since 1934\u201d) would vanish with <\/span>the real voting figures<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

What was chilling about the 2020 elections was precisely how much that margin hid. Biden won; but Trump got more than 74 million votes, almost 5 million more than Barack Obama in his historic victory in 2008; that is, a proportion of the total vote higher than that against Clinton in 2016. Although he lost the algebra of the total electoral vote, he won in as many states as Biden, that is, he took half of the Union.<\/span><\/p>\n

When on the eve of those last elections I asked what the reaction of those who would lose would be, I did not base it so much on the quarrelsome tone of the campaigns, which has become almost normal in U.S. politics, but on the violent content of the Republican challenges to the legitimacy of the process, the anticipated accusations of fraud, the ideological terrorism of branding the opponent as a \u201ccommunist\u201d or \u201cPutin\u2019s henchman.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I confess that I did not then imagine a mutiny encouraged by the president himself to <\/span>storm the Capitol<\/span><\/a>. But if it had occurred to me, some knowledgeable friends would have responded: \u201cWho can dare to storm the Capitol in Washington? That is a third-world leftist nightmare, typical of people who don\u2019t really know the United States, no way.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Regarding my last question of 2020 \u2014 What role would the Supreme Court play? \u2014 this brotherhood appointed for life that guarantees the perfect balance of the three powers has gone from certifying the integrity of the 2020 elections to legitimizing, barely four years later, its main challenger, and putting him above the law, in that and wherever he can exercise his power, within an already very presidential regime.<\/span><\/p>\n

A quantitative and descriptive portrait, such as the one that polls can provide, does not save us from putting them in a context and in a qualitative analysis. As much as the presidential debates, the changing pictures of public opinion, the latest statements of the candidates, and the party conventions themselves project a certain political meteorology, they are only the tip of the iceberg.<\/span><\/p>\n

Although we do not have access to investigate it, we know that this context includes alliances between currents and interest groups, internal party dynamics at the federal and state level, money that supports some and others, commitments with decisive powers such as the military industry and energy, who bet on all the horses.<\/span><\/p>\n

I recently heard an expert friend comment that the winning strategy to face the challenges of the next elections would be, in the absence of ideal candidates, to constitute an anti-Trump front capable of prevailing, as the Front Populaire did in the recent French elections against the extreme right. Great idea, I thought.<\/span><\/p>\n

The difference with Europe is that there the popular fronts have had a long history, left and center-left parties that have come to government, union movements, environmentalists, feminists, with high mobilization capacity, a public sector that has played a key role in economic and social development, and which includes large media outlets, health and education systems, which condition mentalities, whose identity and roots are part of the inherited political culture, and where the term socialist is not \u201cthe S word,\u201d a bad word.<\/span><\/p>\n

My last question refers to what the elections portend for our relations, and if there is something we can do to favor them: does the historical record reveal that, when the Cuban government has made significant economic or political changes, from 1988 to now, has U.S. policy reacted favorably?<\/span><\/p>\n

Another expert friend told me that this logic is \u201crandom.\u201d For example, the <\/span>Torricelli Act<\/span><\/a> (1992) was a reaction to the perception that \u201cnow communism is really falling\u201d (in Cuba); and the <\/span>Helms-Burton Act<\/span><\/a> (1996) sought to accelerate that fall, instead of reacting to the economic changes in Cuba (1993-95). Likewise, the opening to agricultural exports, under a Republican administration, did not respond to Cuba continuing on the path of economic reforms, but rather to its reaction to the U.S. offers after the 2008 hurricanes and, in particular, to the weight of the Senators from the agricultural states.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the Guidelines (2011) were released,\u201d my friend continues, \u201cObama did not go beyond applying some specific measures promised in his campaign. The United States intensified its financial sanctions against Cuba. The opening of relations in December 2014 coincides with the beginning of the \u2018counter-reform\u2019 in Cuba, which would be more evident during the 7th Congress of the PCC (Communist Party of Cuba), and which follows <\/span>Obama\u2019s visit<\/span><\/a>. Subsequently, Trump\u2019s measures had more to do with Miami than with developments in Havana.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Donald Trump, Latinos and immigrants<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n