Breathe
By Sofía Guadarrama Collado
The world continues to be stunned by the overwhelming defeat of Kamala Harris in the last U.S. presidential election.
Many have questioned what happened if she was the best prepared candidate, with the best proposals and with the support of dozens of personalities from the artistic world such as Taylor Swift, Oprah Winfrey, Ariana Grande, John Legend, Matt Damon, Jane Fonda, Ben Stiller, Kathy Griffin, Olivia Rodrigo, Barbra Streisand, Beyoncé, Katy Perry, Leonardo DiCaprio, Ed Sheeran, Jennifer López among many others. He also received the support of some thirty economists and Nobel Prize winners, such as Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Shiller, among many others.
There are those who believe that Trump won because he got the support of billionaire businessmen, but Kamala Harris also received the support of big moguls such as Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn; Marc Cuban, entrepreneur and owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI; Jeff Bewkes, former CEO of Time Warner; Chad Gifford, former chairman of Bank of America; Melinda French Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Sheryl Sandberg, former COO of Facebook; Reed Hastings, co-founder and CEO of Netflix; Steven Spielberg, film director; Michael Bloomberg, founder of Bloomberg L.P. and former mayor of New York; Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook; John Pritzker, owner of Hyatt Hotels; Haim Saban, co-founder of Fox Family Channel; Eric Schmidt, former CEO of Google, among others.
Days before Super Bowl LVIII, Donald Trump asked Taylor Swift, through a message on his social network Truth Social, not to endorse Joe Biden. In those days many claimed that only Swift's support for one of the candidates could affect the outcome of the election.
False!
It was already proven that neither Taylor Swift, nor Oprah Winfrey, nor Ariana Grande, nor Beyoncé, nor Katy Perry, nor Leonardo DiCaprio could tip the scales in favor of Kamala Harris.
What happened? Was it the proposals?
Kamala Harris proposed strengthening the middle class by reducing health care, housing and food costs. She also proposed raising taxes on large corporations.
Was that his big mistake?
In health care, Harris proposed expanding Medicare to dental, vision and hearing services.
On the other hand, it promised to reinstate the COVID-era Child Tax Credit and offered a $6,000 tax credit for families with an infant no more than one year old.
Kamala Harris was in favor of reproductive rights and therefore sought to urge Congress to sign a bill that would commit reproductive protections into federal law.
Was that his mistake?
He also promised to build three million new homes and offered first-generation homebuyers down payment assistance for their first home.
On immigration issues she was not as tough as Donald Trump, but she did mention the need for comprehensive immigration reform.
Was that his big mistake?
For his part, Donald Trump promised ad nauseam that he would carry out the largest deportation in the history of the United States, as well as the expansion of the wall on the southern border. And as icing on the cake: he would prevent citizenship by birth if the parents were not U.S. citizens.
On the economy, he promised to eliminate taxes on tipped wages, cut taxes to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 and reduce the corporate tax rate to 15% for companies that manufacture their products in the country.
On trade, he threatened to impose tariffs of up to 25% on Mexican exports if Mexico does not stop the flow of drugs and immigrants.
With respect to the trans community, he threatened to reverse protections for transgender people.
In energy, it aims to eliminate environmental restrictions to facilitate the extraction of fossil fuels and increase the production of dirty energy.
Regarding the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Donald Trump promised to end the war between Russia and Ukraine within 24 hours. The same was promised by Vicente Fox in 2000 with the conflict in Chiapas. What many analysts are predicting is a rapprochement with Russia, which would imply the failure of Ukraine. For decades, many Americans have spoken out against their country spending so much money on wars, since the Vietnam War, the Iraq War and the invasion of Afghanistan. Trump promised them that if he became president he would stop providing military and financial aid to Ukraine.
Now then. The question is why did Donald Trump win the election if he is a felon with 91 charges in four different criminal cases in the U.S. Did becoming a martyr increase his vote count?
Some say it was because 74% of voters think the U.S. is headed in the wrong direction and that the economy is in bad shape.
Others think that Trump's allegations of voter fraud in 2020 convinced a large number of voters that there was indeed voter fraud and that their electoral system is obsolete. Trump learned something from AMLO.
There are analysts who believe that disinformation played an important part in the election. And for that, Donald Trump is an expert. Part of that disinformation consisted of a fear campaign.
Donald Trump convinced his followers that the United States was in ruins and that he could return his country to that lost Eden. It is well said that promising does not impoverish.
That said, it is not surprising that Trump has managed to get the working class and non-college educated vote. Selling hope is big business among the most uninformed and least educated people.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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