Causes of a Defeat

By Guillermo Alvarado

Despite the fact that the polls showed a tight tie between the Republican and Democratic candidates for the U.S. presidency until the last moment, in the end Kamala Harris lost by a wide margin the access to the White House.

There are several factors that influenced this result, which will undoubtedly have repercussions in the international arena, and among them is the late entry of the vice-president into the race, when Donald Trump had already established his campaign in the country.

The responsibility on this point falls entirely on President Joseph Biden, who, against all the opinions of friends and analysts, insisted on fighting for the Oval Office, knowing full well that he did not arouse sympathy or passions, after an administration that was almost a continuation of Trump's previous one.

His advanced age and the evident deterioration of his intellectual capacities kept him out of the fight, but he still forced his party to back him.

Analysts estimate that if he had resigned in January, instead of resigning until July, the story would have been different, although in my opinion this circumstance, although important, was not the most determining factor.

Kamala Harris arrived late, it is true, but she also arrived without innovative ideas, without marking a radical difference with respect to the Biden administration, clearly rejected even within broad sectors of Democratic sympathizers.

For example, the Republican challenger won the most Hispanic county in the country, Starr County, which had voted overwhelmingly for Democratic candidates for more than a century.

Harris never connected with the Blue Party's core constituencies, including young people, women, ethnic minorities and immigrants, simply because she offered nothing new.

And there is a third very important factor here, and that is the total support of the Biden administration, of which she is vice president, for the brutal genocide being perpetrated by Israel against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip.

The Democratic candidate has never questioned the most brutal mass violation of human rights since World War II, and this has taken away the votes of university students, young men and women, the large Arab-American community, and even non-Zionist Jewish groups.

If you want to make a symbolic figure of what happened in this election, I would say that Trump did not defeat Harris, she lost on her own.