Trump, Biden and Mexico

The U.S. presidential elections will take place on Tuesday of next week. The candidates, as is known, are Joe Biden of the Democratic Party and Donald Trump of the Republican Party, who is seeking reelection.

The former vice president of the Barack Obama administration is ahead by a 7.7-point spread over the New York magnate among average citizens, according to the site RealClearPolitics. However, elections in the U.S. are not straightforward, as they are in Mexico, where the vote is counted without intermediaries to elect our representatives.

Instead, on the other side of the Rio Bravo the elections take place using a much more complicated process: The vote passes through the sieve of the Electoral College of the area where the citizen resides. In political science terms, this is called indirect voting. It may be the case, as it was four year ago, that despite winning in the general popular vote, one can lose in the Electoral College. That is what happened to Hillary Clinton, who got 3 million more votes than Trump.

The United States has a total of 538 Electoral College electors, distributed demographically by the states, so that whoever gets a simple majority of this number — 270 — emerges victorious. The federal entities with the most electors are California, 55; Texas, 38; Florida, 29; and New York, 29. The least are Alaska, 3; Wyoming, 3; Delaware, 3; Montana, 3; North Dakota, 3; South Dakota, 3; Vermont, 3; and 3 for Washington, D.C.

According to the political prognostications of CNN, Biden will have 290 electoral votes and Trump, 163. What does Biden need to do assure his victory? Win in the so-called swing states. It’s worthwhile to say that these states sometimes vote for one party and sometimes the other.

That’s the case for Michigan, 16; Nevada, 6; Colorado, 9: Arizona, 11; Wisconsin, 10; and Pennsylvania, 20. The aforementioned political prognosticators of CNN point out that the playing field of the electoral battle lies in these states.

The electoral map of the U.S. is extremely clear in showing how electoral preferences are divided between the Democrats (blue) and the Republicans (red). The northeast coast of the Atlantic and the entire Pacific coast are dominated by the Democrats, while the central U.S. (more agricultural, religious and conservative) is controlled by the Republicans.

North Americans go to the polls deeply divided. (In fact, they have already cast 19 million votes through the mail.) This polarization isn’t without a price: What Donald Trump has done, throughout his time in power, is fan the flames of racism, xenophobia, supremacy, intolerance and obscurantism.

One factor that set off pent-up fury was the killing of African American George Floyd at the hands of (or better put: at the knees of) police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020 in the Powderhorn neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This crime, in effect, unleashed a wave of protest in all of the United States, some of which were savagely repressed at the disposition of Trump himself, under the “Law and Order” slogan that he has made the theme of his campaign.

We don’t forget that when he announced his intention to run for the nomination of the Republican Party as a candidate for the presidency on June 15, 2015, he said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems … They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

At the same event he announced the construction of a border wall. Since assuming the presidency of the country, he has set in motion raids against undocumented immigrants.

As Elizabeth Quan Kiu pointed out, “many of the 11 million immigrants live, I can assure you, not with anxiety, but with panic and terror under Trump’s mandate.”

In contrast to this sad reality, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, during his visit with Trump in the White House on July 8, 2020, said, “I wanted to be here to thank the people of the United states, its government and you, President Trump, for being increasingly more respectful of our Mexican people.” An embarrassing performance by the chief executive, who also gave his tacit approval to the Republican in the middle of an electoral campaign. And his publicists have taken advantage of this, taking out television ads focusing on López Obrador’s statement.

If Biden wins it will go well for Mexico, but not for López Obrador, for the simple reason that he sided with Trump.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are in favor of human rights and the legalization of 11 million undocumented compatriots who live in the United States.