Will America become the next Venezuela? There was a time that would have been an unthinkable question to even ask but today, it is not such a far-fetched comparison. Venezuela recently held elections for president and the current incumbent, Nicholas Maduro, declared victory shortly after the polls closed, despite overwhelming evidence that his opponent, Edmundo Gonzalez, overwhelmingly won the election. To date, Maduro’s government has refused to release the official vote tallies.
This picture has even more similarities to the current political landscape in the United States in that Maduro’s initial opponent was a woman, Maria Corina Machado, who was very popular and who Maduro viewed as a serious threat to his reign (and yes, I chose that word on purpose). The Maduro administration used the levers of government to disqualify Machado from running on some trumped-up charges that were upheld by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, which is stacked with Maduro loyalists. Sound familiar? Remember how Trump and the Republicans initially discussed trying to use the courts to disqualify Harris as the nominee?
Machado endorsed Edmundo Gonzalez to run in her place and by all accounts, including those by international election monitors, Gonzalez legitimately won the election. As I mentioned above, despite that, Maduro declared victory and when protests erupted in response to his attempt to steal the election, he mobilized the police and the judicial system. Over 2,000 people have been arrested and sham investigations have been instituted against various supporters of Gonzalez.
The leaders of several South American countries who have relationships with Maduro have been in discussions trying to persuade him to accept the results of the election and step down. Thus far, those discussions have gone nowhere. The United States has offered Maduro amnesty if he steps down. Maduro knows that if he stays in Venezuela and is eventually overthrown, either at the ballot box or via a coup, he will likely be tried and convicted for various crimes.
The United States imposed crippling sanctions on Venezuela under President Trump and the economy has been in terrible straits because of that for several years. The U.S. has apparently offered to ease some of those sanctions if Maduro steps down and accepts the offer of immunity. Only time will tell how this plays out.
The truly frightening thing is that a very similar scenario could well play out in the United States. I am currently reading a book, “Antidemocratic: Inside the Far Right’s 50-year Plot to Control American Elections.” It is truly scary but there is example after example of this almost every day in the news. A number of Republican controlled states have passed laws that gives unprecedented control of elections to state legislatures and avowed election deniers.
Vice President Harris continues to surge in the polls and there is at least a 50 percent chance she will win the popular vote and possibly the electoral college vote. The question is, will the Republican machine, including the U.S. Supreme Court, pull a Venezuela to deny a Harris victory despite whatever the legitimate vote count is? It was once unimaginable to even think that but no longer. Will the United States of America, once the paradigm of democracy, be the next Venezuela? It’s more probable than you might want to believe.
