(West Palm Beach) They are around twenty friends, for four hours in front of the West Palm Beach Convention Center. Flags, MAGA caps, cries of joy. A golden Florida youth, first or second year university students. They are there to “live the moment”, and who knows if Donald Trump will not pass by…
Updated at 2:56 a.m.
It is here, 15 minutes from Mar-a-Lago, that the 45e President of the United States should come and say that he will be the 47the. Only one defeated president has achieved the feat of being re-elected four years after his defeat: Grover Cleveland. He annoys historians, moreover, because he was on 22e and the 24the president, and therefore there were not 46, but 45 people to occupy the office, even if Joe Biden is the 46e.
“What do you like about Trump?
“His policies align better with my values,” Wynn, 20, who voted for the first time this year, told me.
PHOTO YVES BOISVERT, THE PRESS
Rowdy and Wynn, two students who were voting for the first time, were waiting Tuesday evening to see Donald Trump pass by, near Mar-a-Lago, Florida.
I ask her if the issue of reproductive rights affects her.
“Basically, it’s up to each state to decide its abortion policies, and if you don’t like the laws in your state, you can just move,” she told me.
A little further on, I come across a Venezuelan asylum seeker. He came to celebrate Trump’s (probable) victory. I tell him about Biden’s special humanitarian program for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans – work permits for 30,000 people. He tells me that Trump is harder on socialists like Nicolás Maduro.
I go a little further. A young Colombian immigrant waits for her order at a restaurant. She is 20 years old. She would have wanted to vote, but she had to replace someone at work, and since she also works at her father’s garage, in addition to her studies in mechanical engineering, in the end, she didn’t have time.
“Nervous?
— No, I think Trump will win. »
She supports it for two reasons. She thinks economic measures will be better under her leadership. And also, his family immigrated through official channels. She has several friends who have done it clandestinely, it doesn’t shock her. But she is against those who come here, have lots of children and receive social assistance “paid for by other immigrants who work 7 days a week like [elle] ».
PHOTO MARCO BELLO, REUTERS
Near Mar-a-Lago, supporters watched the results closely and expressed joy at each Republican gain.
Why will Donald Trump apparently be elected? Or, if by some impossibility he loses at the end of the counting, why did he come so close?
In these three encounters on the sidewalks of Florida, as in all cities in this country, there are some answers.
First, conservatism. For many Americans, Democrats, and perhaps even more so a Democratic woman from California, this is a moral and religious impossibility. Not all “conservatives” are 83 years old. They are sometimes 20 years old and attending university.
Second, money. The one you get when you’re rich and don’t want too many taxes. But especially the one who fails week after week to pay for groceries and rent, even while working like crazy.
Third, the impression that this country is moving too far to the left, whatever the meaning we give to this word. Either culturally, because “toilets for women should remain for women”, or because “boys play sports against girls”. Or politically, by being too complacent with communist countries – a deep theme in this state where ex-Cubans are very republican. By a strange historical reversal, for example, Russia, for many republicans, is no longer the Communist Empire of Evil, but a place where traditional values are tried to be preserved.
In seven months of reporting in the United States, I have heard all this expressed in a hundred ways. We will not summarize the Trumpist voter in a single stereotype.
There is a very substantial base that loves and admires Trump, what he embodies or what he sells: success, authority and strength. But this base, even if it represents millions of people, is not enough to win the presidency. We have to convince those in the middle. In addition to convincing those who don’t like him to vote for him anyway.
He succeeded.
Difficult to understand, when we think of his speeches, where he made no effort to round off the angles of his aggressive image. No concessions to appear acceptable in the eyes of the proverbial “suburban women”. The issue of abortion did not tip the scales. The “secret” vote for women clearly does not exist, or in the other direction.
This November 5, therefore, he wins – or loses by a tiny margin…
As if we were returning to the state of affairs, just after the assassination attempt against him, when the Republican convention seemed to lead him directly to power. When the country seemed to reject Joe Biden and Democrats had no answers.
Kamala Harris seemed to change the conversation overnight. Barely 100 days later, we are forced to see that she has failed to represent change. She has once again become what the Americans rejected: Joe Biden’s number 2.
