Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is always an orphan, says the political saying attributed to John Kennedy. The defeat of the Democratic candidate against Donald Trump is no different, and commentators were pointing out multiple reasons and multiple culprits as early as this morning of Wednesday, November 6. Here are the names that come up the most in the analyzes of Liberation and in those of our colleagues across the Atlantic.
Elon Musk
The richest man in the world threw himself body and soul into the battle for his foal, fully mobilizing his social network which had become a masculinist, conspiratorial and openly racist sounding board, offering (illegally) millions of dollars per (false) raffle to voters, and speaking out against Kamala Harris at a breakneck pace.
Joe Biden
The President of the United States graciously withdrew from the race on July 21 to better help the Democrats, but it was already too late, many Democratic executives argue. In question, the American economy under Biden, Donald Trump's main theme throughout the campaign. While the figures are excellent in macroeconomic terms, retirees suffered from inflation under Biden while young people were hit hard by the negative effects of the decline in growth. Faced with Trump's simplistic proposals – protectionism, lower taxes and an end to uncontrolled immigration – Harris had too little time to make her alternatives heard. The analysis of Financial Times.
Andy Montgomery
This young black man from North Carolina voted for Donald Trump, as he promised us, and he is not the only one. The Republican candidate, openly racist, received many more votes than expected in states with large black and Latino populations, and exit polls, even partial, point to the Republican candidate's impressive progress among black men, particularly black men. young people. Harris' bet on women, and certainly on black women, has not paid off, as they voted for her in the same proportions as their vote for Biden four years ago. Trump, on the other hand, is gaining more than 10% among young black men, mainly thanks to first-time voters. Across all age categories, Trump gained 6% among blacks and 10% among Latinos, while Harris is 3% behind Biden in 2020. In voting areas with high black and Hispanic populations, Trump “took a gamble on getting them out of their video games to vote, and he succeeded,” analyzes Ruth Marcus in the Washington Post and Jacey Fortin in the New York Times.
Volodymyr Zelensky
One in two Americans thought on the eve of the elections that their country “gives too much money to foreign countries at war”, targeting Israel and Ukraine equally. But on Ukraine, Trump was much clearer and his message resonated much more than Harris's. In fact, even in Pennsylvania's large Ukrainian community, Trump is seen as the candidate who could best end the war. “I think Ukrainians who support President Trump see him as the strong man who ultimately, despite his idiosyncrasies, would be able to take on Putin – the businessman who could seal the deal,” explained for example Eugene Luciw, the president of the Ukrainian State Congress, in an analysis of the Washington Post.
Benyamin Nétanyahou
The war in Gaza has deeply divided the Democratic Party, and many of its voters in Muslim communities said they were ready to boycott the vote to protest Joe Biden's unconditional support for Israel. If Harris was clearly more measured, her hesitations largely benefited Trump, who garnered numerous Muslim supports, without having to explain the contradictions of his positions, between “deep friendship” with Netanyahu and call on Israelis to «end this war quickly».
All these analyzes cannot make us forget the sixth man who brought down Harris, Donald Trump himself, a political beast that many had buried far too quickly.
