Trump’s warning back in 2016 about not recognizing the election results became a call to action after his defeat in the 2020 presidential election. Despite his own Department of Justice and the Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, asserting and certifying it was the ‘most secure’ election in US history, Trump insisted that there had been a fraud without proof. Instead of supporting the evidence of a Republican administration of a clean and transparent election, the GOP embarked along with the former president on a full-blown court expedition seeking to stop the election from being certified. Fortunately, election officials stood by the law, and the court system upheld the results. The system worked.
However, the election has left critical issues that need to be addressed as voting rights are currently under threat by the Republican Party after a massive turnout during the pandemic. The attack underway includes stripping election officials of their authority and creating felonies that would prevent anyone from protecting elections in the way these officials did in 2020 to save American democracy.
The reluctance to recognize a fair election, and the refusal to concede, fueled a violent insurrection to impede a procedural vote count in the Capitol. The damage this episode has caused goes beyond the Biden presidency. The consequence of a violent mob assaulting Congress is a stain in the history of a country that takes pride in its democratic system.
Unfortunately, this dangerous behavior is being rewarded or purposely ignored by those in the unique position to stop the spread of lies undermining the electoral process and the democratic political system in the United States. The Republican Party continues kowtowing to the former president’s pointless effort in relitigating the election. At the same time, lawmakers keep pushing falsehoods about the election results to justify the passing of voter suppression laws.
In addition to this situation, the election post-mortem shows the former president’s inroads among the Latino electorate, especially in South Florida. Regardless of the warnings from the Democratic Party, the Trump campaign’s communications strategy deployed a disinformation effort through traditional and non-traditional media with a significant penetration within Latino audiences. The campaign was so effective that the gap between President Biden and the former president in the Democratic stronghold of Miami-Dade was reduced by 22 points, prompting concerns among party activists and strategists.
The Democratic Party has been unsuccessfully sounding the alarm for quite some time. There is the pervasive use of media, not only within social media but also through Spanish-speaking radio and tv stations, contributing to the spread of these fabrications. The 2020 election is not over for influencers and talk-show hosts pushing the unfounded electoral fraud conspiracy theory without anyone holding them accountable.
This behavior started back in 2020 with the accusations from Spanish-speaking media personalities against the Black Lives Matter movement amid the social justice protests following the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis Police Department police officer. This line of attack continued as part of the Republican strategy to demonize Democrats, accusing then-candidate Biden and the Democratic Party of promoting a socialist agenda and reacting to the increase in support of the outcry for racial and social justice.
The accusations rapidly expanded to establish a connection between Biden, socialism, and the authoritarian regimes in Latin America, like the one led by Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela or the aspiring leftist candidate Gustavo Petro in Colombia. In South Florida, Spanish-speaking media has turned into an echo chamber of relentless disinformation, not only directed at Latino voters in the state but also influencing audiences in Venezuela and Colombia, where these conspiracy theories are quickly spreading through the social media and messaging platforms Twitter, Facebook, and WhatsApp, that are very popular in Latin America and among Latinos in the United States.
This situation creates the perfect environment for a protracted campaign of lies involving the Biden administration and the Democratic Party and their supposedly socialist agenda of supporting leftists regimes in Latin America. As Republicans continue building a narrative just before the Presidential Elections in Nicaragua (November 2021) and Colombia (May 2022), the intention is to increase their share of votes among Latinos in the 2022 Midterms stoking fears of socialism while continuing to peddle lies about the election.
The Democratic party cannot allow itself to wait for the Midterms to stop this disinformation campaign in Spanish-speaking media in South Florida. American democracy is at stake. It will take more than the Voting Rights Act to protect the electoral process when a political party uses all its resources to maintain the lie that brought a violent mob to the Capitol, intending to do whatever it took to prevent President Joe Biden from being certified.
This was probably a drill. The behavior of the Republican Party makes it clear they are not interested in defending democracy and its institutions. This leaves the country with only one functioning party, the Democratic Party, and the American experiment is in their hands. The Democratic Party needs to gather full support from donors and media to fund an educational campaign that directs the responsibility of the assault on democracy on those who are spreading lies about the election. In the realm of public opinion, it has to be clear that those advancing the falsehood that the election was stolen are doing exactly what the governments they accuse of forcing them into exile do. They need to be held accountable publicly, and their sponsors need to know they are supporting undemocratic media personalities contributing to ruining American democracy. If they continue to undermine the democratic system, there will be no turning back once they have achieved their mission. Let’s hope it is not too late.