Bridge, Trump, democracy
Óscar Puente, a sharp-tongued and clumsy politician, has redeemed himself by providing explanations and assuming responsibility with his resignation as Minister of Public Works, due to the Urda railway tragedy and the high-speed rail disaster. Furthermore, these were not just superficial explanations: they were exhaustive, first in a press conference and then in parliament, at his own request. It was not a deferred resignation either, but one in strictly live terms, also renouncing his place on the electoral lists. This is called accountability and the assumption of responsibility, and the spectacle was so unusual that it left even the shrewd analysts wide-eyed, who now repeat that the resignation was a foregone conclusion (the same ones who, just hours before it happened, said that Puente would cling to the office because he aspired to be Sánchez's successor). Nevertheless, the one left most disoriented is the nationalist right, the PP and Vox, who in the face of catastrophes still use a handbook that advises insulting victims when they do not suit their interests. All eyes, by the way, have turned back to Carlos Mazón, after two years have passed since the DANA in the Valencian Country and he remains protected by the PP, with good remuneration and judicial immunity in the Valencian Courts. But beyond the particularly odious comparisons, Puente's resignation has revived the pre-campaign: remember, as the columnist Matías Vallés would say, in which newspaper and in which sectarian column you read before anywhere else that the campaign might be knocked out, but not dead.
Recall also in which column and in which woke newspaper it began to receive news that Donald Trump could suffer a heavy defeat in the mid-term elections. The results of this Tuesday are not a corrective, but a cycle change: a Hispanic candidate has won in Texas, a Muslim in Michigan, the Republicans have lost Kansas. Trump has been affected by the price of fuel, certainly, but he has also paid at once, and with interest, the price of his Caesarism. From the murderous police brutality of the ICE to the absurd war in Iran, from the filth of Epstein's island to the anti-democratic arrogance of tech magnates, from the firing of civil servants to mass deportations, from the insults to non-aligned journalists to the unrest and tension in the streets, from the videos made with AI sunbathing with Netanyahu at a resort in Gaza to the macabre society they have formed to commit the genocide and profit from it.
Trump's defeat is terrible news for provincial Trump supporters who wish to erode democracy to impose new forms of political, economic, and social control. It reminds us of an obvious fact: the problem with democracy is that undesirable characters can come to power, but its greatness is that they can also be expelled via the same means they arrive, which are the ballot boxes. And it is even possible to prevent them from ever reaching power.
