My initial feeling is these results confirm my take that this was absolutely a winnable election for the opposition. The desire for fresh leadership is widespread enough, and hardships caused by U.S. economic warfare have created ripe conditions for opposing parties to seize advantage of.

Luckily for Maduro the counter-revolution is incapable of rallying around the sort of candidate who could win. A SocDem who claims they’ll preserve broadly popular social programs but eliminate their “corruption”, talks about standing up for human rights, and seeks to normalize relations with the U.S (but who is not ready to coup the Venezuelan government for Uncle Sam if given the slightest chance to) would have a great chance of winning. This is so obvious that even the ghouls in Washington backed Guaido because he was opposition figure closest to meeting these criteria, except of course that of not being a spineless traitor.

María Corina Machado the leader of the counter-revolution, is not that. She proudly identifies as being on the extreme right of Venezuelan political spectrum, with her central policies being to privatize the state-owned oil company (PDVSA) and eliminate welfare for the poor. She has also supported every effort by a foreign government to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

The Venezuelan counter-revolution also continues to be very clearly overtly racist against Afro-Venezuelan and Mestizo peoples, in their rhetoric and aims.

Of course no mainstream media in the Global North will examine the very clear reasons for the Venezuelan counter-revolution’s incredible streak of L’s continued today, and will instead peddle Mike Lindell tier conspiracy theories.