If you're thinking that the announced results of the July 29 elections in Venezuela sound suspiciously like a rerun of their 2018 elections, that simply means that you have a good memory. As you may recall, all of the available international polling showed President Nicolas Maduro trailing opposition candidate Juan Guaido badly and the reporting from individual precincts indicated that Maduro lost handily. But he declared himself the winner days later and ordered the Supreme Court to certify the results. The United States recognized Guaido as the legitimate president of Venezuela by order of President Donald Trump, along with many other nations. That made no practical difference, however, and Maduro retained power. Well, last week it happened again. And Washington is now recognizing opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia as the winner. Maduro obviously has no intention of stepping down. (CNN)

The United States has said “it is clear” that President Nicolas Maduro lost the popular vote in Venezuela’s election last week, as a key opposition leader said she is in hiding in fear for her life.

“Given the overwhelming evidence, it is clear to the United States and, most importantly, to the Venezuelan people that Edmundo González Urrutia won the most votes in Venezuela’s July 28 presidential election,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“In addition, the United States rejects Maduro’s unsubstantiated allegations against opposition leaders. Maduro and his representatives’ threats to arrest opposition leaders, including Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, are an undemocratic attempt to repress political participation and retain power,” Blinken added.

In response to public outcries, Maduro has once again asked the Venezuelan Supreme Court to review the election results. However, that is still little more than an exercise in political theater. When Maduro originally took power in 2014, he removed every member of the court that demonstrated any tendency toward independent thinking and replaced them with his own loyalist flunkies. They know all too well that very bad things can happen to people in Venezuela who speak or act in ways that Nicolas Maduro disapproves of. You may rest assured that they will certify the election results in Maduro's favor once again.

Even if the White House recognizes Gonzalez as the legitimate president, nothing much will change. Both he and opposition party leader María Corina Machado are currently in hiding at undisclosed locations in fear for their lives. If this election follows the same pattern as the previous one, Gonzalez will wind up in prison on vague, unspecified charges as soon as he is located. If released, he will likely flee the country just as Guaido did in 2020. Eventually, our government will go back to doing business with Maduro in a routine fashion because Venezuela continues to maintain a large footprint in international affairs, particularly in the Western hemisphere, and they can't simply be ignored.

While perhaps uncomfortable to discuss, it may prove somewhat ironic that the Biden administration is publicly calling out election fraud in Venezuela and declaring Nicolas Marduro's presidency illegitimate. Venezuela is legitimately a "banana republic" in the original sense of the term. But even today, we still have many people in the United States questioning the results of the 2020 elections here, with faith in our governmental institutions at an all-time low. The Democrats have just concluded a presidential "primary" that was as undemocratic as anything Maduro could ever dream up, throwing out the votes cast by tens of millions of their party members and installing a presidential candidate by fiat who never received a single vote. And yet we still somehow feel entitled to decry the Maduro government as illegitimate? 

This is the danger that a nation faces when it begins treading down such a path, particularly a global superpower. Why should other foreign leaders follow our lead in claiming to reject Maduro and embracing Gonzalez? The last time we tried that it wound up making no difference at all. And if Kamala Harris is somehow elected in November and sworn in as the next President in January (God help us all), Nicolas Maduro may well go before the press and declare her to be illigitimate. At this point, what could we really say in response? There's some unpleasant food for thought for you.