Past peak crazy
was called again (perhaps for lack of a viable alternative) by a prodemocracy coalition of centrists and leftists and some hardcore political conservatives to challenge Bolsonaro’s re-election.
Bolsonaro’s yellow-shirted supporters have staged protests, crying the usual “stolen elections” trope and had asked the armed forces to intervene and call for a fresh presidential vote. But the strong institutional defense of the elections from the Supreme Court down to the electoral officials has reduced Brazil’s own version of “Stop the Steal” to irrelevance.
Lula will soon move into the presidential palace. Pockets of protests are still expected and social media sniping from the Bolsonaro diehards will probably last years. But democratic elections, for all their warts, as the Brazil elections proved, remain strong counterfoils against the most determined anti-democratic forces.
Across Latin America, such peaceful transitions involving left-wing, but pro-democracy winners taking power in the presidential palaces have become almost routine.
The big meltdown for antidemocracy forces was in the US, as the expected ascendancy of an assortment of Trumpists to the Senate, the House of Representatives, the state capitols, the state assemblies — and the secretary of state positions that oversee the elections in their respective states — in the midterm elections crashed and burned. Voters expected to deliver a so-called red wave with big Republican majorities in the Senate, House, Capitols, state legislatures, and secretary of state positions voted for the pro-democracy forces instead of being swayed by their economic insecurities.
At the end of the count, only a small majority in the House — a majority so slim that it won’t even count as a legislating mandate — was the puny product of the “red wave” expectation. For the first time, Republican Party leaders that used to cower on bended knees before Trump are now questioning his fitness to lead the party. The “stolen elections” grievance that absorbed much of the party’s energy over the past two years has been dropped by party mandarins, a slap on Trump.
The party had this rude awakening. Candidate quality matters. More than the standard obeisance to Trump. Conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, election deniers and assorted kooks and loonies “sent by God” to deliver America from the clutches of the satanic Democrats are not viable at the polls.
At the polling booths, voters of the world’s oldest democracy voted to nurture democracy than be dictated by their legitimate economic struggles.
The global polity is probably past peak crazy. By the way, and this is the best news after years of despairing over the fate of democracy, Putin and his revanchist dreams called the “Russian World” are getting bogged down in the mud and muck of the Ukrainian oblasts. Before fleeing from the advancing Ukrainians, Russian soldiers looted the homes of their cell phones and household appliances. But left behind the electric cords and steel pipes that they used for torture. So much for the “best army” in the world.