2023-11-11 05:26:00
Sergio Massa, from the celebration to the ballot. The difficult exercise as minister and candidate
The electoral race is on its way to its end, following two national rounds and dozens of local elections. Little remains: tomorrow’s debate and a few more activities of the candidates, in a general atmosphere that does not exhibit enthusiasm or anything similar. Surely and to a large extent, it is the drag of the long crisis, although more striking is the effect of the candidates’ own game, that is, the crossed bets of Sergio Massa and Javier Milei on the fears and errors of others, rather than to any hopeful formula. On both sides, the idea that the future of democracy is at stake adds sadness.
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It is much more than uncertainty. That, in any case, reflects stacks of surveys, already played publicly and with tracking for more reserved consumption in the days remaining until the runoff. It also happens that, according to some consultants, a prominent factor appears in this race: the condition of fear of what is coming. It is an element that divides waters, or that feeds back the crack, and is exploited as the main brushstroke to paint the rejection of the competitor.
Of course, it would not be regarding provoking expectations, in a positive sense, but rather regarding generating basic, defensive behaviors. It is also significant for the context that marked the stage of the PASO – which far exceeds the idea of selection in each internal – and the map that the first round drew three weeks ago: political fragmentation, with the addition of a certain dissociation between the disputes provincial and national results.
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This time, the runoff does not appear as a mechanism to consolidate an option in a more or less bipartisan scheme, but rather to fabricate that table and settle it. It recreates the crack, in a context without two almost exclusive leaderships. Milei appears as “new”, although not at all at the limitless levels that were agitated in the media following the primaries. Massa recovered space to place the ruling party in the final, but far from the voting levels traditionally maintained by Peronism. Said in numbers: the ruling party reached 37 points in October and LLA reached 30.
Together for Change was left out of the game, shaken by a deep crisis, a prologue in turn to the reconfiguration of politics that will follow the runoff. His electorate from the first round, almost 24 percent, is a central part of the dispute, along with the band of regarding 7 points that leaned towards Juan Schiaretti. In a simplified way, Massa and Milei sought to ensure from the outset the most decisive vote of that conglomerate: one of greater rejection of the libertarian, and of greater rejection of Peronism/Kirchnerism, the other.
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The consensus among consultants and campaign teams is that this is not enough. There remains a band that is defined in one word as “moderate”, although this is a category that does not summarize everything that is at stake. That, without counting the rejection of the two offers, which might turn to blank votes, an audience that is difficult to weigh numerically but which is also targeted.
In any case, it is an exercise that reveals the candidates’ discomfort with their suits for this decisive stage of the campaign. On the one hand, there is a need to connect with the toughest positions of voters who are considered played, according to the polls. The focus is on the percentages of JxC and Schiaretti that are considered favorable to Massa or Milei. And at the same time, they follow the recommendations on care in public exhibition, to give an image of a certain moderation or, at least, containment.
In this game, in addition to hiding the elements that can generate greater resistance, they aim to provoke the error of others, as a political space and above all as a personal reaction. The campaign teams are working along these lines for this Sunday’s debate. It is a double-edged challenge, because a blow can be decisive, but so can crossing a limit.
Javier Milei, in the new stage of the campaign. Moderate profile attempt
The official candidate and the libertarian have a lot to take care of. Massa has for some time articulated a speech, not at all simple, related to his management in the Economy, along with the broader attempt to take off the four years of government of Alberto Fernández and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Then issues out of control are added. One last: the illegal espionage scandal involving Rodolfo Tailhade, a hardline Kirchnerist deputy, and Fabián “Conu” Rodríguez, a front-line AFIP official, aligned with La Cámpora. The case is linked to the attempted impeachment of the Supreme Court and its waves frustrated the official campaign agenda in Congress.
Milei also has issues that she tries to place outside the final stretch of the campaign. Before the first round, she had arranged for the members of her economic circle to lower their level of exposure, entangled in explanations regarding the deadlines and depth of proposals such as dollarization or State reform. She also added indefensible and even dark statements regarding weapons and organs. On another, very different level, she needs to shift the focus of the agreement with Mauricio Macri.
It is clear that, almost mechanically, those weak points of one will be targeted by the other. However, the most noisy and at the same time least measured is constituted by the agitation around the risk to democracy that puts the maximum tension in the dispute between Massa and Milei.
That is the element that extremes negative campaigns. It is well above the low blows. Some of those hits look natural. The ruling party, for example, insists on the enormous increase in train and bus tickets that a libertarian victory would mean. Extend the game. The last installment is the bonus for minimum retirements, which this time is only for one month and with the future pending the electoral result. From the LLA, they speak without hesitation of a scenario of hyperinflation and economic collapse in the event of UxP’s victory.
More serious is the intersection of warnings regarding the risk to the democratic system that the meaning of voting might have. To put it bluntly: the future would hold authoritarianism, poverty, denialism and regression in matters of rights, in one case, or hegemonism, corruption, economic and social deterioration, in the other.
Of course, they are not expressions that emerge from nowhere and there are finer and more elaborate arguments between support for Massa and support for Milei. In any case, the point is that, played like this, they add tension to the electoral uncertainty. It is not all. They leave almost no space to think regarding how to democratically process the result of the runoff, whatever it may be, and the picture of political fragmentation, emerging from the first round and the provincial elections, expressed in Congress and on the map of the governorates. This is what comes following the campaign and Sunday the 19th.
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