The officialization of the Lula/Alckmin ticket, no surprise, illuminates a gray electoral strategy. aims to turn back the hands of the clock of history, making 2026 a second 2022. Democracy versus coup, “democratic front” against “fascism” – this is the main line of the PT campaign. This is an option for those who lack options.
Lula cannot complain about his luck. His main rival is called Bolsonaro – and, on top of that, he is an unqualified candidate whose position is due exclusively to his surname. Despite everything, as polls suggest, the president risks losing. Cause: The clock refuses to go back.
Back then, the Bolsonarist coup was an imminent threat, a sword raised over the institutions by the occupant of the Planalto. Today, the coup clique, defeated, is serving long prison sentences. The invocation of a permanent emergency faces skepticism from the centrist electorate who gave Lula a victory within the margin of error.
More: 2026 is not 2022 because, in that interval, Lula frustrated expectations, revealing himself to be a prisoner of the past: fiscal expansionism that freezes interest rates at stratospheric levels and the reduction of social policies to pecuniary benefits. The crude metaphor hits a sensitive nerve. The majority declares itself against reappointing the president.
Even so, the Lulista strategy can work. In Dallas, at CPAC, a reactionary conference sponsored by Maga, the heir to the name insisted on extremist speech, disseminating conspiratorial theses about the polls and calling for Washington’s interference in the Brazilian election. Trump, Milei, Bukele: the sacred trinity offers the PT easy targets, opening a path to triumph.
Luck, however, has limits. Contrary to what hopeful PT leaders imagine, his candidacy is bad news for Lula. The right-wing speaks through two microphones, while the center-left moves in circles in the Lulista cage.
Caiado represents a false third way. It is clearly on the right, but it distinguishes itself from the anti-democratic reactionism of the replacement Bolsonaro. In a tactical move as clever as it was opportunistic, he did not wrap his promise of amnesty to the coup plotters in the cellophane of revenge or reparation, but in that of “national pacification”.
The former governor of Goiás unfurls the two hot flags of the current Latin American electoral cycle: public security and corruption. It benefits from high popularity, in a state driven by agriculture, the most dynamic sector of the Brazilian economy, and is not vulnerable to credible accusations of coup plotting. Furthermore, unlike Flávio from “rachadinhas”, his closets seem free of skeletons.
Caiado’s candidacy fulfills a double function. In a normal horizon, it would win over a significant portion of the center-right electorate averse to Bolsonarism, becoming a providential partner for the extremist candidate in the decisive round. In a scenario of implosion of the second Bolsonaro, under relentless PT bombardment, he would monopolize majority anti-Lulism. Whitewashed, the improbable, bets on the arrow of time, not on the eternal return.
“History repeats itself, the first time as tragedy; the second time as farce.” Lula did not correctly decipher Marx’s warning.
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