The electoral effects of the great for a seat on the Supreme Court cannot be underestimated. It is not enough to consider that the electorate does not care about nominations to the STF and that the issue will be forgotten.
As, the defeat, unprecedented in 130 years, is a clear sign that the PT candidate’s candidacy enters a new phase of what was already configured as a process of political and electoral isolation.
Lula is being pushed into confinement on the left, in a context in which valuable alliances from the center to the right are becoming even more difficult.
This situation, in the context of a polarized second round, removes from the candidate that small, but decisive, slice of voters who would decide, on the margin, the victor.
The narrowing movement was already in full swing, with the help of the PT, the arrogance and futility in the Palace kitchen. There is an atmosphere of confusion and uneasiness.
Has Lula become a lame duck (“lame duck”, as Americans refer to a ruler who no longer has the capacity to govern) or can he change the situation? Would such measures attract votes from the streets or is it all just an illusion? Could this be a twist in the script, a “plot twist”? It has the potential to target powerful enemies of the president, but also friends.
For now we see the growth of the front that brings together the Master’s party, centrão and Bolsonarism (with part of the Supreme Court and everything), with a view to electing an anti-PT government. It would be the consecration of Flávio Bolsonaro, the puppet of the extreme right in the Executive, under the supervision of this type of delinquent parliamentarism that was strengthened by Davi Alcolumbre’s response to the president. An arrangement that offers the markets the carrot of “fiscal adjustment” and privatizations, in exchange for complicity that has already been partially achieved.
Conjectures about the somewhat remote chances of a change of candidate – Lula making way for Fernando Haddad or Geraldo Alckmin – are part of this universe. These are names with less rejection, which would theoretically have more sympathy from relevant sectors of the economy and even from a certain middle class. On the other hand, they do not have the strength and political effectiveness of Lula. Perhaps the question is more dramatic than that: who is it better to lose with?
After the trauma of the Messias case, a colleague who navigates the seas of politics said something to me like “I have the feeling that I started watching the film of Lula’s defeat in the election”. The great tragedy of this melancholy premonition would, of course, be the consequent victory of an unqualified candidate like Flávio Bolsonaro, who has all the conditions to promote a national catastrophe. What came to be seen as an occasional trick turned into a, until now, competitive postulation.
Let us remember when there were months left before the captain’s election and this seemed to many eyes – including mine – an inconceivable folly. At the same time, something said that we would inevitably march towards disaster. Is my colleague watching the wrong movie? We’ll see.
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