Bolsonaro was the favorite, Trump was also the favorite Opinion

From Rio de Janeiro

A year ago, Trump was one of the favorites for re-election as President of the United States. He was leading the polls, while his opponents fought to see who would face him, divided at low rates, so that they could challenge him.

A situation similar to the one we are living in now in Brazil. Bolsonaro liquidated his opponents on the right with hard and fast blows and left alone as a potential candidate for the business, media and right-wing parties.

Meanwhile, the judiciary, which is providing another service to the oligarchy in Brazil, is slow to judge Lula and restore all his rights, until he is the candidate who unites the opposition against Bolsonaro. Polls show that Bolsonaro is advancing with a comfortable majority, while a series of opposition candidates are dividing their preferences among themselves, all of which face enormous difficulties in uniting and channeling the great potential of rejecting the far-right president.

Polls, which often consult a thousand people in Brazil, place unavoidable situations on people’s minds. Nobody believes that if Lula is included in the polls, he can reproduce the status of 2018, with all advisers indicating that he would win all opponents in the first round.

It also does not take into account that surveys, in addition to the limited number of interviews, are conducted over the phone, in a very cold and artificial climate, in addition to leaving a large part of the poorest population outside the consultation. . But basically, Don’t take into account that polling is one thing and campaigning another. This is particularly important for Lula, given his extraordinary communication skills, especially with the country’s poor majority, either as a candidate or as a candidate supporter – something Haddad missed in 2018-.

Bolsonaro didn’t even have a Trump honeymoon, as the US economy grows and jobs are created, generally leading to the re-election of a president of the United States. The epidemic has turned the country upside down, starting with the economy, which has entered a recession and caused unemployment. At the same time, negative rhetoric regarding the pandemic has created a climate extremely unfavorable to reelection.

Meanwhile, the Democrats rallied around a moderate candidate, who knew from the start that sections of the Republican Party itself were dissatisfied with Trump’s positions. But above all, he directed all forms of rejection of Trump, promising a government that would revitalize the economy and firmly fight the pandemic, and firmly opposed the scenario that represented Trump.

Another downside to polls without Lula is that they lead other opposition candidates to believe that they might be the left’s candidate against Bolsonaro. In the first place, it is clear that the dispute will be very difficult, and no candidate will be able to face it. Second, Bolsonaro will have a strong influx of support, which must be countered by popular support, as has always been for Labor candidates, which are rooted in the northeast of the country, but now also on the outskirts of the nation’s large cities. Southeast and South. A performance that can only be enjoyed by Lula, the Candidate or Mentor.

It will also be necessary, as the Bolivian and Ecuadorian experiences demonstrate, to achieve a victory by a wide margin, overcoming the judicial processes that were imposed in those countries as well as in Brazil.Under which elections are held in those countries. Exiting this process requires unity of democratic forces, strong popular support and great leadership that conveys the security of being able to defeat Bolsonaro and govern successfully, just as the Labor Party has succeeded in doing so.

Bolsonaro may be the favorite, but it will not be if the left were guided by the standards of experiences of recent electoral victories: Argentina, the United States, Bolivia.. Bolsonaro will appear, like Trump, as a sniper who attacks nothing but old politics and corruption, as if he did not practice it in public. He will be a victim of his failed government. It is clear that in 2022 the economy will remain in recession and high unemployment. The effects of the epidemic will continue to be felt, with the supply of vaccines unstable and even with the current victims of the Coronavirus.

Poll shows there is an alternative to Bolsonaro: a country with economic development, income distribution and employment, vaccines for everyone, with democracy. This would be the critical scenario for the defeat of Bolsonaro and the victory of the democratic forces.