One of the stunning facts of the age is the continued prominence of AMLO. His favorability ratings within his party have been high and basically unchanged since late 2018. In a range of polls, most have actually shown Morena leading the opposition in a race for election in 2024.
His prominence is astounding because, over the past four years, the Mexican establishment has spent enormous amounts of energy trying to discredit him.
Those in this establishment correctly identified AMLO as a grave threat to democracy. The task before was clear. They were never going to shake the hard-core Morena folks. The job was to peel away independents and those Morenistas offended by and exhausted by his antics.
Many strategies were deployed in order to discredit AMLO. There was the immorality strategy: Thousands of articles were written detailing his lies and peccadilloes. There was the attack strategy: Investigations were launched into his various scandals and outrages. There was the exposure strategy: Scores of books were written exposing how shambolic and ineffective the AMLO administration really is.
The net effect of these strategies has been to sell a lot of books and subscriptions and to make anti-AMLOists feel good. But this entire barrage of invective has not discredited AMLO among the people who will very likely play the most determinant role. It has probably pulled some college-educated Morenistas into the opposition ranks and pushed some working-class voters over to the Morenista side.
The barrage has probably solidified AMLO’s hold on his party. Morenistas see themselves at war with the progressive urban elites. If those elites are dumping on AMLO, he must be their guy.
Every week, opposition leaders give speeches at every event, declaring the Morena movement a threat to democracy. The speech says a lot of true things about that movement, but there is an implied confession: They have no strategy. Denouncing AMLO and discrediting him are two different tasks. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned, denunciation may be morally necessary, but it doesn’t achieve the goal the denouncers think it does.
Some commentators argue that the opposition strategy in their speeches was to make AMLO the central issue of the 2021 midterms; both the opposition and AMLO have an interest in making sure that AMLO is the sun around which all of Mexican politics revolves.
You would think that those in the anti-AMLO camp would have at one point stepped back and asked some elemental questions: What are we trying to achieve? Who is the core audience here? Which strategies have worked, and which have not?
If those questions were asked, the straightforward conclusion would be that most of what they are doing is not working. The next conclusion might be that there’s a lot of self-indulgence here. They’re doing things that help those in the anti-AMLO world bond with one another, and that help people in the AMLO world bond with one another. They’re locking in the political structures that benefit AMLO.
The core conclusion is that attacking AMLO personally doesn’t work. You have to rearrange the underlying situation. We are in the middle of a cultural/economic/partisan/identity war between more progressive people in the metro areas and more conservative people everywhere else. To lead the left in this war, AMLO doesn’t have to be honest, moral, or competent; he just has to be seen taking the fight to the “elites.”
The proper strategy in this situation is to scramble the identity war narrative. That’s what the opposition did in 2021. It dodged the culture war issues.
An opposition candidate who steps outside the culture/identity war narrative is going to have access to the voters who need to be moved. Public voices who don’t seem locked in the insular educated elite worldview are going to be able to reach the people who need to be reached.
AMLOistas tell themselves that Mexico is being threatened by a radical right putsch that is out to take over the government and undermine the culture. The core challenge now is to show by word and deed that this is a gross exaggeration.
Can Morena win again? Absolutely. An Ebrard/Sheimbaum/López doubter should doubt someone so emotionally flat and charmless can win a nomination in the age of intensive media. And then once the Morena candidate is nominated, he/she has some chance of winning, because nobody is executing an effective strategy against him/her.
If that happens, we can at least console ourselves with that Taylor Swift lyric: “I had a marvelous time ruinin’ everything.”
The previous lines juxtapose a column by David Brooks published by The New York Times on September 15, 2022, with the title: Why Is There Still No Strategy to Defeat Donald Trump?”.* His analysis is impeccable, and the similarity of what is happening in U.S. politics with Mexican politics is striking. The only thing that was done was to change Trump for AMLO, Republicans for Morenistas, 2016 for 2018 and 2022 for 2021, I for them, Democrats for the opposition, and Americans for Mexicans. Interesting exercise.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/15/opinion/strategy-defeat-donald-trump.html?smid=url-share
SEPGRA Political Analysis Group
Comments:
It might be time to go back to basics and actually appeal to voters with a platform and fresh ideas, etc.
Establishmentarians around the world were dealt a stunning rebuke in the mid-to-late 2010s. The Washington Consensus was working only for a few educated urbanite professionals in major global cities and they were oblivious to the social and economic changes across broader spheres of their societies.
The establishment is still attempting to ignore the rebuke; in the US, they claimed that the Trump victory was illegitimate. While similar denial isn’t present in Mexico, the strategy to highlight the repugnance of AMLO the man is identical to the strategy used on Trump. And indeed in the conference rooms and cocktail lounges and yoga studios of the global cities, people may all agree.
The point’s been made, and the voters don’t care. They knew these candidates were scummy when they were initially running. To them, it’s a wash. “Establishmentarians are corrupt as well” (many are). And the system establishmentarians are trying to preserve seemed rigged before to the populist voters around the world. “why not give it a shot”
In the US I think the establishment has been let off the hook. COVID has led to a new phase of reshoring and a tight labor market. Trump was defeated and Republicans are trying to forget about him (unless he becomes a martyr and is resuscitated). But it doesn’t look like the Mexican establishment is being similarly bailed out.
St. Cyr
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