Chile Constitutional Referendum, September 4th 2022

[PSOL]

Does anyone know about newly elected Coquimbo mayor Alí Manoucheri?

[PSOL]

So talking with some Chilean travelers has led me to “discover” that the PCCh is a “social democratic” party. Now I’d like to believe with my first impressions that everyone talks with good faith, so what are they talking about exactly? What in official campaign literature or the party platform are they on about?

[PSOL]

Yes, but given the left-wing nature of PS compared to other Latin American parties like PT, I’m interested in hearing some reasons as to what makes the PCCh to be crypto socdems

[PSOL]

I have a general feelings from recently released polls that Jadue might just barely miss the runoff to Provoste from more right wing Socialist voters, thus leading to a centrist winning from backing Left and Center. How right is this intuition? Are the polls I’m seeing inaccurate or misleading to the general feel there?

[PSOL]

https://twitter.com/populismupdates/status/1410645222640345092?s=21

More cringe pointing to Jadue losing the election. Sad, he was the only hope and now he’s p!$$ing it all away. Matheiu or Provoste will be the next Chilean president.

[PSOL]

Jadue’s poor campaign is hyped up by a media that hates him dearly. No doubt there are flaws, but he seems to be about as electable as BoBo Boric.

[PSOL]

Jadue’s poor campaign is hyped up by a media that hates him dearly. No doubt there are flaws, but he seems to be about as electable as BoBo Boric.

Eh, not really. Is true that Boric and Jadue have almost the same platform but Jadue is a CO-MU-NIST, you see?. And this is not a manufactured media thing (though they DO hate him a lot), common people in Chile take the party labels quite literally (this also happens to the Socialist Party though it ironically helps them). If you talk to the median voter he will tell you that he doesn't like "extremes" and that politics divide society and blablabla. The post-pinochet transition hardcoded consensus and unity on the minds of most of the adult population (that's why Lavin goes so hard on those themes). I find it extremely annoying but that's how regular folks think. Boric, and to be honest any candidate without the hammer and the sickle behind it would wipe the floor with any rightist but I genuinely think Jadue would lose.

He COULD conceivably win given the national context if he campaigned well and moderated his image, but he hasn't done that and the communists are so full of themselves right now I doubt he will do that in the future.

If Jadue wins the most likely scenario is a Provoste victory, and while she is probably the single most leftist element on her party, it's kinda depressing going through the social uprising and the constituent elections only to end up with a christian democrat president.

The issue is that Boric strikes me as an alienating rich kid, and Jadue and the Communist Party seem to be more experienced operatives than Boric.

I think it would be best to keep pushing and try to get Jadue across the finish line, ultimately they are the most stable bed with heavy rewards for a new democratic socialist Chile.

[PSOL]

I am going to split my ticket to make my vote count. Go UPA’s Artés/parliamentary Wide Left+.

[PSOL]

Could you go into detail on Ártes’s performance?

[PSOL]

Could you go into detail on Ártes’s performance?

Oh, you would have liked him a lot. He said he was the only one proposing a different system, socialism, called Boric a "bourgeoise liberal", had many different nationalization proposals and my favorite thing, asked Sichel to say with energy that he was right-wing, not "centre right". For what is worth, the debate did make me consider protest-voting him since I really don't want to vote for Boric in the first round.

Boric is very likely going to win the first round, and in no doubt going to be in the top 2 to advance in the runoff. You and anyone else in your circle’s vote does not matter in this regard.

[PSOL]

What is Artes saying?

[PSOL]

So a recent poll shows Kast and Boric tied in the second round. Boric is most likely going to win this but the very fact it exists is depressing.

[PSOL]

Artes usually is a notable presence on the debate stage, what happened?

[PSOL]

This is going to be a mess with a loooot of contestion. Everyone will be up against everyone’s throats for weeks just like in Peru.

[PSOL]

Big Ernst Thalmann energy here:

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1462608058899644419

Good, associating with the upscale left in Chile most likely caused a depressing effect on PC. Boric’s awful campaigning depressed the entire working class to lead to this.

The upscale left and the useful idiots in the PC ruined a once in a lifetime opportunity by doing the same mistakes as what was done in 1968 France, abort the revolution led by their own union in hopes that electoralism would help their @$$es. Unlike then, there was no overarching Soviet Union that made them do it and—most importantly—Jadue could have won this election had he been more aggressive and gone for owning the rich instead of kowtowing towards the unpopular front/diet electoralism nonsense.

[PSOL]

How did PTS do?

[PSOL]

Big Ernst Thalmann energy here:

https://twitter.com/AmericaElige/status/1462608058899644419

Good, associating with the upscale left in Chile most likely caused a depressing effect on PC. Boric’s awful campaigning depressed the entire working class to lead to this.

The upscale left and the useful idiots in the PC ruined a once in a lifetime opportunity by doing the same mistakes as what was done in 1968 France, abort the revolution led by their own union in hopes that electoralism would help their @$$es. Unlike then, there was no overarching Soviet Union that made them do it and—most importantly—Jadue could have won this election had he been more aggressive and gone for owning the rich instead of kowtowing towards the unpopular front/diet electoralism nonsense.

This is hilarious on so many levels, not least that 1) "abort the revolution" as if Chile was 1910s Russia, 2) "upscale left" - PSOL, meet Red Velvet, Red Velvet, meet PSOL, 3) there's actually a second round and you have to win that too, 4) I'm not sure whatever alternative to electoralism would be less unpopular, 5) Boric's campaign was for from perfect, but I don't think Jadue or Artés or whoever could get out the working-class vote (as I said in a previous post, what does it even mean to be working class today?) any better.

Another fun-filled day at the Cult of the Ice Axe!

Chile 2018-2020 was quite literally 1968 France, being a transitory state between a protest and a revolution. It ended similarly, with the main nominal communist party ending the strike to focus on electoralism and thus aborting what could have been. On the electoral matters, Jadue throughout the campaign was far less cringe and off-putting than Bobo Boric.

Keep failing Lib, maybe the elites will slip up and you’ll win once Chile becomes a liberal democracy after decades of Kast’s iron rule. Maybe then the cult of the Burkean compromise will be dead.

[PSOL]

OK, Peru and Chile are different countries, but let's be a little more optimistic

There was also a very polarizing runoff in Peru.
In the following day after the first round in Peru, we though Fujimori would win.

Castillo was both the winner of the first round and his campaign advisors were stellar in leading the campaign to victory. Boric meanwhile is a complete failure and has terrible campaign advisors to a terrible candidate.

It’s already more bleak.

[PSOL]

Nobody but right wing partisans make or break their vote on immigration, but they will if that is coupled with an undesirable candidate that has a “I’m better than you yokels” aura.

[PSOL]

Guess Marx was right about the lumpenproletariat...

More seriously, it makes sense if slightly more educated and skilled workers were more likely to be unionized. Also the rural poor are probably much more religious compared to the urban working class. Is there any class component to Evangelicalism in Chile? Evangelical converts in Latin America seem to be a mix of upwardly mobile "new" middle class types and the poor. Of course, many evangelicals still vote for left parties in Latin America for class reasons.

There’s also the aspect that while some of the Lumpenproletariat are not willing as a class person to join the workers movement, as a whole they have no class consciousness and are thus convinced by gut feelings or uncaring about politics.

What is the turnout of the rural poor and unemployed relative to the population?

[PSOL]

It's unclear to me why we're discussing AMLO in a thread about Chile but I might as well weigh-in: Mexican politics defies easy characterization in terms of "left" and "right". Clearly, the PAN appears to be something like a center-right party, whereas the old PRD was clearly a center-left party, but Mexican history is totally lacking in class-based divides between socialists representing the working class and reactionaries or liberals representing elites. Instead, there is a long-standing tradition of charismatic, populist leaders, who have established broad appeal through clientelism/patronage and, also, nationalism aimed at foreign invaders or investors etc. AMLO represents a return to this tradition, best embodied in the PRI - it's unclear to me what's left-wing about it even if his opponents are convinced he is Hugo Chavez. This is quite unlike anything else in Latin America so searching for parallels in Mexico in other countries is basically a bad idea.

Bluntly, nothing about Chilean politics should make you think about Mexico - there are, quite literally, no similarities, no parallels. Chilean politics is more similar to politics in Japan than it is to politics in Mexico!

Morena (Amlo) is not a leftist party, it is a front with many parties of different ideology and I would even dare to say that Amlo is a "social conservative". There are many divisions within his party on the issue of religion, abortion and gay marriage and when all these factions have been at odds with each other, Amlo has always supported the "conservative" faction.

This is very true. Socialist Alternative and the rapist have been at odds with one another within Morena, and I think there’s several other factions such as the PRDistas that broke off then in 2012 and more recently. And even still Morena governs with more conservative partners like PVEM outweighing PT.

Mexican politics, if anything, resembles Honduras politics where a nominally “left” party—the current iteration of Libre—is composed of numerous factions that moderate the party platform and that they’ve joined with the more conservative Nasrallah to win/govern.

[PSOL]

What’s happening with the constitutional convention?

[PSOL]

I am never supporting PCCh after they betrayed their voters over and over again and continue to suck. Hopefully the UPA and PTR can get enough traction from the parliamentary rightists and bobos disappointing everyone to make it to parliament next election.

[PSOL]

How accurate is this article on the reasons as to why the left prevailed?

[PSOL]

While we are in this break, some political updates:

The right is trying to regroup and figuring out who are going to be their leaders. RN and UDI presidents invited everyone from the republicans to DC and PDG to unite as opposition to Boric (lol). DC obviously says no. EVOPOLI supposedly doesn't want to be in the same coalition as Kast so the most likely scenario is status quo (CP+ or whatever name they choose this time on one hand and in the other, Kast's  REP).

DC is having internal elections on January 23th. There are three lists: One of the conservative faction led by deputy Joanna Pérez, one from the progressive faction led by La Granja mayor Felipe Delpín (says that DC shouldn't be opposition to Boric as has been stated by the current party leaders) and former DC youth leader Diego Calderón who also seems to be progressive and socially liberal.

Everyone knows that Boric is going to have PS ministers, but they still don't figure it out how. PS wants to enter formally Apruebo Dignidad (along with PPD, PR and PL lol), but Apruebo Dignidad just want them to be a "government party" (they talk about different circles, AD is the inner one, then in the next one they would put PS)

AD is really shooting itself in the foot with this gatekeeping bullsh*t. I get that you don't want to make it Concertacion 2.0, but it should be enough to keep the non-socialist parties out.

PS itself is made up of third wayers and the executive office and parliamentary coalition is already self-compromising, how much of a big tent do you need?