Did Hugo Chavez legitimately win?

[WMS]

Poor Venezuelans and the international far left love him despite (or perhaps because of) the devastating impact of his rule on democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela,

It`s not as if these things were in a better state than they now are before he came around, you know...

Anyways... I like Chavez' campaign.

"Re-elect Chavez President.
Vote against the Devil. Vote against the Empire."

Proving strangeland's point for him, are you?

[WMS]

Interesting point though, could one argue that Massachusetts or Utah aren't really democratic?

Those places are a lot like South Carolina in the old days, in that the real races are, in general, the primaries, not the general elections.

Utah and Massashusetts don't forbid almost the entire population from voting in the primaries, though.

[WMS]

Poor Venezuelans and the international far left love him despite (or perhaps because of) the devastating impact of his rule on democracy and the rule of law in Venezuela,

It`s not as if these things were in a better state than they now are before he came around, you know...

Anyways... I like Chavez' campaign.

"Re-elect Chavez President.
Vote against the Devil. Vote against the Empire."

Proving strangeland's point for him, are you?

Same thing as when Ronald Reagan or George W Bush go around calling their bogeymen of choice "Evil" - you might not agree, but if you dislike said bogeyman more than the person saying it (or if you just feel that said bogeyman gets what is still way too good a press) you're delighted to hear someone in power say something crass like that out loud...

Well, I dislike Chavez more than Bush, so clearly I wouldn't be delighted, now would I? The bigger point was that when people like Chavez say things like they do the international far left gives them a free pass on all the bad things they do, because being "anti-Yanqui" is clearly more important than being a democrat instead of an autocrat...