Italian Elections and Politics 2022 - Our Time to Schlein

[Antonio the Sixth]

Last night the House voted confidence in Meloni, 235 to 154. Today it will be the turn of the Senate.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Last night the House voted confidence in Meloni, 235 to 154. Today it will be the turn of the Senate.

And the Senate followed suit, 115-79.

So today Meloni is PM in the fullest of her capacities. Now we'll finally get to see her true face.

[Antonio the Sixth]

fwiw Meloni has already backtracked on this and will keep certain restrictions in place for now. Still, yeah, she's clearly throwing a bone to these types of people.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Yep. Here it begins.

[Antonio the Sixth]

lol

[Antonio the Sixth]

lol

Everything Meloni is saying is correct. I'm unsure why this is funny. Particularly to someone who should be 'anti-imperialist'.

oh, we've got an international political economy expert in chat

Frankly the workings of the Franc CFA system are beyond me as they're beyond like 95% of this forum. I'm sure it's exploitative in some way (like almost all dealings between developed and developing countries are), but no, it doesn't work like Meloni says it does, and there are reasons why these countries (many of which are on pretty bad terms with France right now) find it preferable to having their own national currecy.

[Antonio the Sixth]

lol

Everything Meloni is saying is correct. I'm unsure why this is funny. Particularly to someone who should be 'anti-imperialist'.

oh, we've got an international political economy expert in chat

Frankly the workings of the Franc CFA system are beyond me as they're beyond like 95% of this forum. I'm sure it's exploitative in some way (like almost all dealings between developed and developing countries are), but no, it doesn't work like Meloni says it does, and there are reasons why these countries (many of which are on pretty bad terms with France right now) find it preferable to having their own national currecy.

They find it preferable because France makes up a gargantuan amount of their trade. Really you are just proving my point. They can't stop using it because France has that much control.

Unequal trade relationships are a ubiquitous feature of the modern global economy. It's bad and it should change, but has nothing to do with a petty feud between two developed Western European countries. Also another important benefit is monetary stability - the same reason why countries used to be on the gold standards during the 19th century and why they tried to set up the Bretton Woods system until Nixon blew it up. It's especially important for developing countries since investors tend to be more sensitive to monetary risks.

Again, I'm not qualified enough to actually discuss the pros and cons here (unlike you, I've actually taken classes in international political economy before, but I'm sensible enough to realize that doesn't make me an expert). But evidently that doesn't stop cheap populist politicians and their moronic Atlas simps from bloviating on the subject.

[Antonio the Sixth]

In more serious news, the Meloni government is starting to hit its first speed bumps. The most notable one is a strike of gas station attendants that started yesterday (and may or may not continue until tomorrow) in protest against a series of regulation the government passed to curb "speculation" in gas prices. This came after prices rose sharply in the new year following the end of government subsidies that had been enacted in the middle of the oil crisis last year (whereas Meloni had previously promised she would keep those subsidies). Whatever the merits of the proposal, it sure came off like the government was trying to blame gas stations for the outcome of its own policy decisions. Anyway the government seems interested in bringing this to a quick resolution and has already made significant concessions. And while the prices are high, they are significantly down from their peak and likely to fall further, so I don't expect this to be an enormous deal, but it's at least a sign that the honeymoon is over.

The other bubbling controversy is that the government is gearing up for yet another judicial reform that is likely to draw the ire of PD and M5S as well as of the judiciary itself. I don't know why they're so obsessed with relitigating this sh*t all the time, especially now that Berlusconi is close to politically irrelevant, but here we are again. Coming off the heels of the arrest of Messina Denaro, it also doesn't seem like the best optics to talk about reining in overzealous magistrates, but what do I know.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Meloni seems to be becoming like your average Premier who promisses a lot of "change" but then... nothing. Actually nothing, neither radical or moderate, just managing daily affairs.

There are in fact some relatively substantive reforms underway. However, instead of being about the kitchen-table concerns Italians have in their daily lives (and that drove Meloni to power in the first place) they are about the longstanding ideological obsessions of the right. One is judicial reform, always in the direction of sticking it to the judges/prosecutors who are accused of being too hard on politicians (and to be fair there is also a lot of corruption in the Italian judiciary, though not more than in other branches of government). The other is the law on "regional autonomy", which promises to let regions keep a higher share of their tax revenue. Of course that's good news for wealthy regions like the right-wing bastions of Lombardy and Veneto, and less good news for the South which is a lot more dependent on state support. So Meloni is definitely getting busy in government - but her priorities aren't exactly those of ordinary Italians.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fash Girl Winter is still going strong, it seems. Still waiting for a Dream of Spring.

[Antonio the Sixth]

These are really preliminary data, based mostly on results in Northern cities - which, yes, look very good for Schlein right now. Still, we should wait for the South, since many big name PD figures there support Bonaccini.

[Antonio the Sixth]

OK, if these (very partial) regional results hold, Schlein has this and it won't even be close.

https://twitter.com/you_trend/status/1629949467523788809

This would be the first time we have a real upset in a PD primary. Very interesting.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Bonaccini just conceded. With 80% of the votes counted, Schlein leads by 8 poins, so this is over.

This is really shocking, honestly. I was expecting Bonaccini to win handily given the amount of institutional support he had and the PD voter base's tendency to go with the "safe choice".

It's also a heartening result, not because Schlein is a particularly inspiring leader, but because Bonaccini's strategic vision would have been a complete disaster for PD. The last thing we needed is doubling down on branding PD as the "responsible grown-ups party" and opening the door back to parasites like Renzi and Calenda. At least after tonight those people are out in the cold.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Ohh... this is quite an upset.

Was turnout high? In 2019 there were 1,582,000 ballots cast.

probably the turn out is at best 1/4 of that 2019

Turnout is estimated to be around 1.2M, so less than in 2019, but not that much less.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Weird map, but I guess not entirely surprising given the candidates and the big names supporting them. With that Campania result, it's clear that De Luca continues to be a major power broker in the South. Sicily is interesting. PD is much less well-implanted there so I guess that played to Schlein's favor? And while it sucks a little that the North is what carried the day for Schlein, I guess it's nice that her stronger area was the Northwest rather than the cursed Northeast.

[Antonio the Sixth]

New title since winter is over, at least astronomically speaking. Politically, the winter continues, as Meloni decided to pick another culture war to inflict upon all of us. The latest one is that she decided to withdraw recognition of adoptions of children by same-sex couples, which was already in a legal grey zone as Renzi failed to have it legally enshrined in his civil unions bill. Some mayors were still recognizing them anyway, but Meloni officially put an end to it a few weeks ago. She tried to justify this obvious act of gratuitous cruelty by fearmongering about surrogacy, which is already illegal in Italy and has nothing to do with this debate anyway. Lovely stuff all around.

[Antonio the Sixth]

New title since winter is over, at least astronomically speaking. Politically, the winter continues, as Meloni decided to pick another culture war to inflict upon all of us. The latest one is that she decided to withdraw recognition of adoptions of children by same-sex couples, which was already in a legal grey zone as Renzi failed to have it legally enshrined in his civil unions bill. Some mayors were still recognizing them anyway, but Meloni officially put an end to it a few weeks ago. She tried to justify this obvious act of gratuitous cruelty by fearmongering about surrogacy, which is already illegal in Italy and has nothing to do with this debate anyway. Lovely stuff all around.

I must be out of the loop because all I've heard about in recent times is the CGIL congress, the plans to cut taxes being developed and Bonelli's stunt where he brought rocks from the Adige river bed to Parliament, but thanks. I also thought this was all decided at the court level - did she override the Court of Cassation?

I'm not sure. It was mostly being done on the initiative of individual municipalities (Milan being the main one) so I'm not sure what the legal framework behind it is. It sounds like Milan is going along with it, though I heard Padova's mayor (huh!) has said he'll continue to go recognize them. If the standoff continues it will surely have to go to court at some point.