Brazilian presidential and general elections 2022 (1st round: October 2nd, 2nd round: October 30th)

[Vosem]

Could anyone explain why the Federal District votes so far to the right? Is it just a consequence of being in the northwest or is there more to it?

It's way richer than the rest of Brazil, right?

[Vosem]

Who's voting Lula/right-wing parties for Congress?

Didn't all the polls show Lula doing far better than any other left-wing possibility? I think there are a number of people who basically support the Brazilian right but are willing to cross over for Lula specifically. Lula also played to the center pretty hard (he picked Geraldo Alckmin, the right-wing presidential candidate from 2006, as his running mate), and I don't know that PT or PT-associated candidates downballot would've done that.

[Vosem]

I think it's very important to zoom-out from the number-crunching and campaign minutiae when discussing the 1st round results:

• Some eight years ago, Dilma's government engaged in extremely stupid heterodox meddling in central bank operations right around the time that commodity prices fell off of a cliff. Brazil's economy suffered a massive increase in unemployment and a burst of inflation. It has yet to recover from this severe recession. People continue to talk about "nostalgia" for Lula's presidency but this period is remembered by far more voters and it will tend to be attributed to...the PT and even Lula.
• Subsequently, Dilma Rousseff was impeached from office on trumped-up charges that anyone reasonable would view as being a soft "coup d'etat". There, was quite literally, an orchestrated campaign against her and those behind the campaign imposed radical constitutional reforms, and austerity on Brazil.
• Shortly after this, Lula was barred from running for President and imprisoned as part of an orchestrated campaign to throw the election towards the right. He was released from prison three years ago.
• In the election that Lula was barred from running in, the left was reduced to a rump and Haddad was crushed by over a ten point margin against a candidate widely despised by Brazilians. Just about anyone else would have made the election close, Ciro Gomes could have defeated Bolsonaro.
• Two years ago, it was considered a "good performance" that Boulos lost Sao Paulo mayoral election by 20 points and that Manuela d'Avila lost by 10 points in Porto Alegre. This, more or less, was a repeat of Haddad's disastrous performance. Lula won both cities by 10 points tonight.

Lula and, by extension, PT, PSOL and associated allies have risen from the dead to remain the only relevant opposition to fascist-flavored right-wing populism in Brazil. Lula was in prison. He will probably be President. Anyone who fails to see this as one of history's great comebacks is far too focused on the present, cannot see the big picture.

The one caveat to keep in mind is that if Lula was allowed to run in 2018, all of this could have been avoided. He probably would have crushed Bolsonaro, albeit not to the extent that polls predicted. He probably would have been lauded for his response to the pandemic simply because he wouldn't have implied that people dying of COVID are congenital weaklings deserving of such a fate. He then would have likely sailed to an easy re-election, in spite of all of the recent turbulence in the world. The main actors in Brazil responsible for this nightmare are Sergio Moro and elements in the judiciary that are crooked and vile. Bolsonaro is horrible, yes, but he was enabled by them and likely couldn't have become President without them...

Why did Haddad perform so badly in 2018 relative to any other potential candidate?

It's more that Lula is a very strong candidate than Haddad having been a weak one; if anything when you consider how much Dilma had become reviled Haddad actually performed quite strongly. DFB's point that Brazilian politics has polarized into a battle between PT-ism and Bolsonarismo, and so Lula (and his party) are the only real opposition, is true and was already substantially true by 2018.

[Vosem]

Returning to the subject of Brazil, so as not to get too far off topic. I think the left here follows the same path. Lula is the last bastion of the "deep left". The "new left" is copying the US/Europe model and its new leaderships are all like that.

However, as Brazilian demography is different, the result will be a massive loss of votes, as the majority of the Brazilian population is poor and does not have higher education. The right does not seem to have any desire to improve the educational level of Brazilians and the left without votes.

Which for me always raises the question: why? Why does the left in country after country keep doing this? What on earth makes left-wingers in places like Brazil think that it's a model that will succeed there when it's toxic even in the societies for which it was designed?

I don't think the left or the right is deliberately designed in any country; ideas spread when people sincerely believe them. (There are many explanations out there for why "new left" ideas might be spreading, but all of these explanations have to start out by recognizing that these ideas are in fact convincing to lots and lots of people).

The Brazilian left (and the American left, and the American right, and so on and so forth) is not capable of contorting itself to the best shape to check the Brazilian right; people within it are actually sincerely motivated by the ideas they hold.

[Vosem]

I don't think the left or the right is deliberately designed in any country; ideas spread when people sincerely believe them. (There are many explanations out there for why "new left" ideas might be spreading, but all of these explanations have to start out by recognizing that these ideas are in fact convincing to lots and lots of people).

The Brazilian left (and the American left, and the American right, and so on and so forth) is not capable of contorting itself to the best shape to check the Brazilian right; people within it are actually sincerely motivated by the ideas they hold.

I understand that, but you'd think the repeated failure of a certain type of idea to improve people's lives would eventually start to put new people off adopting it. Say what you will--and what I have!--of the Reagan-Clinton-Greenspan joyride of the late 1980s through mid-2000s, at least it meant that lots and lots of people my age and a little older had nice big fancy homes to grow up in.

I would think one of the things that the two of us would agree on is that ideas with very poor track records of improving peoples' lives keep being stubbornly believed in! Convincingness seems only very vaguely correlated with effectiveness, though I actually do think it's been getting more correlated over time since the Industrial Revolution. Actually -- although very slowly -- I think people do learn from history.