How to risk an election that was won
Together for Change
he started this electoral campaign with the advantage that public opinion and published opinion -media, polls- declared him the
winner
of the October elections.
It did not cost him much
in the face of a Peronism that already in 2021 was rejected by the vote.
But as happens to a force in that position, the job of the campaign now is not to lose them.
This strategy was described by the legendary
Julio Feo
, a key adviser to Felipe González in the first election that brought socialism to power in 1982 after half a century.
"The electoral experience of other countries indicated that the favorite candidate was wearing out with exposure in the campaign. It
is usually good for the second-placed candidate to go out to rallies
, because they can overcome their intention to vote, but whoever starts with an advantage must take care his image a lot so as not to lose voters along the way”, says Sergio del Molino in his book
"Un tal González"
, a manual of what can and should be done, and what is not, in politics.
The
situation has no mysteries
: optimism in view of the triumph over a Peronism whose only dialectical recourse is to explain why things are not working out, drags the ambition of the leaders into a hasty fight to occupy the high positions of the new government.
In this type of skirmish, a party that has already won on paper can lose, or put its chances at risk.
The Cambiemos agenda changed hands
The coalition assumes the need to carry out a campaign that ensures the victory that they presume, and that does not allow the flight of votes, which the polls indicate, towards Javier Milei.
This option resents the strength of the PRO in the interior, which was built on the basis of conservative parties that previously found a channel in the UCeDé.
Milei's ingenuity was to capture the agenda of Together for Change
-opening up the economy, deregulation, reducing the deficit, lowering taxes- with an emphasis close to demagogy.
This agenda is the one that, in the 2019 presidential elections,
earned Cambiemos the victory in the large districts
: in 5 of the most populated, the Macri-Pichetto formula won, even losing the elections.
It is also the agenda of business organizations, the establishment that sponsors the
flock
of audiovisual animators that exalt Milei's option.
Nor is it strange that this option rests on the distrust in the leadership - here and in the rest of the world - that demolishes the parties.
The attack on the "caste" is not original
.
He expresses the distrust towards the leaders that has fueled the abstention from voting since 1983, and which was a record in the 2021 elections.
Peronism celebrates the stage.
Milei is an episode in a long history and can serve as leverage to demolish Together for Change
.
In the fantasy of a ballot, Peronism would push in favor of Milei because the objective of the ruling party is to demolish that force that is Cambiemos, which retains 40/42% of the votes and dominates in the large districts.
And it's not an episode.
It has been growing for 20 years and effectively represents the middle sectors of Argentina.
Second lines negotiate better than their bosses
On the afternoon of this Monday there will be a
meeting of the heads of the PRO
to assume the need to mitigate the fights at the top.
It is such an important meeting that 1)
it was called by Horacio Rodríguez Larreta
;
2) forced a
hasty return of Mauricio Macri from Miami
, to be present.
It is an inorganic summit in which the candidates Larreta and Bullrich participate, as well as referents without a candidacy, such as Macri himself and María Eugenia Vidal.
They are committed to knotting up the initiatives brought to them by a
table of second-line referents
, which
operates in the shadows
and has been entrusted with the responsibility of unifying positions and pacifying the fights.
If the bosses don't agree, let's work from below to bring them closer, offering meeting opportunities.
That table has been in session since the previous week and
already had its first meeting last Wednesday
, in the new PRO bunker, which is Jorge Triaca's house.
The group is made up of two delegates from each cacique:
- The owner of the house and Fernando de Andreis represent Macri;
Diego Santilli and Federico Di Benedetto to Larreta;
Federico Angelini and Juan Pablo Arenaza to Bullrich;
and Alex Campbell and Federico Salvai to Vidal.
Cristian Ritondo must have been in this sector, who apologized for a family commitment -a son's birthday (like Prince Harry who left before the coronation for that very reason)-.
The PRO puts the coalition at risk
Macri is convinced that Bullrich is a better candidate than Horacio Rodríguez
and that he should already negotiate the role of chief of staff of an eventual government.
It is difficult for someone who has built power from the polls to admit a destiny within reach of a decree and to abide by decisions made on the unbearable fragility of the polls.
Macri
wants to continue to control the PRO
, and if he could, the coalition, which has the best chances of winning in five of the seven largest districts in the country, the ones that contribute the most votes.
It's not little.
His discredit in the electorate as a whole made a candidacy unfeasible.
But to exercise power without having the baton, you have to have confidence in politics that Macri does not have.
This impulse puts the entire coalition in crisis because
it blows up the pillars that are the alliance with the UCR and the Elisa Carrió Coalition
.
That agreement allowed him to win the balloting to be Buenos Aires' head of government twice and to be president in 2015. Macri denounces the contract when he sees that the radicalismo wants to extend it to appoint the new head of government of the CABA, after co-governing during the two terms of Larreta.
The formula of mutual neutralities
The battering ram he employs is Patricia Bullrich, whom he sets up as an alternative against Larreta's candidacy.
If Macri's action is solvent for the PRO and the coalition,
Bullrich's is no less.
She plays all or nothing, she has no party
, nor
constituency
to which she owes an explanation if she is doing well or badly.
It is difficult for that to help a force that must distribute responsibilities among figures like hers or Vidal, anchored in notoriety in the media, with leaders who administer districts and who have parties and districts behind them to whom they owe explanations if they it goes well or bad
The debate leads to a formula of mutual neutrality.
That Larreta remove Quirós from the candidacy for head of government and leave only Jorge Macri as a candidate for the PRO and that he be even-handed in the bid with Lousteau.
This strategy must have as a counterpart that Bullrich is fair in the bid in Buenos Aires between his candidate for governor, Ritondo, and Santilli, who answers to Horacio.
If it is not achieved by negotiating, time will impose a formula as a necessity in order not to lose a won election
.
Come out in the sun, economists
The PRO table must respond to the effects of a
harsh comment from Pichetto the previous week
, at the meeting with Cambiemos economists.
The Republican Encuentro candidate criticized economists for being the spokesmen for pessimism.
You have to win the elections, he said, and you can't do that by promising a black future.
They have to stop going on television promising adjustment and that there is no future
.
How are we going to talk about pension reform, when this government has already taken away mobility from retirees and they lost 25% of their income?
The retirees are our votes
, are we going to tell them that we are going to cut more?
How do they talk about an agreement on prices and wages, which is the same as what this government says?
They remind me of Gelbard.
The economy is going to be fixed by politics and that is done by winning the elections, he said, words more words less.
For that you have to talk about development, growth, not a black future.
Pichetto is critical of Macri's decision to lower his candidacy
from him.
When Vidal described JxC as a group of leaders, Pichetto replied that there should be a single leader and program, and that a candidate must be defined as soon as possible and given authority.
There is no -he added- that there is someone as president and another behind that commands.
This is what happens to Alberto Fernández.
And it's not true, he joked, that they don't even serve coffee to those who don't have power.
Yes, they serve it to you, but they serve it to you cold.
Like Billy Bond -the one from Heavy Rock and Roll, who returns to Luna Park- Pichetto sang "Come out in the sun" for them.
Massa denies candidacy..., but it's Sergio
Peronism does not have them better.
Sergio Massa again denied this weekend that he wants to be a candidate for president
.
"But you already know how Sergio is", the person who tells it warns himself.
He has an environment against him that reminds him that he is a shareholder of this government.
Not only of the errors of the ruling party, but also that he has ministers and legislators to whom he has to put a little roof of protection.
He can't leave them in the band.
Jorge Capitanich distributes ideas that warn that
only Cristina could be the sole candidate of Peronism
.
He got off before everyone else in a competition between parties without net leadership that allows them to lead formulas with the expectation of success.
She is left alone and in control of a sector of the ruling party.
She is not enough to drag the rest, but since 2021 none of the governors of the other Peronism built a presidential candidacy, except for Schiaretti, who does not play with the Peronism of the AMBA.
Capitanich believes that Massa cannot be the only candidate
and that if there is a STEP, no representative of the Olivos ruling party can play, which has a large management deficit.
Soon dispatch for San Juan and Tucumán
The process of the ruling party has other effects, such as those that cast
shadows on next week's elections in Tucumán and San Juan
.
The candidates Juan Manzur (for lieutenant governor) and Sergio Uñac (for governor) are being objected to by their opponents, and
a decision is awaited by the Supreme Court
, where the appeals are.
The court takes its time and ignores the rush imposed by the fact that the polls are a week away.
"Our term is not the day of the elections.
Our term is the date of assumption
", is heard on the fourth floor, from where Ricardo Lorenzetti will be absent this week.
They are complex cases.
In the case of Tucumán there is a gray area that makes things easier for Manzur.
In the case of San Juan, the Constitution allows him to discuss, as in Salta, three terms.
The work of the Court is to reconcile these cases with the jurisprudence expressed by the court in Santiago del Estero (2013), La Rioja and Río Negro (2019).
In those cases,
he stopped the new mandate of Gerardo Zamora, Sergio Casas and Alberto Weretilneck
, respectively.
Miguel Pichetto was in San Juan on Thursday, recalled these cases and warned about the similarity with Uñac's attempt for a new term that, if a previous vice governorship is added, would already be facing a fourth term.
"I hope that the Court -he said- applies its doctrine to this case".
Pichetto supports the opposition candidate to Peronism, Marcelo Orrego.
Former deputy Ricardo Gil Lavedra, who sponsors Orrego's challenge, will present to the Court in the next few hours
a request for prompt dispatch of the case
, so that, if successful, there will be elections next Sunday with another Peronist candidate.
If it is delayed and there are elections, it will be more difficult to apply a ruling against it, because the defense could argue that the popular will has already been expressed.
Separate national strategies from local ones
The other mission of the JxC table that meets this Monday is to screw on a strategy that separates the provincial processes (where the PRO plays according to local impulses) from the national strategy.
The idea is to encapsulate the national campaign
and separate it from the early elections in the provinces.
Omar de Marchi in Mendoza divorces Alfredo Cornejo's radicals, and nails a candidacy for governor with a front made up of parties like the one that supports Carrió's national candidacy, and the one that proposes Javier Milei.
The task is to show the public that these local decisions do not affect the course of national candidacies
.
Cornejo's fight with De Marchi began when he was Larreta's territorial boss, and Cornejo has maintained his support for Bullrich.
In Córdoba, Javier Pretto, resigning president of the PRO in the province, where Macri had the best results, is going with Schiaretti's party, but affirms that in the national order he will support President Larreta.
Schiaretti captures, more signal than votes
The case of Córdoba is slippery because
Macri's reluctance to support the gubernatorial candidacy of Luis Juez
, who will lead Marcos Carasso, president of the UCR Córdoba, and who responds to the line of Mario Negri, is public.
Pretto's move to schiarettismo seems to express the objective agreement that Macri always had with Schiaretti, but there are other elements.
One is that Pretto complains about the "ninguneo" of the national PRO in the face of all his initiatives.
Another is that Schiaretti's offer to the PRO of Córdoba is not new.
When the Cordoba leaders consulted with Macri, he rejected it.
Larreta consoles herself with the fact that Pretto has said that he will support his candidacy
, and that the new PRO president of that province, Oscar Agost Carreño, responds to his project.
Schiaretti's move is a sign that goes beyond Córdoba.
It is a symbol of the elasticity that wants to give him a front for his presidential candidacy.
The votes that radicals and the PRO of Córdoba could lose weigh less than this signal.
Macristas with a human face blow out candles
The
JxC table must formalize the entry of José Luis Espert
as a candidate for a PASO of Together for Change.
In 20 days the registration of alliances expires and by that moment it must be determined what will be a candidate.
Bullrich does not want it as a presidential candidate.
He admits that he is a senator for Buenos Aires.
He understands that she is the one in charge of withholding the vote that he presumes she can run away to Milei and that Espert, who represents a liberal option, can take away her support.
Bullrich was in Mar de Plata on Thursday
together with Ricardo López Murphy and Hernan Lombardi in street and leadership events, with businessmen and leaders of the 5th.
electoral section.
They had the opportunity to offer a macrismo altarpiece with a human face: at midnight they appeared at the Las Nubes restaurant, in the Manantiales complex, with a cake with candles to honor Lombardi for his birthday.
These types of gestures are what the table of the second lines recommends, to show their voters that they are all in the same direction.
look too
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