2000 Florida -- Again -- Sort Of

Mexico's presidential election is over and the relatively conservative Felipe Calderon of the semi-reformist Political Action Party has won a razor's edge victory over quasi-socialist Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

Personal Oppinion: There were no real good choices here, but I would prefer Calderon over Obrador, but neither one is true reformer Mexico needs. Calderon looks to me like a status-quo guy while Obrador talks the socialist talk, and socialism is a one-way ticket to an economic catastrophe far worse than anything America is facing.

It does seem to some that Mexican voters went with what they felt was the lesser of two evils. As the article put it: Felipe Calderon won Mexico's presidential election not because of who he is, but because of who he isn't. Many Mexicans rightly fear Obrador's ideas.

What really gets me is that Obrador is screaming fraud. Yes there was probably a lot of fraud on both sides and it probably pretty much canceled out. The problem is that the left does not believe they can lose a fair election and the fact that they lost is proof that the election was tampered with. Goes back to the idea that Marx had about the flow of history leading inevitably to socialism. When socialism is denied somebody interfered with the inevitable results of the flow of history. It just never occurs to them that Marx was simply wrong about the course of history.

Anyone can win or lose a fair election if the people hear the message. (The problem is getting the message out, which takes $$$$$)

Now there are rumblings of mass protests. What next? Civil war? Not likely but Mexico has a North/South political divide as bad or worse than our red state/blue state divide that is not going to go away with a simple election. I would like to see a state-by-state break-down of the vote.

Here is an interesting analysis, that seems fairly non-partisan, but is somewhat pessimistic about democracy in Latin America. He brings up things we need to think about. A good part of the problem is when people vote for candidates who will solve their problems for them rather than give them the tools and opportunity to solve their own problems. What many Latin American Nations, and perhaps America too, needs is a leader that will say "You people can solve any problem with the right tools and being allowed to do it. My job is to make it possible for you to solve your own problems." But candidates that promise to solve the problems themselves make better sounding promises.