Jan.09

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Brazilian Orange

Consider the following scenario:

1. A right-wing populist is elected president of his country.
2. His first term proves very divisive, due to his extreme policies and his propensity for villainizing his opponents.
3. When he runs for reelection, he loses to a more liberal challenger.
4. Because of the kind of man he is, he refuses to concede defeat and tells his supporters they have been cheated.
5. Some of the president's supporters, roused to fury by having been "cheated," launch a violent assault on the nation's Congress.
6. The president's party condemns the attack, but the president himself says very little, beyond framing the incident as a garden-variety "protest."

We assume this sounds very familiar. After all, it happened in Brazil just yesterday. Their system is a little different from the one in the U.S.; there's no counting of electoral votes to be interrupted, and new president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has already assumed office. Oh, and the Brazilians have no problem arresting politicians suspected of criminal behavior, former president or no, so alleged-inciter-of-insurrection Jair Bolsonaro is apparently out of the country, and is reportedly visiting Florida, where a politician like him should be right at home. Anyhow, some of the details are different, but the broad outlines are eerily familiar.

This helps explain why so many non-Americans follow this site in particular, and U.S. politics in general—folks well beyond the United States' borders often take their cues from the Americans, for better or worse. And you would have to look pretty long and hard to find two leaders more similar than Jair and the Hair. Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), among others, observed as much yesterday, tweeting: "Two years since Jan. 6, Trump's legacy continues to poison our hemisphere." We will see if Bolsonaro has the colhoes to return to Brazil, or if he takes up permanent residence in the Democratic People's Republic of Florida. (Z)