Winners (and whiners?)
Leopoldo. Yes, him, believe it or not. The smashing victory that Capriles got was thanks to him. He managed, somewhat, to make his Voluntad Popular fans work for Capriles even though he lost the very few holds he had along the way (Chacao anyone?). But for him, for his future, and even better, for Voluntad Popular he looked better last night standing in the background of a big winner, than having shared equally with the other losers. By the way, it was very classy of him that even on stage he made as much as possible an effort to stay behind the 5 candidates remaining. Duly noted.
Primero Justicia. though we also have the whiners there. I mean, this morning one of their guys said on TV that "the best had won" which not only was stupid, but was also a total misreading of the situation and, further, was a very nasty augury for what is next. If people like that are not quickly put under control a fast crash landing is in the works. Still, with a sweep of Miranda, Aragua conquest and a few scattered freebies, they have all the right in the world today to feel happy about themselves.
Losers, and many of them but I will not list them all
AD, COPEI and "la cuarta". All that reminded folks of pre Chavez years, from Diego Arria to the pseudo electoral machinery of AD and Copei was rejected. It does not matter whether this people deserved what they got, it is what they got and they must live with it. Diego Arria can still salvage something: after all he is the number one contender for foreign minister to Capriles and Capriles would be a fool to pass on that (the more so he said today that he did not want to be world leader, that he likes it here inside Venezuela). As Chigüire profiles said, Arria knows his way around London streets. But AD, COPEI, MAS et al? We are not talking aggiornamento here, we are talking Pentecostal baptismal pools....Repeatedly...
Maria Corina Machado. All her talk of that she could beat Chavez did not fly in the end. I can count personally at least 6 people who were going to vote for her as late as Friday. On Sunday they voted for Capriles 4 and 2 for Perez because "he is better to fight Chavez". Heck, even the fun polls of this blog still up on the right corner tells you that story when you compare them! That is the price to pay when you think that beauty and brains are enough to carry the day in a country as superficial and venal and lambucia as Venezuela. Her message was only good for diffident wanna be intellectuals like yours truly who is never afraid to vote for a lost cause if it is "right". Yet, all is not lost. She gets a starting capital of 100K something votes which are hard core votes and probably a potential of an additional twice that much softer votes, if it were a more normal country. So it is up to her to work for this becoming a more normal country and for that she needs to get back to the National assembly and become Capriles point man there, saying all the stuff that it is better not said by him during the campaign. A good cop bad cop game in the next months favoring Capriles is the best way to rebuild her career. Her time will come, if she is smart enough to understand that.
Chavez. Silly me, of course he is the last but biggest of this list..... yesterday he lost on so many counts that it would require a full lengthy post to account for all the ways I love thee not. But even as the disaster was coming he could not resit to pile more mistakes and he made a near cadena from La Victoria, forcing Venevision and Televen to show his speech instead of reporting on the true news of the day. Obsession ends in perdition, ask Othello. His mistakes were: never believe the MUD would manage it (so no plan B ever existed); ridicule the MUD primary and its candidates (thus giving them free publicity in chavista state TV, forgetting that there is not such thing as bad publicity as Woody Allen said, I think); threaten his followers with retaliation if they voted in the primaries (which sure enough send quite a few of them yesterday, more on that later). And more but yet it was not enough apparently as today his sycophantic "cagatintas" are all over trying to explain yesterday and only making things worse. Someone, some day, inside chavismo has to realize that silence can be golden, even for a few minutes at a time.