Of primaries and other evils

The French Socialist party held primaries yesterday to decide on its presidential candidate for next year election.  And may this serve as an eye opening for the Unidad MUD....

First, in primaries a result is never a sure thing because what mobilizes more people to vote in primaries are ideologies, militancy, etc..  Thus in France Arnaud (de) Montebourg came in a surprising strong third when polls did not gave him a hoot a month ago, defeating what was my favorite candidate 5 years ago, Ségolène Royal who came to a dismal 4th position.  What did dear Arnaud do?  Besides dropping his aristocratic "de" (a la Tony Benn in the UK) he shamelessly went to the far elft of the socialist party and thus plenty of the leftist fringes that do not like the socialist main stream decided to pay the 1 euro poll tax and vote for the man.  2 weeks more of campaign he could even have beaten Martine Aubry who is preparing herself indecently to court him for next Sunday second round.  If she wins in such conditions it would be almost a godsend to Sarkozy reelection schemes!

First lesson for the Unidad: at 3 full month for the Unidad primaries all is still possible.....

Second: whatever one may have to complain about the open system of the socialists to select their candidate (open primaries, 1 euro poll tax) they had the wisdom to decide on a second round ballot next Sunday.  That is, whomever wins, with or without Montebourg, will have a "mandate" of sorts by having the majority of the voters.  Except that unfortunately there may be a whole bunch of Sarkozy supporters that may decide to go and vote for Aubry even though this is not sponsored at all by the center right leadership who sense that Sarkozy is almost lost and that Hollande is a much better option than Aubry (I concur, I will never vote for her and had I been able to vote in the primary I would have gone to Manuel Valls who barely hovered at 5%....).

Second lesson for the Unidad: let's say that Capriles wins with only 30% of the votes and is declared the unity canditate.  You connect the dots.

Thrid: but the primaries of the socialists, for political purposes have been a hit because more than 2 million people went to vote.  In a country of 40 million potential voters this seems little but in French political parlance and tradition, it was an excellent turnout, an invigorating one for the Left and a troubling one for the Right.

Third lesson for the Unidad: make sure your primaries draw at least 2 million people.  With the precedent of the Tascon list this might be difficult and thus the MUD should work hard at convincing people to go and vote in February.  That is, by the way, my number: less than 2 million votes and the chances of a Chavez reelection are good, more than 3 millions and Chavez is almost toast......