Leftist Andrés Manuel López Obrador Wins Mexican Presidency in a Landslide
His leftist party also won the majority in Mexico’s congress.
Third time is a charm for former Mexico City mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The two-time presidential runner up came out on top of Mexico’s presidential election on Sunday in a landslide victory.
He’s the first leftist to win the election in decades in Mexico. Some of his supporters have referred him as the “messiah” as they look to him to uphold promises the other parties have failed to uphold.
From The New York Times:
The core promises of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign — to end corruption, reduce violence and address Mexico’s endemic poverty — were immensely popular with voters, but they come with questions he and his new government may struggle to answer.
How he will pay for his ambitious slate of social programs without overspending and harming the economy? How will he rid the government of bad actors when some of those same people were a part of his campaign? Can he make a dent in the unyielding violence of the drug war, which left Mexico with more homicides last year than any time in the last two decades?
And how will Mr. López Obrador, a firebrand with a tendency to dismiss his critics in the media and elsewhere, govern?
In the end, the nation’s desire for change outweighed any of the misgivings the candidate inspired.
The Wall Street Journal reported that López Obrador’s party the Movement for National Regeneration (Morena) also won the “majority in both houses of Mexico’s congress, seven key gubernatorial races as well as the Mexico City mayor’s office.”
If the results stand then López Obrador will “be the first Mexican president since 1997 to have a legislative majority, making it easier for him to push through his agenda.”
His humble appearance also won over the voters. From Fox News:
Early in his career, Obrador lived in a dirt-floor shack, built houses for the poor and marched for environmental protections against the giant state-owned, state-run oil company, PEMEX. As Mexico City’s mayor in 2005, he drove an old Nissan Sentra. Today, he claims not to own a credit card or checking account and says he will sell the presidential plane, turn the presidential palace into a park and live in his tiny townhouse in Mexico City.
“I voted for Andres Manuel for president because I like his proposals,” said Mexico City resident Diana Ortiz. “He’s not promoting the a rich government, the powerful guys. Instead he wants to be empower as much to the people here. He wants a more democratic vote.”
López Obrador proposed in his campaign “increased pensions for the elderly, educational grants for Mexico’s youth and additional support for farmers.” He wants to “increase wages and create jobs” and believes those two items “will further curb drug trafficking, violence and illegal immigration – all of which could go a long way toward addressing some of [President Donald] Trump’s chief complaints about the U.S.’ southern neighbor.”
Mexico will pull in funds for these proposals when his administration eliminates “corruption, a figure he places at tens of billions of dollars a year, a windfall some experts doubt will materialize.”
President George W. Bush’s Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez isn’t surprised by the outcome. First of all, López Obrador maintained a lead over his opponents during the campaign. Secondly, the Mexican “people are fed up” and López Obrador drew them in with “allure of change.”
The PRI party ruled Mexico for almost all of the 20th century after its founding in the 1920s. The PAN party took over in 2000 before PRI rose back to power in 2012.
The people want something different. Politico reported:
“AMLO actually cares about Mexicans, and wants to save our lives and make them better,” said Frida Hernández, a waitress from Los Laureles, a small neighborhood about 45 minutes outside of Mexico City. “No one has been more out of touch with his own people than Peña Nieto.”
Hernández said Mexico’s growing murder rate under Peña Nieto was a large part of why she decided to vote for López Obrador. Almost 110,000 Mexicans have been murdered since Peña Nieto took office at the end of 2012.
Many voters were eager for change. Some said their vote this year was not necessarily in support of López Obrador but against the established political parties that don’t represent the average Mexican.
“I support change, and it seems that López Obrador is the only real person open to change on the ballot,” said Mario Ramírez, an Uber driver from Doctores, a Mexico City neighborhood. “But only time will tell if Mexico can truly get better.”
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‘Landslide,’ plus, “…also won the “majority in both houses of Mexico’s congress, seven key gubernatorial races as well as the Mexico City mayor’s office.”
Which obviously means Mexico’s population is full of like-minded leftists eager for marxist government. No wonder leftists in the USA want open borders.
BUILD. THE. WALL.
I’m not as concerned with Obrador’s election in Mexico as some are. First, the biggest problem facing any Mexican President is that large areas of the country are now essentially ungovernable, and completely out of control – the northern states run by the narco gangs are one obvious area, the Mayan areas near Central America are another. Left or right, the Government can do nothing in these areas until it re-asserts control over these regions, and that will not be easy. The outgoing President failed miserably at this task.
Most likely Obrador will fail and become unpopular pretty quickly, just like all Mexican Presidents fail and become unpopular, and for the same reasons.
A) Mexican population kicked out the corrupt PRI only to find that its replacement was also corrupt, making them turn to this guy because they don’t think he’s corrupt. B) 113 political candidates were murdered in the year leading up to the election. C) 600-odd candidates dropped out under intimidation, relieving the cartels of the need to murder them, too.
This didn’t just happen out of an outbreak of love of leftism. It has a context.
Sad to say, I think Mexico’s only hope of regaining control of their country is a Duterte or a Pinochet. Maybe a Franco. Once a country is too far gone, nothing less than a major bloodbath can set it straight. I am not saying that I support that idea or am sanguine about it, just that it’s a pattern that repeats in failing societies over and over again.
What’s a real surprise is an outfit like Maduro’s gang in Venezuela, who have run that country so far down that there’s going to be nothing left for them to rule in a few more months. Nobody in that Army realizes they could stand up and take that place over with just a couple thousand dedicated followers?
Go Red get dead.
When you have a corrupt sinkhole and intrinsic poverty, the way out is always socialism / communism. Works every time.
Look how much better off the Venezuelans are now.
This ought to be fun.
The liberals won last weeks award for stupid, sociopathic public statements. Why are you in a hurry to win it back?
What’s the over-under on when we hit 100k new Mexican illegal immigrants with asylum hearings pending?
Our leftists elected a “messiah” to two terms. Nearly destroyed the nation in eight years! There is only one Messiah, and He is not a politican!
Now that they’ve elected him how long before their country collapses? Then watch the flight to our border.
Their insanity and their new messiah will not be able to do what he promised and outrage will soon break out. In Mexico outrage often means violence.
It doesn’t bode well for their country and it doesn’t bode well for ours.
“Now that they’ve elected him how long before their country collapses? “
If you are going to skip the daily National Security Briefings, would you at least read the crib notes? Please, for the children.
They are already collapsing. They rate right up there with Syria in terms of civilian deaths. The tourist trade is collapsing. Sensible white people should not visit there. Should they need medical assistance, it is provided after cash is paid in advance. That includes ambulance rides. “Collapsing” is a process, and they have been working on it for over a century. This new president will do for Mexico what Chavez did for Venezuela: Make his children incredibly wealthy.
I agree with you message. I think there is a Heinlein quote about “How did you go bankrupt? Very slowly at first and then very quickly.” Mexico appears to be on the brink of going slowly to going quickly.
Didn’t this candidate encourage swarms of illegal immigration? Are they then unlawful enemy combatant, saboteurs, and instigators, invading? Would this be a cause of war? Or can we just build the fence, faster? Any fence, even wood posts with 3 rails of barbed wire is better than nothing. A feeble barbed-wire fence at least indicates “This is a border. Do not cross.”
So Mexico’s version of Bernie Sanders is coming soon to an already broken economy near you. This should be not fun at all at the border.
A political system with a history of over 100 million dead in less than 100 years, just moved in next door. With offshoots appearing in many cities around the US and with “Obama: The Sequel” winning the primary in the Bronx, we’ll really need to prioritize our walls.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/06/the_chicago_model_population_replacement_and_the_transformation_of_the_usa.html
Good to read
Future ALPO.
My first thought was “crap, more increases of illegals at the borders”.
Why do so many fall for the “free stuff” meme of the left? Honestly, do they not know these all have to be paid for somehow?
The troubling thing is these collapses take time, and once they are in the downward spiral, it happens hard and fast. The only good thing is the smarter (relative term) ones will look to flee the country earlier.
That wall becomes every more needed, with this election and how we can imagine how it will turn out should give some of Congress the drive to get it funded… I hope.
“Why do so many fall for the “free stuff” meme of the left?”
Cows jumping over the moon, the Tooth fairy, Santa Clause, “he will change, I know he will”, free stuff, eternal peace, etc.
It’s all on a spectrum, as are the believers. Some go soon, some go late and some never go.
Of course Obrador and his party were extremely popular in Mexico. Mexico has some of the same political problems with governance that the US does; a rich elite which is seemingly oblivious to the problems of the middle and lower economic classes and widespread public corruption. He essentially sold MMGFFT [make Mexico Great For the First Time]. How this will all play out is yet to be seen. Given the political history of Old Mexico, this will be a nearly vertical uphill battle.
The US take away from this is that it is past time to allow Mexico to go its own way. Increase border security, including a wall. End NAFTA. Cut foreign aid to Mexico. Deal with Mexico as just another foreign country.
Time to build that wall!!
Also, I wonder if this guy will make it through his term. It seems as if “The People” like him but in Mexico, The People don’t have any power other than their vote. The corruptocrats and cartel bosses are not just going to shrug their shoulders and quit and I expect they will ultimately prove more powerful than him.
Exactly – Obrador’s got a couple huge problems. One of them is in order to finance a new socialist agenda, he’s going to find a big source of income, but there’s not a whole lot of wealth sitting around Mexico these days that isn’t connect to the Cartels in some way. And those are some of the most crazy violent people on the planet, and they ain’t gonna give up very easily.
On the other hand, he could nationalize the oil biz – oh wait Porfirio already beat him to that, did it in 1938. And it’s been mismanaged into the ground ever since.
“The [Mexican] people want something different.”
Yeah, so did the Cubans…and the Venezuelans…and the [fill in the blank]……
I thought I read that he also campaigned on increasing Mexican emigration to the US by some hyperbolic amount. Like “10 times more Mexican citizens” crossing and working in the US. It sounded like he was trying to get more juice by being vocally anti-Trump which probably works in Mexico.
It will be interesting to see how he works with this administration. I doubt Trump will hesitate to make life miserable by toying with aid, deportations, tariffs, NAFTA, etc., if this guy tries to be the tougher guy.
Supposedly, Sessions is having the federal government’s interpretation of current amnesty law rewritten so that amnesty need not be listened to when someone is caught sneaking past ports of entry. The effect on the current system of sneak-and-demand-asylum-when-caught would be quite dramatic.
In the meantime, this is a political war between those quaint people who still believe in the concept of the United States having national borders, and those who consider them to be Fake Borders.
You mean ASYLUM, not amnesty, correct? I did hear something to that effect, which would be a very smart move.
That makes more sense.
Regardless, Trump has almost all of the leverage over Obrador. If he gets to overbearing, anything that slows remittances back to Mexico will cripple his economy right out of the gate.
How did the California vote break?
There’s only one answer to this.
Build. The. Wall!
He sure looks white to me. So does the blonde standing next to bim. White Hispanic?
“…looks white…”
Does any one monitor comments for possible racist, hate elements? Looks racist. Whatever. Does he identify as a…
My claim is that “Hispanic” is a term created by two Jewish lawyers in the Nixon White House because “Mexican” was a pejorative, as was “Chicano” or “Latino”. Hispanics only live north of the Rio Grande.
I have extensive dealings with people in Mexico, and read — almost daily — the papers that are published there. Most of AMLO’s supporters have no love for the Left; instead, they’re looking for someone to drain the swamp. They’re also fed up with the multinational elites that are draining Mexico and messing in its politics.
Sound familiar? Those were the same reasons why many Americans voted for Trump.
I hope that we here can stop gloating over the prospect of AMLO failing, and look beyond the ends of our own noses.
“Most of AMLO’s supporters have no love for the Left”
I believe your mistaken. Do you have any evidence of this that is not anecdotal? I too have friends and business in Mexico. It’s not what I find. The productive don’t like him. Those that believe in rainbow colored unicorns do. Anecdotally.
“Most of AMLO’s supporters have no love for the Left; instead, they’re looking for someone to drain the swamp.”
Then they are stupid. AMLO has been an America-hating Chavista for some two decades, intent on following Hugo Chavez’ Bolovarian example. Leftists don’t drain swamps – they at best just change the occupants.
The idea that the AMLO vote was desperation, hoping someone will drain the swamp, makes some sense — except, of course, for all the promises López Obrador made to pay more public money to everyone. The idea that he will eliminate corruption to pay for it is foolish, considering Mexico’s history. If he pushes too hard on the corruption he’ll be murdered, like so many other public officials.