The reasons for the defeat of the center-right are not those that are convenient for the left
The outcome of the ballots confirms, indeed strengthens, our analysis of the defeat of the center-right after the first round ( "The moderate turning point and the" civic "candidates do not pay, abstention punishes the divided and uncertain center-right" ).
A clear defeat, 5 to 1 in the largest cities called to vote. Two data, however, suggest the center-right not to dramatize too much. The first: he did not govern in any of the big cities where he lost, while he held the only one of the six – Trieste – which he administered, albeit with a few too many difficulties.
The second mitigating partial is the trend that has been underway for years, everywhere in the Western world, which sees the large urban centers vote on the left and the scarcely competitive right. Therefore, think about the political offer, the ruling class, the strategy and cohesion of the "coalition", but fall into depression and self-flagellation, even not.
It is true, the trend that sees conservative parties almost everywhere not even being able to touch the ball in big cities, in this electoral round were added serious errors of the center-right, which got everything wrong that could have been wrong.
The weakness of the candidates has been talked about too much – and too soon it has been taken for granted in the camp of the center-right itself. But it is a weakness that first of all from personal value (I am aware of attracting someone's derision, but believe me Michetti was no more mediocre than Gualtieri …), depended on the “civic” profile of the candidates. In fact, they have lost both politically mediocre candidates, as in Milan, as well as more prepared candidates, as in Turin. The mistake here was rather that of wanting to pursue the left, with a decade of delay, on the fashion of "civic" and "technical" candidates.
Political candidates were needed – and not necessarily leaders (to nominate Salvini and Meloni would have meant taking them off the national playing field). We do not know if the renunciation of political candidacies derives from a lack of leadership or from a psychological subjection, as if to receive the license of presentability the center-right parties cannot present themselves with their faces, but we are certainly not in a phase politics in which elections are won by convincing that increasingly narrow range of voters who sincerely consider all options and choose from time to time, "secularly", right or left.
The polarization is strong and elections are won first of all by mobilizing their electorate, which the left has managed very well to do – making the most of the assistance of the Interior Ministry – playing the evergreen card of anti-fascism. If you can't convey enthusiasm to your parents, the sense of a battle worth fighting, a real stake, you're not going anywhere, even if you convince some undecided at the center.
The result of Rome may seem obvious with the polls closed, but the left had the merit of not taking the race under their feet, so much so that it proceeded from the beginning – clearly helped by the "Red Beast" , its media firepower – to the scientific demolition of the opposing candidate, so as to make him appear from the start, before he opened his mouth, like a speck and a loser. In this, the center-right parties (and the media) must learn to have less scruples.
The center-right is also beginning to pay a high price for its national disruption, which regional governments are no longer enough to hide. Two pieces are part of the Draghi government and one piece remained in the opposition. In the League, the gap between LegaSalvini and LegaEuro is increasingly evident ( re-read Musso in Atlantico Quotidiano ).
Preliminarily to a debate of ideas – for which the latest book by Daniele Capezzone "For a new right" offers solid bases – clarity is needed about the very existence of a center-right coalition, because for some it seems to have become a taxi: it is useful when it comes to governing at the local level, while at the national level the three main parties have not governed together for ten years and take different paths even when they are in opposition, some ending up supporting left-wing governments. A situation that in the long run cannot fail to generate confusion and undermine the credibility of the coalition itself.
Already started after the first round, the trial of Salvini and Meloni will be strengthened after the ballots by the politicians and commentators of the center-right area, who will thus contribute to strengthening the spin of the left, aimed as always at giving licenses of presentability: invariably the presentable right is the least competitive in the polls. Spoiler (but we will also get there with the reasoning): try to remember who, from time to time, were the most hated and most fondled center-right leaders, in their different moments of electoral consensus.
But is it really a "sovereign defeat"? The center-right has lost, which has "winked at the no-vax ", the no-green pass , the racists and the fascists, in short, the unpresentables of every ream, the deplorables . So, would the remedy be to huddle even more around Draghi?
Frankly, the data and logic say something else.
First, take a look at the performance of the three parties. Forza Italia in a vertical fall, from 3 percent in Rome (together with the UDC) to 7 percent in Milan. The League far from the political and European percentages. The only one in the coalition that has held, indeed has grown in percentage terms, is the Brothers of Italy. Of course, "his" candidate also lost, but in Rome the Meloni party practically ran alone.
If you really want to draw an indication at the national level of the defeat of the center-right, one cannot fail to keep in mind that the only party that has held, Brothers of Italy, is also the only one in opposition to the Draghi government and the one that more than the others it "winked at the no-pass ", while Forza Italia, the most governmental and favorable to the Green Pass , has percentages from the civic list and the League, with its ambiguity as a fighting party and government, ending probably to displease the voters of both orientations, it comes out strongly reduced.
We also look at the candidates for mayor. No one was a boor and vulgar sovereignist or no-vax . Moderates like Occhiuto and Dipiazza did well in Calabria and Trieste, but the equally moderate Bernardo in Milan (head of pediatrics at Fatebenefratelli) and Maresca in Naples (a magistrate!) Failed dramatically. Michetti himself in Rome, indicated by the Brothers of Italy, at least in the language of an administrative officer, had the appearance of a staid technician, not of the chief of the people. The Giorgetti line? He lost Damilano in Turin and even the “giorgettiano” fief of Varese fell into the hands of the left.
In short, there is no "line" between those expressed today by the center-right parties – governmental and pro Green Pass , sovereign opposition, or the Northern League – that can be said to have been rewarded in the polls, and probably this confusion has disoriented the voters, but the one interpreted by Meloni has undoubtedly collected more votes than the others, so much so that it has been the object of the "media attention" of the left, which has fished out the anti-fascist prejudice, in the last two weeks of the campaign.
And finally, the figure of abstention, higher in the suburbs, which is quite unanimously believed to have damaged the center-right more than the center-left.
So why would the potential center-right voters not go to the polls? To have Salvini and Meloni “continually glanced at the no-vax people, fully embracing the battle against the Green Pass “ ?? The voter from the suburbs does not exactly correspond to the “moderate” type voter, but in any case, if that was the reason why, why stay at home and not look at the vast choice of candidates with conviction yes-vax and pro Green Pass ?
True, those no-vax are minority positions (those no-pass not so much …), but then why did the center-right voters not at least reward Forza Italia and the many candidates for mayor who did not "look"? Why not even a faint signal?
Our reading is that the record abstention – net of the weakness of the candidates and the other factors already mentioned – is due not to an unfulfilled request for convinced adhesion to vaccines and the Green Pass , and in general to "moderation" in the sign of Europeanism, but to the ebb of disillusionment and resignation, in a large section of the electorate, for the complete normalization of the 5 Star Movement and for that – in progress – of the League.
The first almost disappears, the second moves back. And coincidentally, these are the two political forces that have changed their identity the most in recent months. Political forces that had built their electoral successes on a radical aversion to the establishment and a profound criticism of the EU. In the blink of an eye, the 5 Stars put themselves at the service of that establishment. Initially, in the two-year period 2019-2020, the League took advantage of it, partly intercepting the disappointed grillini, but a few months later it began the same path at the court of Draghi. A transformation in the buildings that turns into distrust and abstention in the polls.
Beyond any judgment of merit, these mutations in the two parties that more than any other had given voice to such radical requests for change, have strengthened in their voters the perception, already present, of the total uselessness of the vote: to vote for political proposals other than the Democratic Party and its satellites, it does not serve to affect the decisions of the "palaces", on government action. Why go to vote if there is still the "autopilot" on?
The post The reasons for the defeat of the center-right are not those that are convenient for the left appeared first on Atlantico Quotidiano .
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Atlantico Quotidiano at the URL http://www.atlanticoquotidiano.it/quotidiano/le-ragioni-della-sconfitta-del-centrodestra-non-sono-quelle-che-fanno-comodo-alla-sinistra/ on Tue, 19 Oct 2021 03:52:00 +0000.