Flavio promised to pardon his father, so the other effect of this is that Bolsonaro stays in jail. Although by jail I mean house arrest, which is something that rich, powerful people manage to get somehow and is barely a punishment.
I mean, to be fair, the restriction on freedom is the real punishment. I don't think anyone could honestly say that house arrest isn't genuinely undesirable, especially for rich and powerful people.
What's the point of having all that money and power if you can't actually do the things you want?
The Finnish public broadcaster has used a model to predict final vote share for as long as I remember. The stated purpose is to offset the bias that comes from smaller, more rural municipalities reporting sooner.
It usually kicks in when 10-20 % of the votes have been counted and switches back to raw results near the 90% mark.
Didn't find an exact date when they started using it; an article says "dates back to 1960s" but it's definitely been a staple in 2000s.
They are impressive but I often ask myself why so much effort is spend here. While people are curious about results, a bit of waiting for the counts shouldn't matter.
The most "sensible" application would be for betting markets I thought.
One modern need is to avoid people using the well known patterns of vote reporting to inflame conspiracies about "mysterious" and "sudden" reversals in vote tallies.
Trust me, telling people the vote will look weird ahead of time does not quiet the vote consipuracistst. Heck I'd say it gives ammo. They call it predictive programming. The lie is revealed and normalized.
True but for example in California we have it extra bad where it takes weeks for votes to get counted.
Even the most idealistic person with respect to how people should process election results must admit that it taking this long either:
a) Undermines trust or
b) Creates a more fertile ground to undermine trust
It was anyway a lose-lose situation. I hope to see Brazil free from 'bolsopetismo'/'bolsolulismo' (as some of we call this disease to keep Bolsonaro and Lula or their parties on the presidential room) soon, but here we go for another 4 years...
On the same day, in Serbia, the long-term incumbent was defeated by a party/movement that has been founded only 2 years ago as a response to corruption issues. So change can happen.
Serbia has actual corruption. Lula went to jail because when Bolsonaro was in charge they made up a case about him accepting beachfront property. Even the UN Human Rights Committee found that the prosecutions violated his due process and political rights
Lula's Fala.BR platform is a massive step up for free and public access to information for all Brazilians and federal contracting procedures have been standardized and oversight has been massively improved.
Lula represents a massive step towards fighting corruption
> Lula went to jail because when Bolsonaro was in charge they made up a case about him accepting beachfront property.
Lula went to jail before Bolsonaro came into power and got released while he was president. It's a well remembered case in Latin America and it's easy to correct you on that.
I agree with you. I wish we had better candidates. The right had Dr. Enéas Carneiro, who's dead. The left has PCO, which is awesome but is shunned by the rest of the left because they are bold enough to criticize Lula and PT. Neither ever had or will have any realistic chance of ever winning.
It's not going to end until Lula literally drops dead. This country proved that today.
It wasn't consecutive, there were 2 terms (one of which was for the opposition) in-between. According to the law a president can only serve 2 consecutive terms.
It is not great true, but it is not Turkey/Russia-level with president for life (yet). Although it is forming a succession crisis in much the same way.
The idea that you must fire your most competent employees after ~8 years on the job, in a exceedingly difficult job that requires on-the-job training, is in fact one of the most inane and damaging things to democracy.
They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials. The longer you stay the easier it is for you to get elected.
That’s why it is very important to have a time limit in power.
It's even more important that time limit gives those in power a planned off-ramp.
The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.
When I read about ancient (republican) Rome, I used to wonder how much their having an off-ramp from power contributed to their stability.
In many of the contemporary cultures (e.g., the post-Alexander greek kingdoms), being toppled from the heights of power would result in exile, imprisonment, or worse; in the republic, you could lose a battle as a general or step down from being consul and still lead a peaceful life afterwards.
One could argue that the change in this situation in the late republic directly resulted in it's downfall--Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he feared prosecution and imprisonment by his opponents once he lost his proconsular immunity.
That's a reasonable thought. But a counter perspective is that leaders may have had more integrity and fidelity to ethical behaviors making prosecution less necessary. If that were the case then it would be better to have continual investigation and prosecution possible so there is no shield of power or incentive to hold on to the shield. The check on power is the punishment. The threat of punishment encourages leaders that are unethical to self select avoiding office.
TBH the idea that one person could have so much power is bad imho, it only attracts sociopaths.
I like the swiss model more where one party never gets full power, even if it means societal changes take more time to happen[1], it seems less risky to me as there is never one power grab whose decision can influence the next election by stuff like redistricting, puting clearly leaning judges to federal court, etc.
[1] famous example is the women right to vote in the general election happened in 1971 which is quite shameful
> Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials.
A "required absence" is a thing in a number of sensitive positions, especially financial/regulated industries.
> They are most competent in getting elected, which often is not the same as being most competent in anything else.
If it was not clear, I am not stating that anyone who is in office is automatically the most competent. However, the entire point of a democracy is that you have the option to fire bad candidates. And yet, with term limits, when you do get a competent candidate in office, you do not have the option to keep them in office.
The most commonly repeated pattern across literally all of human history is that power grows.
Being the chief executive in a system like brazil's results in a lot of power, for several perfectly good reasons, but it does mean you have to build in safe guards against that power growing.
Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
> Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
Term limits are not a solution either, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate. Clearly there is a need to check power, but perhaps the mechanisms that check power should not also ensure you will never have a truly excellent leader && increase instability from flipflopping policies && give more opportunities for people who will abuse power to take office and ignore the term limits because that's what people who abuse power do. A term limit is only effective against a mildly bad candidate who is not truly willing to abuse their power, because if they are willing to abuse their power they can just ignore it. In that way, you've created a system that caps upside but leaves downside uncapped in practice.
I wouldn't mix countries and software projects though. When the "benevolent leader" of a software project goes crazy there will be a bit of social media drama and that's it. When the same thing happens in a country, people are massacred (and in essence this is also the reason why countries shouldn't be governed like a company, a country can't simply shut down like a company when things go south).
There's the view that republican Rome's military success was due to their public career path churning out OK military commanders at a steady rate. Not necessarily great, just good enough with a solid understanding of the basics.
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
I ran into that idea the other day and I thought it was pretty interesting, although I'd phrase it slightly differently:
"Rome's tradition of having to serve in 'lower offices' before the higher ones meant that when aristocrats inevitably ended up in charge of entire armies they had some level of practical experience and learnings to draw on while commanding".
But yes, much is made of Rome's redundancy in terms of military strength and there's a lot of states during that period that had A King who did everything and then died in a battle and then everything collapsed.
Tbh, a single politician should never have enough power to move the needle significantly to either side. And even in companies, the "bus factor" is a thing (eg everybody must be replaceable).
In America the next administration hides them for you because they will never set the precedent of punishing a president for exceeding their power.
Obama could have had Bush against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Trump could have had Obama against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Biden could have had Trump... and on and one we go.
Disagree. Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career. I want people who can serve with high dedication and then go back to private life. I'd like to see term limits on representatives and senators as well, and also an upper age limit.
> Presidency, like other elected positions, should not be a career.
As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?
The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same. And humans have biases against change. Term limits guarantee the downside is limited and they are healthy for a real democracy.
Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.
The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
I agree with you, the system is far from perfect. But right now we're talking about the benefits of term limits and it is greatly comforting that no matter what, in two more years Trump will be gone.
I mean, US foreign policy been supercharged with Trump, and from that perspective his leadership's been plenty adequate. Declaring war on Iran in particular has long been a neoliberal aspiration that no one had the political courage to implement - enter Trump, the nominal adversary on whom they could outsource their ambitions, and whose blunders could cynically be disavowed.
> The skill to win elections and the skill to govern are not the same.
Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.
> You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits.
The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.
And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.
The writing is that no one can serve as president for longer than ten years, not that someone couldn't run a third term. A traditional reading means that you wouldn't seek a third term, but tradition'a been thrown out the window.
In the interests of pedantry, that's not what the writing says. The operative text is quoted here:
> No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
The 'obvious loophole' is that the text doesn't constrain the number of terms anyone can serve, but instead constrains the number of times someone can be elected as president, so if you run as vice president for someone who agrees to immediately resign to let you be president, you technically don't run afoul of the rule.
(The more likely loophole, following from Trump v Colorado, is that nobody is actually allowed to declare somebody ineligible for president, so the constitution's strictures are meaningless in practice. It truly is a disgusting SCOTUS decision.)
The entire republican tradition (with a small r) rests on the assumption that leadership is a common skill. The society is supposed to give ambitious young people opportunities to demonstrate their skills, and then select the most capable ones and give them increasingly challenging roles. At any given time, there should be an order of magnitude more potential leaders (with the necessary skills and experience) than what the society actually needs. And the leaders should be replaced often enough, to avoid giving them the idea that they are somehow special.
Part of being competent is building legislative and other public service systems that run without you being at the helm, and bringing up younger leaders behind you who keep things going upward. Memento mori, and all that.
Exactly this; the job of civil service is to retain institutional competence, and to offer cabinets digests and levers to pull that they can operate at high level.
Day one:
- your predecessor had this and this initiative, see pages 4 to 7
- i don't like that, what alternatives exist
- we worked this up at the time, here are the projections which were updated six months ago
- good, do that instead
- we'll need to redo the numbers
- then do so, and brief me again next week
Democracy is not about figuring out who’s most competent at the job, it’s about being able to get rid of everybody in power at some point without using weapons or waiting for them to die of natural causes. A term limit is a very good idea and I’d even implement it for legislators and other government officials.
Brazil also has this. A president can't run 3 times in a row. But if there's a break in between then they can run again. Lula won't be able to run in 2030
It’s a nice argument but there’s another axis: fatigue. Leading takes its toll. To be charitable it’s not plausible that you can run a country, with all the stress that entails, and out compete everyone not at the apex of the front line.
I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.
Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!
The problem is what happens if an incompetent person stays on forever. There are many examples in history of great countries and empires that were lead by one person only for it all to come down when one idiot became the person in charge. An important idea behind term limits and democracy is sacrificing the ability to have an amazing leader for life so that an incompetent leader doesn't serve for life.
Its a fundamental safeguard and a hedge against tyranny. Its why, in general, countries that are lead by one person for life can be very impressive in the short term but inevitably fall apart once the wrong person eventually takes charge. Because the odds are that eventually the wrong person will take charge.
i feel like democracy isn't about the most competent but about the "least bad" option you could have. an effective dictator (lol) can cut thru the red tape but what people are worried about are the terrible ones. at least with a democracy you can rotate them out.
First among equals, the president of the Confederation has no powers over and above the other six councillors and continues to head the assigned department. Traditionally the duty rotates among the members in order of seniority; the vice president of the Federal Council assumes the presidency the year after the officeholder's tenure. The president of the Confederation is not the head of state because the entire Federal Council is the collective head of state.
No, it means that the role of the Swiss president cannot be compared to the cases discussed. It requires a different organization of the state, not just a term or age limit.
Wrt to the latter: the Swiss system prefers the elder candidate.
Are you talking about politicians, or actual employees?
If the latter: Yes, that is actually stupid, but the stupidity lies not in the term limits for politicians, but in the idea that public servants are employed on the grounds of party affiliation.[1]
But replacing large swathes of competent higher officials every time you change government... The only country I know of for sure that does that is the USA. Are you saying that's the way it works in Brazil, too?
___
[1]: Sure, to some extent it exists everywhere, but that's usually only a few sincure posts for old politicians removed from any actual influence by being "promoted diagonally left-upwards". (See, for example, the post of "landshövding" in Sweden.)
Except when those employees also have command of armies, at which point history has shown that swapping them out before they get too comfortable is key for keeping a republic a republic.
It doesn't really show that, though. Putin was not stopped by term limits. Hitler seized power within a year of being elected. Lukashenko established his rigged state within two years. Fujimori launched a self-coup within two years. I'm actually not aware of evidence that term limits have ever meaningfully did anything to impede a would-be wrongdoer.
Survivorship bias explains that. The list of dictators-for-life does not include those who don't become dictators for life.
I'd suggest that term limits are party of a package that rests on strong public faith in democratic institutions. E.g. Macron is about able to hang on, but i doubt he could stay past an electoral defeat because he presides over a nation that won't tolerate it.
Please, let's not cherry-pick our worries about what's not good for democracy. Yes, perhaps term-limits might aid in a healthy democracy, perhaps not. But please read this [1]
Why? If they’re democratically voted, what’s wrong with it?
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
I wish Australia had term limits for all politicians, and not just for the PM. Term limits prevents people becoming career politicians, which i think would be a good thing.
The argument against aggressive term limits that I’ve read: there are many people making a career in politics as a whole—lobbyists, influence groups, party committees, etc. They have a huge advantage over the term-limited elected politician.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
Mark Rutte, Netherlands, 14 years prime minister, four terms in office. It is hard to say if he represented the general will of the population given that his party, the liberal-right VVD favors the more well-to-do part of the population. I think many voters voted for him as a trustworthy face and friendly, amicable man. Vote for the personality. He was also characterized as Mr Tefal for his ability to make nothing stick to him in terms of criticism, and utterly pragmatic, denouncing vision. As a result the big problems and areas where reform were most needed, were always pushed to the future.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
I think the real weakness of democracy is that governments can’t make difficult changes. The current government wanted to but both the right and the left did not accept those changes. Similar story as France, a big need to change, but everybody expects others to pay, not themselves.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.
Yeah this is valuable context. He Jerry Brown'd it.
I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.
I don't like the idea of reelections in general. I think it is generally damaging to democracy. Ideally I would not even add term limits, but they should all be non-consecutive.
Still, as you said, this context is important. Lula left in 2010 and came back in 2022 after having been arrested, freed, and then defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who was the current president and a fierce rival.
That said, I think reelections are actually more damaging in the legislative (and it is not uncommon to have congressmen and senators for 20, 30 years straight).
Well when the alternative is someone who is openly in favor of violently overthrowing fair elections it's hard to get too upset about someone winning fairly, even if it is their fourth time.
It's wild how closely Brazil's politics have mirrored the US in recent years, at least at a high level. They literally had their own Jan 6 insurrection. Lula, like Biden, was competent enough for a time but ultimately outstayed his welcome and ran for another term when they should have gracefully retired. Unlike Biden, Lula actually imposed some consequences on the people trying to destroy his country's democracy.
It's not. Brazil has a good elections system with the 2 turns. But still on the first turn more than 90% voted for these 2 parties. The only party on "the left" is a Unionist president and a right wing vice president. There's no serious politics on the left, and people vote like they are cheering for football teams. Voting for Lula was the evident lesser evil (as in, proven track record, and no concrete evidence of corruption like his opponent), but half the country disagrees...
It's very situationally dependent. Term limits stop bad politicians doing too much damage, they also stop good politicians getting too much momentum on their side.
I think limiting presidential terms is pretty American, I can't see why its undemocratic to stand for longer as long as there are still elections, free press, right to protest etc.
In the US, FDR stood 4 terms, and he was hardly the end of democracy.
No electoral method is perfect and there are problems with Instant runoff ranked ballots. Look up "Favourite Betrayal" as a problem where ranking your most favourite incorrectly can accidentally result in your least favourite winning.
Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.
I think IRV at least has fairly unpredictable failure cases, which means they can't be exploited.
I remember seeing a 2D chart representing voter preferences on the X and Y axis, coloured by who wins under those preferences (and some symmetry-breaking assumptions). Some systems showed clear biases towards certain outcomes. IRV had a pretty symmetric shape but with a splotch in the middle that was a random jumble of different colours - an unpredictable, chaotic outcome.
> Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
The problem IMO is when there's better options but it's hard to get people to care enough to switch systems again. I'm hoping Ranked Robin can catch on so at least places that went to IRV can switch to a better system without new ballots.
STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) works in two stages:
1. Voters score candidates from 0 to 5.
2. The two candidates with the highest total scores become finalists.
3. The finalist preferred by more voters wins.
So it combines score voting and runoff. Meaning it favors centrist candidates that are prefered by most people over somebody that can turn out the base.
Depends on which ranked system. IRV has a lot of issues that other systems (like STAR, my personal preference in voting system, or Condorcet methods for instance) address much better. Non-monotonicity in particular seems like a bad property of a voting system, so I'm confused that IRV is so popular recently.
One reason IRV is popular is that it has extensive use in other countries (Australia, Ireland). It's not revolutionary but it's an improvement and nothing terrible has happened.
STAR has been used approximately nowhere. STAR is also one of the few seriously advocated-for voting methods in which it's possible for the first choice of a majority to lose, although that isn't likely to happen in practice.
IRV is not used in Ireland except for president, a role so procedurally minor that there is an alternative used when the president is unavailable (it seems to have evolved into what could be called an artistic role). Almost all elections are multimember (3-5 member districts); the voting is done the same way but most of the issues with IRV don't apply to the multimember version or are much less severe. In Ireland, the proprotionally elected body decides the single person roles, including things like auditor or mayor.
> Non-monotonicity in particular seems like a bad property of a voting system, so I'm confused that IRV is so popular recently.
Same here. The idea of lobbying for a voting system where your vote for a candidate might hurt them, or where you might be better off not voting at all than expressing your honest preference is bizarre to me. If IRV was the only alternative, sure, but we have multiple other systems which don't have as bad tradeoffs. STAR or Ranked Robin would be so much better, but the Equal Vote Coalition doesn't seem to have the power behind it that FairVote does.
Not Brazillian, and I didn't know about the 2-turn system, but I definitely became a fan. It's simple to understand and to implement. Ranked voting is too complex to implement and for everyone to understand. Run-off lets you vote for you preferred party first, and for the realistic contender second. Sadly, almost no one did that in Brazil - >90% voted for the finalists in the first turn.
I really strongly believe in approval/disapproval with a runoff.
You can vote for or against as many candidates as you want. Take the top 2 score getters and do a runoff. This means in the first round you can have as many candidates as you want. Those with no name recognition get no support. Also it prevents the situation so many find themselves in where both candidates are deeply unpopular but we feel we have no other choices. If the most well known candidates are deeply divisive then they won't get through.
The runoff gives people time to research the 2 candidates.
two-turn systems don't help if the people aren't educated about them. I lost a friendship once over trying to argue with them that it's okay for people to vote on unpopular candidates in the 1st turn.
I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.
I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.
Mass protests and voter activation might have tipped the scale towards Lula. There was a rude awakening among mainly the younger populace when Bolsonaro jr managed to get the most votes in the first round.
Voting is mandatory but people aren't dragged to the polls. If they don't vote they get a small fine, the repercussions are tiny. So participation is still an issue, there were about 30 million people who didn't vote in the runoff, against 33 million in the first round.
~3 million more people voted compared to the first round. 30 million still didn’t vote. You just pay a fine to put your registration in order for the next time, there are no long term consequences.
* Lula did something unusual, which is win in the second round after trailing in the first. This is a first in Brazilian politics, so simple pattern matchers are surprised.
I'm not surprised. If you have one terrible candidate, in the first round you can vote for whomever you like. In the second round, however, you need to ensure they lose, so you vote for the opposite party, whomever they might be.
France here might disagree. If you have an overly scattered left wing by voting whomever in the first round... you end up with a macron flavored moron as the sole non far-right option in the second round and have to deal with this shit for the next five years.
The only way for the far right to win the second round is to end up against Mélanchon, so what you write is totally in line with what Le Pen would want you to propagate.
Well the first round was extremely close and so was the second one where he only won by 3.5 points. The 1st round loser winning the 2nd round is unprecedented but shifts of that magnitude are not. The margin only shifted by 5 points.
Also I think Lula's campaign successfully highlighted Meta's election interference to the voting base which energized a lot of supporters to turn out
There were lots of candidates in the first round, neither of today's candidates got 50%+1 so they had a runoff, all the voters from those other candidates were forced to pick one of the two
> I was seeing the reports from the first pass which said it was almost guaranteed that Lula would not win because of what the results of the first were. I wonder what caused that prediction to fail.
Those weren't, as far as I can see, real predictions; they were people saying "the runner up in the runoff has never won, therefore the runner up in the runoff _cannot_ win". Which is fairly ridiculous; it's a _tiny_ sample size.
A lot of media outlets have been fingering the outage of some data centers due to kinetic action for a worldwide decline in divisive rhetoric, potentially impacting democratic processes.
> This far less popular than United 24 which is a propaganda outlet disguised as a news site.
What are smoking? If you bother to check, United24 clearly describes itself as "The official fundraising platform for collecting donations to support Ukraine."
Russia does have elections, but they are internally meddled with so outsiders don't see much point. Even places known for brutal authoritarian regimes like Israel and Iran have elections. Elections are a great tool for promoting social cohesion even in decidedly undemocratic countries. It's totally illogical, but people like to vote for the winner - and when everyone knows who the winner is going to be that's quite easy. Elections in illiberal countries are like a societal placebo that can ease the mental burden of the voters and give them a sense of participation and belonging without making any actual changes. Letting the controlled opposition vent regularly and then crushing them in a "fair" election keeps their popularity at a manageable level and helps governments gauge public opinion. Democracy is a system rather than a process, and confusing the trappings of democracy (elections) with the system of democracy (self-governance) is something that's been done by with purpose by antidemocratic forces.
Lula is neither anti-US, nor is he anti-NATO. He is against a single country having hegemony over the globe, against US meddling in Latin American elections (including with trade policy as of late), and against huge defense budgets.
Why do Americans accept that their democratic country is actively intervening in other countries elections? It's grotesque. The US security establishment has been allowed to run amoc for decades and they have destroyed the values that made the US country that people admired across the world.
The people in charge didn't run on this. Most of the real orchestrators are appointees, anyway. They're about to get a reality check fairly soon. I wouldn't be surprised if Hegseth were sacrificed. Rubio, the real brains behind the operations, will probably hold on somehow.
If Americans elect Rubio after all this, or resoundingly reelect a Republican congress, I think you have a better claim.
Tl;dr they don't accept it, but they keep getting tricked
To me it often if feels like South American countries themselves are stuck in an eternal pendulum of electing corrupt left-wing populists after corrupt right-wing populists and swinging back again.
That's representative democracy. There's not really any practical ways to delegate power without enabling corruption, so corruption is more or less inevitable without radical levels of transparency and public oversight.
Hell of an allegation to make with no evidence provided. How do "they" "have" the supreme court, and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
By the end of the next four years, Lula will finish his term with 70% of the seats of the supreme court being filled directly by his party.
They also stacked the lesser courts with judges which support him. Including the electoral court. We had judges who openly declared their vote for him judging his electoral complaints this entire month. Any guess which way the judges leaned?
Did you know one of the supreme court judges used to be Lula's own lawyer?
> and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
The supreme court literally engaged in unconstitutional censorship in order to get him elected in 2022. Judges also constantly barred Bolsonaro from doing things in 2022 that Lula was allowed to do this month, like lowering taxes at the gas pump before the election.
The supreme court was so incredibly politically active in 2022, it destabilized the country and led directly to the January 8th nonsense where people asked the military to enact a coup.
There's a saying here: "judges = gods". Actual lawyer told me that. And Lula owns the judges. If you don't see how having literal judge-god-kings on your side can tilt elections, then I don't know what I can possibly say to convince you.
Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
The whole point of electing the right wing was to make those gods bleed. I'm going to go ahead and deflate my expectations now.
> Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
Do you have a source to read up on this?
Surely they're ruling on whether the executive branch has the power to do XYZ, right? So they don't directly endorse a policy, they decide who can do what?
You see the same in the US, with the decisions largely going the other way.
Lula writes up a sort of decree raising taxes on financial operations such as BRL/USD conversions.
Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
Supreme court swoops in and "reestablishes" the decree.
Through this simple mechanism, president can bypass our elected congress and senate, and rule monocratically like a king.
The supreme court judges are appointed by the president himself. Lula will stack the court with four additional justices loyal to him by the end of the next four years. He will own 70% of the court. He can do anything.
Bolsonaro was our last chance to fix this shit. Plan was to elect a right wing senate and president, then impeach all of those judges. We managed to elect the senators, but not the president. If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court. It's pretty much over now.
> If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court.
There’s a clear right-wing/centrist majority in Congress, so Lula’s Supreme Court nominations will not be that partisan.
Many Justices do need to be investigated and impeached, and it’s our job now to pressure congressmen in that regard, and then pressure again to make sure future nominees are much better.
For some reason, I seriously doubt the senate is going to move a finger against the judges. I just have a bad feeling about this. I don't think they're going to do anything anymore.
I really hope you're right though. If even a single judge suffers consequences, this election will have been a major win.
probably not in the first 2 years with the current Senate president but then next it is less clear. There are 3 conservative judges also involved in the banco Master scandal case so let's see how it ends.
> Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
So in a Republic, the President has the right to issue decrees. That's what makes it the executive branch. Congress can make laws that block specific things but they would need to pass legislation? And assuming this power is granted on the constitution, they can't change this (easily).
> That is exactly what they do.
They rule if the president can issue that decree, no? They don't have the ability to change any of that?
Go a few more years back, and it's hard to say the Brazilian right-wing aren't reaping what they sowed wrt. supreme court/judicial branch shenanigans.
But that doesn't make you wrong. All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove. There are two branches of government with equal claim to popular legitimacy, therefore every presidential republic in the world reels from one constitutional crisis to another like a drunken sailor.
> Go a few more years back, and it's hard to say the Brazilian right-wing aren't reaping what they sowed wrt. supreme court/judicial branch shenanigans.
My exploration of this mess ended at around 2019 which is when the "fake news" inquisition began. It's entirely possible that they were abusing their power for much longer, but I sincerely don't know. Please post details if you do.
> But that doesn't make you wrong.
Thank you.
> All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove.
My impression is this is a Latin American phenomenon. It's how Maduro governed Venezuela, for example. It's the reason why Bukele had to depose the judiciary in El Salvador.
I simply have never heard of or read about anything similar ever happening in the US or Europe. Would appreciate counterpoints.
Well, the EU has a "parliament" that can't change the law, and the EU supreme court (ECJ) has been caught in the past hearing a case where both sides are being argued by the same law firm and the plaintiff didn't even know they were engaged in a court case at all. There was no investigation and nothing was changed. EU media is in general pretty supine and doesn't report on EU level corruption, so given such shenanigans it seems likely the ECJ is quite corrupt. So it's not unknown in Europe.
Unless you're relying on suppressing the capacity of certain parts of your population to vote to win an election, like my country's right wing government has done, because last minute enrollment voters tend to not vote for them.
That’s making quite a mental leap. What’s wrong is changing the rules halfway during a voting day, specially in one of the largest countries in the world with uneven logistics.
Polls were closed in some places, voting boxes sealed, and had to be reopened.
While not necessarily bad, it can create fraud suspicions. Just arrange a longer voting time from the get go. Else it looks you are stalling and boosting turnout out for your side.
PS it’s quite common in some countries to put people on buses and make them vote in exchange of money.
The problem is the bias of the court. When Bolsonaro asked for one in 2022, it was denied. "Everybody had the opportunity to vote". When Bolsonaro asked for one yesterday due to heavy rain in the south, they didn't grant it either. They granted it immediately when Lula asked it though, and the person who did so was Lula's former lawyer. It's clear that there is no fairness to be found in the Brazilian institutions tasked with running fair elections.
When "but they let more eligible voters vote, that's cheating!" is your argument against someone in a democracy, it's time to take a good look at yourself.
Have polling stations open for a week, run them 24 hours on election day. Have so many that there's never a queue, and no one complains that they have to go far. That's democracy. The price is negligible.
Bolsonaro was prohibited from running lives inside the Palácio do Alvorada in 2022. Lula does so with impunity, court rejects regulation when denounced.
Bolsonaro banned from using UN speech during his campaign. Attempts to denounce Lula for the same behavior went nowhere. Judge is known to vote for Lula.
Bolsonaro prevented from explaining his Auxílio Brasil benefits to the public until after the election. Lula can spam people with the same content all he wants with total impunity.
Really? Didn't the Bolsanaro campaign also request an extension of the voting deadline due to water logging and transportation problems in parts of the country?
Yeah, and the court was not at all inclined to grant it, just like they didn't grant an extension when Bolsonaro asked for one in 2022. "Everyone had the opportunity to vote", the judge said back then.
Then Lula asks for one, because his own people placed Lula stickers on busses which is an electoral crime and caused them to be grounded. Suddenly his former lawyer turned supreme court judge is moved to the point of tears at his plight and grants it immediately. The irony is not lost on me.
"son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement which only serves those in power to criminalize dissent and have been seen in many authoritarian regimes during their implementation.
> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement
But, his dad:
> Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted by Brazil's Supreme Court for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat
I don’t see how to read it any other way. Explain?
The Brazilian Supreme Court is completely out of control and its judgements mean nothing. It's not like the American Supreme Court that only arbitrates constitutional matters. Look at the recent history of it and you'll find judges on it using the police as their personal enforcers, randomly imprisoning people who criticize them, high levels of outright corruption and Lula's personal lawyer being appointed to it. Think about it: would the US Supreme Court personally convict someone of a crime? No, they only hear appeals, there is no such thing as someone directly imprisoned by a single supreme court judge in America. The Brazilian court also interferes directly in elections - in this case one of them ordered that voting be extended for hours after it had already been closed and the ballot boxes sealed for no good reason.
Basically, in Brazil the Supreme Court appears to be directly in charge of the police, and they can and do issue whatever "rulings" they want to impose their will on whatever or whoever they feel like, with no appeals possible. Including elected politicians.
I expect this HN thread to be a disaster zone of badly informed takes, but the Brazilians I know consider Brazil to be a dictatorship and this election to have been stolen. It's a sad day.
Thank you so much for this post. I've been saying the same thing as you, and people in this thread are already telling me to check myself into a mental institution.
Bolsonaro was the last chance we had to fix this. The plan was to impeach those judges and then restrict the court to purely constitutional matters, like the US supreme court. That little project is pretty much done now. We'll be lucky if we can impeach Alexandre de Moraes. It's over.
In Brazil, judges are gods. An actual lawyer told me this, once.
The Supreme Court in Brazil can be as rotten of political as it wants, to make a plan to assassinate political rivals is just completely unacceptable.
And before someone tries to defend the bolsonaros by saying they were not involved in this, don't use a defense that they themselves did not use. The defense that Flávio Bolsonaro said about the incident was "thinking of killing someone is not a crime".
> "son of a failed coup organizer" is an absolute false statement
How so?
I don't really follow Brazilian politics, but Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty by the Brazilian Supreme Court of:
participation in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, attempted coup d'état, qualified damage, and deterioration of protected heritage property.[1]
Flávio Bolsonaro is Jair Bolsonaro's son. "attempted coup d'état" is a failed coup.
There don't seem to be any serious questions that the process was fair and that the Supreme Court was impartial (I mean there are always Trumpian accusations of bias, but I mean ones with any evidence at all).
The only part I could see possible disagreement with is organizer I suppose? But I must be missing something.
> There don't seem to be any serious questions that the process was fair and that the Supreme Court was impartial
This is the supreme court that in 2019 launched a perpetual "fake news" inquisition where they are themselves the victims, investigators, prosecutors, judges and executioners of wildcard crimes against themselves with a jurisdiction covering the entire territory of Brazil.
Saying that Bolsonaro was convicted by this court carries less weight to me than saying he was banned by dang.
The whole point of electing a right wing senate and Bolsonaro's son was to impeach and hold accountable the judges of this court. Obviously, that's never going to happen now. Lula will put four additional judges in there, and will rule uncontested until the day that he dies. It's the Venezuela model.
That's right, it's the Venezuela model. It's also the Hungary model, the US model, the South Korea model, the Peru model, the Mongolia model, to name a few. All in recent years have had constitutional crises as a result of conflicts between a popularly elected president and a popularly elected legislative.
Can you show me an example of a US president raising taxes, getting blocked by congress or something, and then asking the supreme court to force the taxes to be raised?
Not raising taxes specifically no, but yes, US presidents have asked the supreme court for permission to do things the legislative told them not to, and gotten it. One Trump famously got, was the right to fire almost all federal employees at will, including members of boards established to be bipartisan for political reasons.
But really, the US has had the same problem you see in Brazil for so long, the president usually doesn't even have to ask the court, because the legislative was already sidelined decades ago. That is the case for the rather important issue of going to war, which of course Trump has also done against legislative approval.
Well, I agreed with anyone who pointed this out to me. Clearly the problem is not isolated to Brazil as I previously imagined.
This isn't right. Judiciary should be impartial. It shouldn't matter who it is, what party it is, the treatment should be equal. Anything less than that is profoundly destabilizing. I couldn't imagine even countries like the US would face the same issue.
Interesting how pro-democracy wave after wave strike the shore as Russia's resources dwindle. Perhaps Russia is/was the only thing still keeping those monsters up?
That's a mind-boggling viewpoint when the US/Trump heavily interfered to prop up Bolsonaro. US has also been propping up dictators throughout SA, especially since trump's reelection
I think this framing is pretty much disinformation itself. Sure, Russia tries to influence elections like every other country does as well, democracies or not.
Currently we see such claims resurfacing on topics like Brexit or other contemporary issues. If you look at the hard data of visibility on the attempts of Russia, they are in a similar spot as their economy. Doing decently poorly.
If any domestic news article or politician points their fingers at Russia, it is probably to distract from something else. Sure, if you are situated in Ukraine, the story is different. The latter does have to swallow the results of the moronic foreign policy of quite a few western nations for that matter and it would be served well if a bit of sensible reflection would be put on the table.
Indeed Russia has had over 20 years of covert operations and generally different philosophy of how to influence a country to your will than the Americans.
Russia occupies a weird area where they have a natural affinity with third worldists and anti-imperialists. Historically a lot of Russian propaganda has targeted the western left (see Russia Today which often looks straight up progressive) but they're clearly also targeting the far right
Well, at least I could read that about Bolsonaro, that's for sure. Being hardline Trump supporters, Bolsonaros are not very fond of things like being in BRICS or making business with China.
I guess Putin doesn't really care whether you are red or blue, but who do you align with, or who do you oppose.
I feel the whole Putin/Trump/Bolsonaro/Netanyahu fascist like schtick is wearing a bit thin with voters. Making <country> great again is running into military quagmires.
This is into "not even wrong" territory. Brazil has a fairly close relationship with Russia, they're a fellow founding BRICS member - and Lula was president when it was formed. What would Putin get from having US (Trump) ally Bolsonaro Jr. over him?
And while it's great that the murder-happy fascist didn't win, it's not exactly a great win for democracy. It's just stopping the bleeding. Besides the obvious problem of being allied with Russia and China, Brazil has a worrying "anti fake news" law. Like elsewhere, it seems the slightly-better guys aren't eager to roll back power grabs that now benefit themselves.
Really? I couldn't tell. In the last debate alone, the main TV network conceded to Flavio's request to not use live fact checking systems on TV. Turns out 75% of his statements were not true. He's facing no consequences for that, nor is the network for hosting and broadcasting his fake facts.
Fact checking systems often lack context and self-correction mechanisms, suffer from selection bias and numerous other problems that doesn't elevate them above other forms of media. Especially media that doesn't claim to be an authoritative source.
You probably could have constructed a fact checker that would have said that 75% is true, the completely other way around. For most truths or facts that is entirely possible without any contradiction if you change perspective. This basic media literacy isn't optional and it cannot be outsourced.
That's true, and indeed the fact checking they posted online sometimes lacked nuance. But they actually tried to tackle that exact problem by labeling several statements as "not quite right", and all facts had a description, it was not black and white. I also understand that in live TV that nuance would be lost. But some statements were 100% straight out lies. Those could be even flagged by the debate moderator.
Such laws always work better for one side than the other, it's always selective about which facts get checked and which false news get suppressed. I don't know about how trusted that media network is in Brazil, but from all we've seen from other countries, authoritative fact checking from old information monopolies just fan the flames. It wouldn't surprise me if conceding to the request was the best they could do in the situation.
The fact that I am learning today that Bolsonaro has been in prison for some time makes me think my strategy of staying away from news and politics to avoid cortisol peaks is working well.
I have a learning a bit more related to tech from this election. Centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement wins elections.
It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president).
Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset.
Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly.
The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign.
The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign.
The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms.
Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress.
The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well.
The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.
In India, we have a name for for blind supporters of the current Hindu right ruling party.. The BJP... They're called andh bhakts... Translated 'the faithful blind'... Even incontrovertible proof of wrong doing does not change their mindset
Lula's corruption "scandal" was the Lava Jato which was cooked up by Bolsonaro. He served 580 days in jail for it. Even the United Nations stepped in and said the case violated his due process and political rights
What other cases are you referring to? Be specific
Your cause and effect are inverted. It's precisely because of Lula's corruption that nobody cares anymore.
He was arrested for the biggest corruption scandal this country ever had. People ratted him out. He was the guy at the top.
Then the supreme court cited some technicality like "his initial judgement took place in the wrong court" and just undid the entire thing. They did it because nobody else could take out Bolsonaro.
Then he ran against Bolsonaro and took him out in 2022. And he just did it again.
It's Brazil. Crime pays. Lula's existence is proof. This country will never truly change.
So... people react by voting on one of the leaders of the fucking Rio mob? (the "nice family you have, it would be a shame if something happened to them" kind of mob?)
Besides, Jair Bolsonaro won when Lula was still in jail.
The "mob" accusations are just that: accusations. Lula was actually held guilty by multiple independent judges based on evidence and testimony.
And you're right, Lula's imprisonment changed everything. It was a moment of hope for many of us, and the reason why Bolsonaro even had a chance to begin with. Surely you can understand why the supreme court breaking the guy out of jail and putting him in the presidential race again while censoring everything Bolsonaro said and did would cause people to stop believing in justice?
The first instance judge colluded with the prosecution, and when the supreme court was about to rule on a habeas corpus, a general tweeted a thinly veiled threat of military coup if the sentence wasn't confirmed. And the evidence was scant to begin with. Hardly surprising that the conviction was eventually overturned.
Bolsonaro's condemnation, on the other hand, was backed by much more comprehensive evidence, and resulted from a heavily scrutinized process.
If the process was so faulty, why was Lula's condemnation annulled based on the flimsiest of excuses?
Everything got thrown out because of a "tried in the wrong court" technicality. I'd still be disappointed but I'd have been far more sympathetic if what you posted had been cited as the reason for the maneuver.
By "the flimsiest of excuses" do you mean the extensive evidence that one of the most fundamental principles of the justice system, the impartiality of the judge, was completely violated? Because I'd call that a mischaracterization, and that's cos' I'm feeling generous.
Like, I'm not happy that the whole process was thrown out either, because a lot of actually corrupt people got away with it. But another fundamental principle of the justice system is that it NEEDS to err on the side of innocence. So, while it is an unfortunate outcome, I still think that 1) it's better than the alternative, and 2) the blame lays 100% with the partial (and, arguably, corrupt) judge and prosecutor. It was their unscrupulous drive to get 1 guy convicted (with, again, arguably second intentions, since both judge and prosecutor got elect and made a bunch of money with talks and shit) that turned the whole case into trash.
UPDATE: I jumped the gun a bit in the answer, and ended up no addressing the main point: Lula's conviction was not overturned just because it was tried in a 1st instance court, the evidence of partiality of the judge was very much also a factor.
Matheus in this forum you're literally the only person who believes this and who feels that this is worse than Bolsonaro having literally planned a coup.
The point is, you really need to sit down, examine your life and get help. You have spent years repeating and amplifying debunked Brazilian right wing propaganda here. You refuse to see and accept evidence when it's presented to you and turn round and accuse others of bias.
At some point, you cross over from being misguided to an embarrassment to yourself.
There are some other people on HN that this comment applies to. I doubt it will make any difference though but think you for putting it this eloquently.
The person who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. Those who walk alone are likely to find themselves in places no one has ever been before.
No, it is really not. I have no horse in the race and know little about the politics in Brazil. But if anyone frames political competition as a right or left wing debate, it is very, very likely horseshit.
Another poster linked to your previous comment regarding the rainforest.
What's your thought process behind your comment:
"If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice."
Given the following facts:
- Climate change is real
- The Amazon stores around 15–20 years of global CO2 emissions. Burning it down would release all that.
- It maintains the rainfall system needed by farms and general Brazilian economy
- There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon and so much unexplored. By protecting it, it preserves biological resources and research relevant to food and medicine.
- Many indigenous people live there (2 million?). So it's OK to just destroy their home?
Any why do you need to burn down the Amazon to build a Brazilian semi-conductor industry?
I think it's clear, if Bolsonaro Jr would have won, he'd continue his father's approach to it, i.e. continue with deforestation and loosen environmental rules.
As I said in that thread, it was merely a rhetoric device to express the fact that I value my nation's development far more than I value the rainforest.
Every election, someone like Greta Thunberg shows up and tells everyone to vote for Lula to save the Amazon.
What about the Brazilian people? Our industry? Our economy? Our prosperity? Our autonomy? Our independence? Our sovereignty?
They couldn't care less about any of that.
The suggestion that we should slow down our own development "to safeguard the Amazon" is offensive to me.
I'll say it again: if burning that jungle down would magically turn Brazil into China or the US, with high value industries, space program, well equipped military, nuclear weapons... I'd sacrifice it all without losing even one second of sleep.
Note the "if", it's important. There's no reason to burn it all down just for kicks. There must be significant advantage for the trade to be worth it. The point is: the trade is on the table as far as I'm concerned. We can endeavour to preserve it, but if it gets in the way of national interests then it definitely must go.
So, this is one of very few of your comments where I can get a glimpse of reason: you have a good point here, the rest of the world telling Brazil to protect its natural resources is hypocrisy of the finest grade. First they clearcut their own forests, make lots of money on raiding the rest of the world and then when the consequences of all that pillaging catch up with them they start telling countries like Brazil that they really should protect the rainforest, 'for the good of the planet'.
That said: they too have a point, they've learned the hard way that this is going to end very bad, not just for Brazil but for the whole continent and possibly even the world. And to that extent they should compensate Brazil year on year for maintaining the Amazon as it is today, to make sure that there is no downside to doing the right thing.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with Joe Jackson, he has a beautiful little bit in 'the obvious song':
"There was a man in the jungle
Trying to make ends meet
Found himself one day with an axe in his hand
When a voice said "Buddy can you spare that tree
We gotta save this world-starting with your land."
It was a rock 'n' roll millionaire from the USA
Doing three to the gallon in a big white car
And he sang and he sang 'till he polluted the air
And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar"
And that's it in a nutshell. So what Brazil should do - and I'm not kidding - is to hold the Amazon hostage. If the part of the world that wants it preserved is really serious they should pay up, and Brazil can use the proceeds to improve the lives of Brazilians. That at least would take a part of the sting out. As for the high value industries, the space program, the well equipped military and the nuclear weapons: those are all things with flip sides as well, and some of those flip sides only become apparent once you go down that route. I think a part of that could be realized steering clear from the downsides, but be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
I think it's a false premise to begin with. Protecting your natural resources and rich biodiversity doesn't mean Brazilians have to suffer.
But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
I get that Lula isn't great, politics is hard. But from the outside it looks like a small majority of Brazilians have voted to say 'not another Bolsonaro'. He would have probably continued like his father and fostered closer ties to Trump and borrowing a few tactics from his playbook, i.e. definitely not good for the average Joe like us.
Good for corporations? Yes - hence why Meta and co tried to push Bolsonaro.
> But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
Thank you for listening in good faith.
I supported Bolsonaro because I saw his election as the only possible way to defeat the supreme court judges, who I believe are dictators. To me this was a priority that overrode all other concerns.
I do not at all share his alignment with Trump and Israel, and especially not his privatization efforts. I'd rather Brazil align itself with China. I understand people's rejection of Bolsonaro, and even agree. The very first comment in this thread came from me, and I expressed this opinion through it:
I can't give an opinion on the supreme court situation, since I don't know the details.
But the scenario you outlined sounds complicated.
In the end I guess people voted for the person who they think would cause the least damage to the country. That's why the last minute turn out of voters, since they saw Bolsonaro was about to win?
Voting for Bolsonaro would get rid of those supreme court judges, but you'd also get all the downsides with it, i.e. probably have a new leader using the Trump playbook and his father's playbook. And look how 2 years of Trump turned out. Him and his family and friends got immensely rich, increased corruption, while democratic institutions have been dismantled and cost of living has risen immensely.
Or continue with Lula and get marginal improvements but the supreme court stays as is. According to reports I read under Lula poverty and hunger rates have fallen, unemployment rates fell, Economy has grown (but has slowed now), Amazon protection has improved.
I think where he hasn't hit the mark yet is cost of living, but that's a problem all over the world. And that's why it's key to understand it's not left vs right, it's normal folks vs the owner class / monopolistic corporations.
It's an terrible situation. Neither of the candidates were what I wanted. In the end I chose to vote against the supreme court.
Both of them would have damaged the country in different ways.
I believe the economy would improve under Bolsonaro, but he did want to sell off national industries and resources to foreign countries which is fatal in the long term. Historically speaking, aligning oneself with the US is also just bad in general. They don't have friends, they have interests. China is a much better partner.
Lula will continue to spend lavishly on benefits for everybody, and eventually the costs are going to spiral out of control. His last term set records in government spenditure and tax revenue. This country exports commodities, and there is no real industrialization effort in place, there isn't much room for hope here. I believe the number one factor that held this country together during his last term was the independent central bank which, as always, set monstrous interest rates, over 12%, despite his efforts to lower it. Inflation was still strong even after that. The people are accruing more and more debt, defaulting on debts. Just bad signs all over the place. The worst possible sign is the fact that Lula's is absolutely loved by the banks. They raked in record profits in the last few years.
You obviously have a strong opinion about what's good for your country and I'm not trying to tell you what's true or not about your own country and its political situation.
But I personally wouldn't trust people like Bolsonaro, we've seen how this turned out in other countries, like the US, Hungary as some examples. Luckily Hungary managed to get rid of Orban after many years. People like that don't feel any civic duty to their country and happily sell out their own people in order to gain more power and enrich themselves.
I don't know whether Lula is a net positive for Brazil or not, but putting my global citizen hat on, I appreciate that Lula is trying to protect the Amazon from greedy corporations.
And since you're a doctor, maybe you can appreciate how important the Amazon is for Brazil and our biosphere as a whole. Not just for the current generation but also future generations.
Since the Amazon is important for the whole world, Brazil should setup a fund for protecting the Amazon and allow people to donate to it and make it transparent how that money is spent. I'd happily donate to that fund, so it's not all on Brazilian tax payers.
Destroying something that took millions of years to grow and evolve for the sake of semiconductor plants and related industry is short sighted. Once those species of plants, fungi or animals have been lost, we won't be able to get them back.
But again, you don't need to destroy the Amazon to build a rich and vibrant semiconductor industry. I think Brazilians are smarter than that ; )
That's quite a shocking comment. I was willing to give that poster the benefit of the doubt, but saying it's OK to burn down the entire Amazon rainforest is quite something.
I'm a doctor. You know nothing about mental health, and neither does the crowd you plan on polling. Looks like you're simply offended by my opinions, and that's fine.
Says the guy whose comments are magically upvoted 6 times, every single comment. I don't know who you have to pay to get that unfair advantage, but I've seen several prominent users have this privilege (like @pjmlp x9). Also the opposite, users who are instantly downvoted on every comment. I'm guessing there are rings of puppet users who automatically upvote users such as yourself to amplify their opinion.
I have made over 60 comments in this thread, and only 2 have a score over 6. Most are between 0 and 2, several have gone all the way down to -4 and some have been straight up flagged to death and won't even show up unless you've configured HN accordingly.
If there's an upvoting ring here, they're doing a terrible job.
Oh I'm sorry about that, I must have been mistaken. I'd remove the comment if I could. I better stop reading political discussions on this site, as it's ruining my mental health with anger and divisiveness. It's kind of ironic that I falsely accused you of cheating in a thread about the Brazil election in which there were also false accusations (as well as true ones, it seems). My bad, please don't take it personally.
Brazil isn't alone in neither option being good. The US has their own (pro-bolsonaro, as fate would have it) supreme court enabled god-king at the moment.
Lula may well be guilty of corruption, but Bolsonaro (senior) isn't in it for wider Brazil either. I'm not trying to preach disillusionment, but in 2026 in most of the heavily polarised countries, if we start from a position that they are both acting in pure unadulterated self-interest we'll at least not have blinkers on with respect to the saviour fascist "says what everyone is thinking" strongman, or the current polished establishment status quo spokesman, etc.
That maybe you should take a deep breath and consider that your views have been clouded by a deeply corrupt bigot with ties to organized crime that has used the last decade to manipulate people into thinking he is "the savior" and "a true patriot" that will essentially make "Brazil great again" with a suck-ass motto "Deus, Pátria e Família" taken straight out of 1930s flavor of fascism while inciting the population into dividing themselves and constantly making ploys in order to take people's eyes away from him while he performs his wrongdoings with the means of every conceived vile strategy straight out of the same playbook Trump uses?
This is the Bolsonaro I know. I'm here to kindly ask you to free your mind from the shackles of his vile social network and see for yourself what he truly is, including seemingly innocuous "family" whatsapp groups and so on.
You seem to think I'm some kind of Bolsonaro loyalist. I'm not.
I don't think Bolsonaro is a savior. I think he is a traitor to his country and to everybody who ever supported him.
I think that if he had actually had balls, he would have actually attempted a coup. Then he would have either won outright or gone down fighting, and his little prison term would have actually been warranted. What he did instead was hop on a plane to the USA like a rat and let my fellow countrymen take the fall for him. His subsequent arrest was predictable, and I didn't feel sorry for him. I don't even defend him against the coup accusations. My position is that the supreme court enacted its own silent coup in 2019 and usurped all power. His coup would merely be a counter to the supreme court's own coup.
I also don't generally disagree with people when they criticize the Bolsonaro family's calls for sanctions against Brazil as a political maneuver. That is treason. I celebrated the Magnitsky sanctions against the supreme court judges, not the ones Trump enacted against the whole country.
My general position is anti-supreme court. You can find me temporarily aligned with Bolsonaro for the purposes of defeating the influence of the supreme court, an effort that clearly failed as of today. You won't find me defending his plans to privatize and sell off the country to the USA and Israel.
There is exactly one politician which represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. He's dead, and is not at all similar to Bolsonaro. I suggest you read about him if you want to understand what I actually think.
I've also been drawing uncomfortably close to the extreme left wing party PCO. Inexplicably, they share many of the viewpoints that I express here. They too are shunned by the "traditional" left that Lula represents, for the same reasons as yours. Pretty wild.
> inciting the population into dividing themselves
Lula's the one who pioneered the politics of polarization in this country. He feeds off Bolsonarism as much as Bolsonarism feeds off him.
> his vile social network
> "family" whatsapp groups and so on
I participate in exactly zero of such channels. HN is the only forum where I post my political viewpoints, and only on Brazil threads. I don't talk about politics with family members at all.
> Even incontrovertible proof of wrong doing does not change their mindset
You could argue that about pretty much every politician and their supporters in India. The right wing keeps winning because the left refuses to address the fears of a majority of the Indian population. Even if those fears are unwarranted - dismissing them as "uneducated" and "blind sheep" alienates people even more.
Most of that gear is manufactured.. With mass media fully captured.. So yes, unwarranted.. And the people are coming out of the spell.. Esp as they see their children suffer due to the systemic damage... These are the silent majority that's slow to react but eventually does.. That's what put the fear in the govt now and precipitated the massive crackdown on dissent.
When one doesn’t have a response based on logic and common sense, one resorts to name calling.
Fact is, whether you like it or not, the party in power has been in power only for a few years, and has achieved more than the other party did in 60 years.
Do you really believe that the INC would have handled Covid better? They were trying to kill off indigenous vaccines to favour Pfizer etc who (a) refused trials in Indian conditions and (b) wanted $62 per shot.
Do you really believe that they would have managed to keep fuel prices in check given Trump's war on Iran?
Do you really believe that Rahul Gandhi is qualified to run a home owner's association, leave alone a nation of 1.4 billion people?
Take a look in the mirror then next time you use that phrase.
Janones was not leading a cult, this is just absurd. He was not telling people what to believe or how to behave AT ALL - he was just giving directions on what to do on social media to win the elections. Bolsonarism on the other hand is 100% a cult, from the beginning.
> It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics
And also because the entire state apparatus was engaged in unconstitutional censorship of his "centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement" machine, which is what wins elections, as you noted.
And now that Janones set up his own "Lula's Army", Brazilian institutions did not manifest even a fraction of the energy they had shown while persecuting Bolsonaro.
Lula was allowed to do everything Bolsonaro was persecuted for in 2022. He even lowered taxes on fuels, and got away with it. The tax cut ends tomorrow.
Nonsense, Bolsonaro was persecuted because 100,000's of Brazilians died unnecessarily during the pandemic, and he and his family decided to push hidrocloroquina and experiment with "forced herd immunity" in regions like Manaus that were sacrificed instead of just telling people to mask, isolate, and take the vaccine. The department of hate from 2018-2022 was absolutely a fake news factory on the model of Steve Bannon and friends, nothing like the Janones digital movement which was completely transparent: you just had to join (and can still join) the whatsapp group.
His poor handling of the pandemic does not somehow justify the relentless censorship effort in 2022.
I remind you that censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, and political censorship doubly so. The supreme court walked all over the constitution when they censored him.
"Fake news" is still speech and cannot and must not be censored. I question the supreme court's ability to determine whether any political statement is true or false in an impartial manner: they declared fake things which I know are true. They said it was "fake news" that Lula was a friend of communist dictators. After he won, I was forced to watch him literally roll out the red carpet and welcome Maduro to my country with full military honors. It was a nationwide gaslighting campaign.
Your side also pushed plenty of "fake news", only with total impunity. Claimed he was going to end the healthcare system. Claimed he was going to end government benefits. Claimed he was going to abolish female suffrage. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he was never going to do any of that, yet the pushing persisted, and not a single judge lifted a finger to censor you people.
Must be nice, having literal judge-god-kings on your side.
You only need to look at what FB has said and done over his entire career in public and private, his copycatting of Trump (ahem, the first debate), and the conduct of him and his father's government (stealing funds allocated for social programs for a shadow budget) to know that his government, with executive, legislative, and judicial majorities, would wreak havoc on every Brazilian instution possible, ala Trump's second government.
As is currently observable in the United States, given consolidation of power in the three branches of government, it is no longer necessary to follow the law or the constitution. Minimal research into who from the US government the Bolsonaros associate with tells you what their agenda would have been in the "Bolsonaro 2" government: complete, transparent self-interest and complete disregard for actually administering the country for the benefit of the people.
Taking him at his word in the last three months of the campaign after 20 years of a vapid/nothing political career full of police investigations and associations with organized crime makes no sense.
An area of Amazon forest roughly the size of the US state of New Jersey has remained standing due to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s leadership of Brazil, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Once again, a clear anti-Bolsonaro vote from the majority of the electorate. Lula won because he got last-minute support from the moderates and even some right-wingers. It certainly does not feel like a victory of the left.
Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground.
I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them.
i don't know why you were downvoted. any turn to the moderation/center seems good news to me. those crazy swings between extremes left or right are just bad. i have never voted for both bolsonaro neither lula and crave for something closer to the center.
lula is a little less crazy (compared to bolsonaro), likely not anti-science, preserves the amazon, seems to care about keeping the same constituition and so on, but he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow.
he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term. so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest. people that likes him usually say they don't like milei, but his incredible debt build up is actually a future-milei magnet.
also, after so much terms and "custo brazil" ("Brazilian (Business) Cost Burden"?) still prohibitive, the country never goes up from its terrible positions in making business rankings. one can just not hope he does anything better now after so much terms. his spending is too demand biased.
Big issue is that there are no swings between crazy left and crazy right.
There is crazy right and significantly more normal left. And if you want the center to win, you need to ackwnowledge that. Anything else helps the more crazy side.
> he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow
This is key to his reelection. He literally ran on a "Bolsonaro will end Bolsa Família" campaign.
It's unfortunate. Lula inherited a post-Washington consensus neoliberal Brazil. He had nearly 20 years to undo all that and reindustrialize the country, thereby putting us on China's path.
I would have voted for him regardless of ideology if he had done it, but he didn't. It's just easier to just anesthetize the population and put them on paliative care with free money.
> he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term.
This "short term" is unbearably long... But I do see signs that the system is reaching its limits. Government was already having trouble paying pensions before Vorcaro.
> so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest.
I wouldn’t say deadlocked but the coalition between moderates and the left isn’t a given. There are many centrist parties who will likely alternate between supporting and opposing the government depending on the issue.
Yeah, they will just make deals. Seriously doubt there will be a deadlock. Hope they at least manage to impeach the supreme court justices, which is what we elected them for.
I would call this a defensive victory. The left’s best chance was a 0-0 draw, so they put everyone in defense and managed to prevent the right from scoring a victory goal.
moving to the right would be a trap. (cf. Dem party vs Trump) The left must instead build an anti-right wing narrative. People vote on material benefits so delivering more of those should be top priority—I think Trumps slump in the US proves that.
Nobody wants to see them cut taxes from the rich or reduce employers rights. The popular "right" in Brazil wants taxes to be easier to pay, judges not to decide based on who is asking, and clear rules on what you can or can't do.
Also, nobody can beat Dilma on cutting taxes from the rich.
But there's also a religious fundamentalist faction, no? Which I recently learned was fomented by the CIA years ago under Reagan (when the Catholic church was moving left and the "US" was afraid of Brazil moving to the left as well)
Those, the "we must kill all the criminals!!", the actual nazis and all the other people that identify with the Bolsonaro family add up to about 15% of the country.
AFAIK the final numbers are not out yet, the electoral commission called it because Lula's margin is sufficiently large that Bolsonaro mathematically cannot win.
The real lesson that the USA should be taking from these elections, is that any non-3rd world country with more than 1 party (not looking at you China) can count next to 100% of the votes in a matter of hours.
Tbh don’t really care which side is right (some of Lula's politics I like and other not). I’m just pointing out the mental gymnastics HN goes through to paint one group as “fascist,” while completely ignoring the grey areas that don’t fit their cleancut worldview.
"We are interested in discussing the defence area, the space area, the scientific and technological area, the education area, and especially, the energy issue area," Lula said.
Anything not left wing is fascism. What I don't like is fascism. Not being a heckin decent human being is fascism. Loving the government too much is fascism but so is hating it too much.
Some communist governments are authoritarian, all fascist governments are authoritarian, and not all authoritarian governments are fascists. The Soviet Union under its most authoritarian and repressive ruler fought and defeated fascism. So the Soviet Union was in the first category above: communist + authoritarian.
Fascism is more then authoritarianism. It is a set of explicitly right wing and explicitly anti-communist and anti-socialist policies, fascism is extremely pro-business. And it is explicitly racist and nationalistic.
The Soviet Union was explicitly pro-worker, it was explicitly communist, it was explicitly left-wing. Under its first ruler it was even explicitly internationalist (to the extend that the Internationale was their national anthem; But their second ruler was for sure a nationalist). There is no definition of fascism which includes the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were fascist, then fascism becomes a useless term completely synonymous with authoritarianism.
It doesn't matter what they said they were, it matters what they actually were. Else you'd have to concede that Hitler was a socialist and North Korea is a democracy. The fact is, the USSR was fascist, not communist. Some of its founders may have had dreams of communism but they rapidly did not translate to the real world.
What they did was fight fascism. And liberate Eastern Europe from fascism.
If we were to consider the Soviet Union fascist, simply because of their atrocities, than we would have to consider the British rule over India fascist. And there we also run into problem, because the British also fought and defeated fascism (albeit not as decisively as the Soviet Union; leaving fascists in power in Spain and Portugal). And there is even more of a case for fascist UK because unlike the Soviet Union, the British enacted racist ethnodemocratic policies emblematic of fascism.
But we have another name for the types of government which ruled India in terror. And that name is Colonialism. The British government wasn’t fascist, it was colonial. And it committed their numerous atrocities in India under the ideology of colonialism.
Likewise with the Soviet Union. At no point in their history were they ruled by a right wing, pro-business, pro-religion, racist regime. The Soviet Union committed their atrocities not to enrich the business elite, with some ethno-nationalist/religious ideology, but to further the ideology of Communism. Businesses were state owned, education was universal, and unions were elevated. The party elite then put them selves in high paying positions for the state owned businesses, created better schools for their own children, and pushed union leadership loyal to the party. So corruption for sure, but still not fascism. For that we need the unions disbanded, their union leaders executed, ethnic minorities kicked out of schools and into ghettos, and state corporations handed over to the aristocracy, etc.
Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him.
I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.
20% happens about 1 in 5 times. I know that's snarky wording but 20% shots come though constantly in daily life.
I think as humans we are really bad at intuition about probabilities, and it being an election only makes it much worse. I don't think anyone is consciously conflating these with poll numbers but percentages of voters are the numbers we see a lot more than prediction markets, and 80% is idunno an 80% chance of getting between 50% and 54% of the vote or something.
It's not a 'prediction market', it's a gambling market. It's far more accurate to say 80% of gamblers were convinced Bolsanaro would win than to say there's an 80% likelihood he would win. It's not measuring likelihood as it's untethered from things that impact the actual results. Obscuring it basic gambling with the word 'prediction' doesn't change the fact that's naked gambling at the end of the day.
It's extremely inaccurate to say 80% of the gamblers were convinced because that's not how it works at all. Each bet has someone on the other side of it - 50% of the people bet on Bolsanaro and 50% against.
If you bet on 20% chances and they happen 30% of the time you make money. The payoffs are such that you win by being a better predictor than the market. I'm fine criticizing it as a gambling blight (not to mention a corruption payoff) but it is also a prediction market.
The 80% is not the proportion of people who think he would win, that's not how these things work.
Every single factor was pointing towards Bolsonaro, Polymarket was just consistent with that.
He unexpectedly won the first round of the election. His lead was expected to grow since he'd likely get most of the votes of the other candidates. 17 out of 18 polls favored Bolsonaro. Market movements indicated a strong expectation of him winning. The Brazilian Real futures are already down 10% in the last couple hours.
But that's how democracy works, I think this election will be studied many times in the future.
If he has an 80% chance to win that means Polymarket will be "wrong" 20% of the time. And 80% seems fair given he was leading in the polls by a razor thin but consistent margin.
Polymarket isn't binary so you are understating how wrong they were. Polymaket gives outcomes as percentage odds and less than 12 hours ago they had Bolsonaro by 5-to-1.
They are good at some markets but they don’t understand latam and especially Brazilian politics in the least so whatever makes it into the US news drives the market although it is normally wrong
A 20% chance of Lula winning is still a real chance of winning. A standard rule of thumb would require 2 standard deviations aka 5% aka p<0.05 for relative certainty.
If the new right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court judges, I'll still call it a major win.
Surprising to see Bolsonaro lose at this point, but the real upset of this election was caused by the senate. The whole point of electing the right wing was to impeach the judges. So long as that happens, I will be satisfied.
The next four years were going to seriously suck for Flávio. Now the economic bomb is going to explode in Lula's hands. I was tempted to vote for Lula myself just to make that happen. It's the supreme court issue that stopped me.
Lula's barely fit for his position as president too. He might resign and let the vice-president deal with it. Also an acceptable outcome.
It's the only place where I feel safe enough to discuss Brazilian politics.
Impeachment of the supreme court is precisely what will save this country. They have been ruling monocratically since they launched the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. People can stomach a Lula win, even I have points where I intersect with the guy. The thing is not a single Brazilian voted for those judges.
Unfortunately, Flávio's loss will only embolden them now. Remains to be seen whether the senators will do what we elected them to do.
> It's the only place where I feel safe enough to discuss Brazilian politics
And so, you feel comfortable foisting your political views on a tech forum, even when you are repeatedly told that your views are unhinged and that you need serious help?
I am not from Brazil, nor am I closely following its politics, but I would like to pose a genuine question: in a modern liberal democracy, doesn’t a four-term presidency represent too much power concentrated in one person?
Not really. He has never had any real legislative power to back him. The biggest scandal surrounding his party was paying off congressmen and heads of parties in order for them to vote for welfare policies. These policies never would've been voted in if that was not the case. A lot of parties gatekeep votes for important legislation until they get handouts.
Ironically (or not at all) the man who individually received the most money from that scheme is the head of Flavio Bolsonaro's party, and the party who received the most payoff as a whole was Jair Bolsonaro's party at the time.
Politics in Brazil require a great deal of consensus, obscure dealmaking and corruption.
Yes it sounds worrisome, the general populace is getting fed up with him running the country for 20 years and want a fresh change of leaders.
But it doesn't help that the alternative far-right candidate is an extremist nutjob whose appointment for the presidential race was done for noone other than nepotism (bearing his jailed father name). That alienated alot of his voting base who wanted a more competent candidate.
In a liberal democracy with many opposing viewpoints, having to elect a single "head of government" that will be necessarily beholden to only one part of the electorate is detrimental, especially in combination with something like FPTP.
A directorate where executive power is distributed over multiple people and executive policy is decided on in a concordat it a much better solution.
The one good thing about the current system is that shitheads like musk can spend half-a-billion to buy elections, but the people still have the final say.
Interestingly the current "lets stop corporations from spending money on elections" that's popular in several states - wouldn't directly touch Musk because he can just spend the money directly.
I don't think "Oooh. Scary muslims!" works any less well if it's required to say "Elon Musk" rather than "American Apple Pie Goodness PAC" or whatever.
It might make a difference for smaller donors, especially if they're more sensitive about their personal PR.
Many countries cap donations by private individuals (capped to 1,000 in Ireland, for instance, for both private individuals and companies). Like, this is a fixable problem.
It's fixable if you have significant Supreme Court reform. I doubt the numbers are there to actually land that reform. Say you get 52 Democrats in the Senate, which is a tall order, and you write some reforms that could actually work, forced retirements, that sort of thing, immediately you'll find that two or three of them suddenly think such reforms need to be "bipartisan" and alas the Republicans who've fixed things don't seem interested in coming along. How about that.
Or, I suppose, you could fix it by abolishing America's Written Constitution so that its legislature can just write legislation for this. I think that would go down like cold sick - Americans love their Written Constitution.
No, this much money in politics is still very dangerous.
A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that next time.
EV sales are not a great metric to judge musk sentiments, consider the Tesla drivers who put various bumper stickers on
Tesla is the only EV company in the US making a good product. People also like the techieness. Foreign manufactures like Hyundai (what I drive, preferred less tech and real buttons) have tariffs and such applied to them. BYD would wreck them all if allowed.
>Tesla is the only EV company in the US making a good product. People also like the techieness.
Well yes. Those were things in EU too. But those didn't override the fact that he tried to control their elections. The US has some people who swore off Tesla in similar protest, but the overall sentiment didn't seem to impact their bottom line.
I personally want to hold out and see if/when the US gives up on tariffing progress. But I have driven a 2008 car for almost 10 years and can't overlook the scenario of needing to replace it one day.
And I'm interested in an FEV for my next car. Tesla is completely out of the question, but I really haven't been impressed with most other offerings when I could peer over the border and see what BYD, Xiaomi, and others are doing. Maybe I compromise short term then trade in when the time comes?
I don't know the specifics of Brazil's system, but at least in the US gerrymandering has nothing to do with the Presidency or Senate, only the House. It's also not without risk. Gerrymandering is bad, but it doesn't change the totals of votes; it attempts to reapportion "excess" votes yielding a large win margin in one area to give winning, but necessarily smaller, margins in more areas. Amongst other challenges though that smaller margin means if there is a wave then a gerrymander can turn into a "dummymander" where previously safe districts get flipped.
>funny business
This is actually pretty dang hard in anything but a total sham, and even then is at least obvious it happened. Some timy fiddling at the margins may be possible to sneak through, and yeah some elections that might make the difference. But that can't counter any serious victory. The more common technique seems to be trying to suppress the vote. But as well as also not being trivial it also too risks backfiring by motivating people much harder. There is a lot of human psychology around "loss", people often absolutely hate things being taken from them even if they were complacent about having them.
Brazilian here. President wins by popular vote. Period.
Must win by 50% plus 1 of all valid votes on Round 1. If not, 1st and 2nd most voted go for Round 2 a few weeks later. Then, 50%+1 again of all valid votes.
Gerrymandering can give you control of state level offices that then let you affect federal elections by say closing voting locations where you think mostly the opposition will vote or kicking people with ethnic names of voting lists at the last minute.
So there's not a direct effect on Presidential elections but there's a second order effect.
Gerrymandering is the most benign of the tricks, and both sides play that trick. What's more concerning is we don't really have a true paper record of the votes. So many of these swing states have machines that produce digital only voting records. So how do we even know that the vote is accurate? Even if there was a paper record, most states don't even bother re-checking unless it's very close. After 2016, a lot of activism across the country has forced states to switch to a paper + digital record, which allows quick tallies, but then also paper backup and opens the door to two way verification. Unfortunately, this is not enough. There needs to be validation done after the election to confirm. But again, the worst part is that the states that really matter have been the ones least incentivized to actually switch over. So who knows? While its conspiracy thinking that Trump didn't actually win in 2024, do we really know for sure?
Everything else you mentioned also matters. I can't tell you the amount of times that the state of Georgia, suddenly out of the blue, invalidated a lot of registered voters. And if people don't check, like my friend in a minority town outside of Atlanta, they won't realize until election day. Red states are more likely to play this trick. Your conclusion is something I disagree with, though. Voters have lost so much over the last decade, and they don't fight back until it really starts to affect them personally. I think the surge that we might see this election is only due to economics. If the economics were good, it's not out of the question that Trump would be doing fairly decent this election cycle. This is why Iran is playing things very well to try to enact maximum economic pain in the days before the election. But it's all about economics, and that shows you that people truly don't really care.
Gerrymandering doesn’t change the fact that the voters decide the results. Most electoral systems already give unequal weight to different votes based on district sizes etc., so gerrymandering is only a change of degree and intention, not of how democracy fundamentally works.
> Gerrymandering doesn’t change the fact that the voters decide the results.
Well it does change which voters decide the results. A lot of electoral systems seek to constantly redress imbalance by having impartial bodies redraw district lines as populations shift. It is a shame the US does not. Gerrymandering is fundamentally undemocratic.
It's not limited to textbooks or academic publications, or based on any context whatsoever, but an ngram search actually suggests there's a much larger musk stain on recent published literature than I'd ever thought possible:
I wasn't trying to imply that, simply noting that there was a surprising amount of literary chatter about Musk, at high levels compared to commonly cited physicists. It's not the most useful comparison.
It could easily be people writing fanfic about him (ugh) or criticising the pants off him, and may not be related at all. But I'd guess a lot of this was field-adjacent to at least his business interests.
I guess some people still like to troll? Or are so dumb they’ve obviously never even cracked a physic text? I’m hoping it’s just old fashioned trolling.
If you have a lot of money and you've managed to stay out of prison, people are generally ready to believe good things about you and want to be in your good graces. If you pay people to continually say good things about you and manage your media appearances for you, there will generally be a lot of impact to that. You're just telling people what they're primed to believe. A lot of people will fluff up your image for free just because they're hoping for patronage.
Musk has a BA in physics that was awarded a couple years after he says he says he completed his studies. Unlike CPSC, leaving a physics program early robs you of some pretty crucial stuff. You generally don't see a lot of rockstar physicists leaving university early to join startups. Despite Musk posing as a rocket scientist, engineering guru, etc., there's no evidence he's one of the scientific or engineering minds behind Tesla or SpaceX's work. He's just a money guy.
The general rule for money guys is that the closer you are to the money, the more of it you can get. This is why CEO's are paid outrageous sums. Musk is the closest guy to the money at his companies, and his one true gift seems to be "getting close" to politicians in order to get the public's money, which Tesla and SpaceX have received gob-smacking amounts of.
If you want a laugh, go look up the episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History addendum where he brought Musk on. Carlin typically interviews authors of history books, so why Musk? Why indeed! During this episode, it comes out that Musk used to have models of WWII planes but clearly knows absolutely nothing about history. Despite this, he makes every effort to sound like he does. This is the sort of exposure $$$ gets you but, sometimes, you miss the mark.
Just a friendly gesture that there's still independents/non-partisan's here. We're a dying breed, but it seems to the the inevitable outcome when politics becomes a religion.
Buddy, ICE is chasing down and killing US citizens. Musk is openly supporting European neo-Nazis. The US tech sector is supporting the genocide of Palestinians, and interfering with foreign elections.
This is a naive perspective. Both extremes are losing people to independents for a reason. What we want is less of this and more of civil discourse. Most people are not tuned into the details, are focusing on their family, and vote based on how their wallet feels and the things they hear 2-3 weeks before the election.
Perhaps if the far left and hard right didn't dominate primaries (many reasons for this), we could have less extreme candidates in November. But it is what it is until we start having civil conversations with our friends, family, neighbors, and community. We could be having conversations about how we improve our democracy.
You comment lends to being part of the problem. Please stop demeaning everyone with blanket statements.
As an independent volunteering with Indivisible, my main effort has been to moderate the members on the far left.
Just to clarify I'm not american and I don't support either us main party, but your comment that the hard left and hard right are dominating the primaries sums it up pretty clearly. From an outside perspective only absolute miniscule fraction of politicians in the US are hard left. Most of US politics would be anywhere between moderate conservative to extreme right in the rest of the world.
This person seem content with summarizing the entire choice of a political party into a single point of torturing immigrants. It's no wonder we're in the state we are.
I have heard of precisely three people in American politics who are left at all, much less far left. Those are AOC, Bernie Sanders, and Zohran Mamdani. The left is certainly not dominating any primaries.
They are democratic socialists, the far left is a much bigger camp.
The rule of thumb I use is, do they say things like "win at all costs" or talk about how they want to dominate others, forcing their views on all Americans.
So where are the quotes of hard left politicians (and not some fringe politician) saying they want to dominate everything. Also how is that even part of a left/right definition. In fact in my experience the ones who most talk about eliminating others in politics are the self declared moderates, who at every opportunity talk about how we need to eliminate the extremes from politics.
the culture war between the groups has ample examplar
lots of top down rules for everyone, rather than the "trickle up" governance experiments we need to runin order to (1) figure out what works in practice (2) convince others they should try it to
> until we start having civil conversations with our friends, family, neighbors, and community. We could be having conversations about how we improve our democracy.
You don't have much idea what some of our family, friends, and neighbors are like do you? I have nothing to say to fascists, Nazis, and anyone who advocates for the things MAGA advocates for. Spare us the "oh we should just talk it out" BS. The time for discourse ended when people started advocating for racist fascism. And if you're unable to spot the racist fascism, then you likely support it.
Blue MAGA (what you sound like) is no better than Trump's MAGA
Please leave your political extremism at home when coming to HN. Musk Social is the place for that, if you need to let off the steam and yell into the void
No idea what blue MAGA is. But I know a fascist apologist when I hear one. And that fascism is the political extremism here, so you might consider leaving it behind.
You know what Blue MAGA is, they are people who are too online, too caught up in their echo chamber, and say hyperbolic things like you have, putting anyone who doesn't agree with them into their evil list, unable to understand nuance or the center / independents
There is a reason both extremes are losing support, it's people who say things like you have here. The rest of us are tired of you and you undermine the causes you care about. Touch some grass, talk to people in real life.
I'll have you know, I'm estranged from my parents and a best friend over these things. You do not need to talk to them all, but we do need to talk with them collectively if we are to move minds. I let my sister work on my parents, she has always had a much closer relationship.
Oh, so blue MAGA is just someone you don't like, I see.
You are either are blind to the things going on in this country, or you approve of them. Elon Musk did a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration. Twice. Trump invited a known white supremacist to dinner. ICE is disappearing people. Trump had his goons raid a sitting congresswoman, in an obvious attempt to intimidate naturalized citizens and immigrants. He is implementing Project 2025, which is white Christian nationalism. He already attempted a coup, and has every intention of interfering in the midterms. Oh and he's clearly a pedo.
And you think people opposed to those things are "extreme"? What exactly do you say to people who support things that Nazis literally supported? As I said, you either support these things, or you are willfully ignorant of them.
There is no center with fascism. You are for or against. I don't give a goddamn if you are tired of hearing about it. People less fortunate than you are living it.
Sure pal. It's not the fascists and the pedos and the white supremacists and the warmongering oligarchs, it's anyone who points out what they are doing.
I'm starting to think you do support all of that. Why else would you whine about anyone mentioning it? What alternative is there? You clearly have no idea about the people you think should be talked to, they cannot be reached because they like what's going on.
It took a goddamn world war to stop Nazis from doing what they did. Talking won't do anything to people like that.
you're only making yourself more miserable thinking and speaking like this
you are as bigoted as you portray them to be, text book projection, because you've never talked with them, you see what bots promote on social media and attribute it to large swaths of humans, that's textbook fascism bud
Aww, thanks for the concern. Your problem is you are not nearly mad enough about what is going on, and where things are heading (assuming you're not fully on board, which is seeming likely). Enjoy your head full of sand.
dwell on this, keep checking back to see how much winning you did, it's totally healthy for you /s
Have you tried to understand why Trump won the popular vote in 2024?
I was like you, then I swore off Big Social and anything with reposts and quote posts, and the echo chamber media that has replaced newspapers. I found new sources for better information and ideas, and started working with my local political organizations instead. Much happier and healthier these days. Able to make more difference than yelling at people online ever will.
This only gets fixed in meat space, not digital space
See, the problem is that each side has moved so far to the extreme that any middle of the road comment is perceived as supporting the other side. But thanks for the demonstration, I guess.
A middle of the road comment would be "we need taxes, but not too high" or "children shouldn't be going hungry, but very sadly we can't afford to feed them from the city budget". What's actually being responded to above is the complete lack of a comment.
No, you just blatantly assumed none of those things mattered to me. You do realize you can have morals and opinions but also be non-partisan, right? Of course big tech is political, I completely agree. But you never asked me that question. Which again, really just keeps driving my point home. It's rabid.
The parties have morals and opinions which are quite diametrically opposed. If you have any at all, then you necessarily align with one or the other - being in the exact middle is an extreme rarity (and also quite a stupid position, because it implies you can't decide whether it's better to have free healthcare or to torture immigrants). Most people who claim to be in the exact middle are in fact not.
Being non-partisan or independent has nothing to do with being in the "exact middle." I don't even think that's a real thing, nor did I ever imply it was. A better example is that, given an election ballot, I might split party lines rather than toe it unconditionally. I register as neither party because I generally disagree enough I don't wish to be affiliated with their policies. It doesn't mean I don't agree with some. Perhaps one election cycle I swing more left than right and the next I swing more right than left. It doesn't mean one cycle I identify as a Democrat and the other a Republican.
Since you keep baiting me with your straw man, I'll address the example: I neither want to torture immigrants nor do I want to give free healthcare to non-taxpayers. So, given your straw man, that would posit I'm in neither party's camp.
It's never a 50/50 split, and thus far it has yet to stay consistent with the tumultuous election cycles we've seen recently. I answered your straw man, which you ignored. Perhaps you can instruct me on what my true party affiliation is based on my answer to it? That might clear things up.
Here are a few examples of initially neutral or moderate organisations that are using their time machines to harbor enemies of His Majesty Homer Simpson:
Lula used a justice he appointed to order polling stations to stay open past the agreed upon deadline without consulting the courts that are supposed to rule on election matters. That's election interference. I'm not convinced the population is going to see him as legitimate after that stunt.
Brazilian here. It was unprecedented but not unreasonable, given problems with availability of public transportation in a number of locations. Both sides asked for extensions, although in different places that would favour their own bases. A nationwide extension was the best option, even if it was semi-botched due to the time it was decided. Also, the vote difference between Lula and Bolsonaro was much larger than any additional voting would have delivered.
Bolsonaro also sought extra voting time as well. He wanted it done only in certain states but it was granted nationwide. He was very involved in this process and is now crying foul because it wasn't done in a matter exclusively favorable to him!
It’s a tough position to fight for: “Lula only won because too many people voted for him!”.
I think you are equivocating. Denying people their vote indeed counts as election tampering but that doesn’t mean giving more people the vote is also bad.
What I wrote happened. It's not "fake news". What remains to be seen is which polling stations remained open and which did not. This election may need to be annulled.
> What remains to be seen is which polling stations remained open and which did not.
You can check it yourself, the output and log files for each ballot box are already available. I can see that mine opened and closed at the expected time.
I literally saw the smugness and confidence get wiped off their faces in real time. They thought they were going to win straight up in the 2nd round of the election, and by the end of it they looked like they were attending a funeral
The idea was to have the best of both worlds. Electronic voting plus a paper vote that gets automatically printed and deposited into a sealed box. Fast vote counting, plus the paper votes as the ultimate source of truth.
Deeply unfortunate, but not entirely unexpected. Lula was allowed to do every "electoral crime" they barred Bolsonaro from doing in 2022. They even extended voting time, a move that directly benefiting him, and also ruled illegal back in 2022.
Gotta look on the bright side. Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like. If the elected right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court justices next year, I'm going to be OK with this.
Many cities had their mayor cancelling free public transportation and stopping people from going voting. Extending the time is a reaction, not a first action. Furthermore, the ask didn't come just from Lula's party, it came from both candidates [1].
2022 Brazil had the Federal Police Director actively interfering with transportation as well.
I commented that 15 hours ago, and replied within minutes.
I think it's a matter of consistency, not agreement. From my perspective it looks like the court only grants things if Lula wants it granted.
I believe it would have been granted even if Bolsonaro hadn't requested it, and I seriously doubt it would have been granted if only Bolsonaro had requested it.
I'm not even accusing anyone of fraud. This is merely evidence of the court's bias and favoritism.
Accuse me of being wrong if you must, but please don't insinuate I'm a bot. These are my actual thoughts.
Now you are just speculating on what would have happened in hypothetical scenarios. That's not evidence of anything.
Also, all that's achieved by extending polls for two hours across is enabling more people to vote. If that helps one or other candidate to win, it can only be because there are lots of people who want to vote for them.
Both sides asked to extend the hours. The court took the action. I don't really know brazillian politics and what happened in the past but thought I'd point that out.
Abstainees were thought to be the biggest source of new votes for Lula in the 2nd round of elections. I think such a move benefited Lula far more than it did Flávio.
It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.
Bolsonaro's father asked for an extension last election. Don't remember why. Denied, illegal. "Everybody had the opportunity to vote".
Bolsonaro's son asked for an extension this election due to heavy rains in the south. As far as I can tell, it was also denied.
Lula asks for an extension this election due to busses being grounded because Lula-aligned syndicates slapped Lula insignias on them which is an electoral crime. Lula's former lawyer turned supreme court judge approves it.
It is obvious that the Brazilian institutions, and these judges in particular, wanted Lula to win. They were going to be impeached otherwise.
Back in 2022, Lula's party used to be against Bolsonaro's "digital militias". They engaged everybody they had in the superior and supreme courts in order to censor it all. It was disgusting.
This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.
They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.
Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.
There are no laws in Brazil, there is only what the supreme court wants. Whatever they write on a piece of paper becomes law, and police obeys it. They are the true seat of power in this country.
You're right about Brazil's censorship problem. There's actually another article about how Lula is still trying to use courts to rein Flavio Bolsonaro's social media presence, with evidence like "the random number generator gave Bolsonaro's ballot number" (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50229587)
Although fortunately, it didn't seem to be work: it seems Facebook and Twitter largely ignored Brazil's courts and Flavio Bolsonaro had a bigger social media presence despite "Lula's Army".
It sounds like they have tried a tactic, discovered that it does not work, and switched to a different tactic which works. Isn't that exactly what they should do?
Absolutely. Do you have nothing to say about the obvious censorship, though? Consistency demands that they too be censored, since Bolsonaro was censored back in 2022. Censoring the right and letting the left run free is precisely what led to January 8th.
I don't condone any form of censorship, for any reason. Brazilian constitution is also clear and unambiguous: censorship is unconstitutional, and political censorship doubly so.
The selective application of unconstitutional "fake news" rules, which were made up on the spot by the supreme court judges aligned with the left: is it good or bad?
Lula and his party spread a truly absurd amount of "fake news" between the 1st round and 2nd round of presidential elections. Why are they allowed to do it while the right was censored?
I for one flag everything I see him posting because his extreme positions hurts our country. It is crazy HN doesn't rate-limit how much he can post and people posting technical stuff can post like 4 comments then get blocked.
This is a very confusing comment. Most on this side don't know the insider informing the Brazilian elections, and we only know the public news
Can you explain?
You are right winger but don't like the Brazilian right wing aligning with the US right wing, but do like the politicians who are aligned with the US right wing?
I'm kinda trying to move past left/right labels. I'll try to explain.
Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.
Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.
Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.
The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022, far more than I ever opposed Lula himself. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.
The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and when Brazil unexpectedly elected a right wing majority in the senate, it struck true fear into the court. This was our chance to completely wipe out that court and forever change the history of this country, like Bukele did for El Salvador.
While in the end the necessary victory didn't materialize, Brazilian senate is still absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.
I have been here for over ten years and have posted over eleven thousand HN comments, only a fraction of which are about politics. If you think I'm some kind of Russian bot account, you couldn't possibly be more wrong.
Also, "debunked" is debatable. I don't accept your portrayal of extremely complex issues as settled, and I also don't accept "official" explanations of anything. I always try to reach my own conclusions and form my own opinions.
I came here to discuss my viewpoints in an attempt to find truth for myself. If you don't want to help with that, then kindly don't reply to me again.
Bolsonaro-aligned mayors deliberately blocked busses from running that would take people to the polls in Lula-supporting neighborhoods. Emergency legal decisions allowed voting times to extend as a response to this. By the margin of votes, it wouldn't have mattered.
Personally, I don't consider it a serious crime at all, or even a crime.
However, it is an electoral crime to do things like stamp public transport vehicles with a party insignia to "remind" candidates who provides for them. As such, it's not at all surprising that the busses were grounded.
The point is the busses weren't grounded maliciously in order to deliberately stop people from voting. There is an actual reason why it happened: Lula's supporters slapped Lula stickers onto the buses, which is an electoral crime.
> Lula was allowed to do every "electoral crime" they barred Bolsonaro from doing in 2022. They even extended voting time, a move that directly benefiting him, and also ruled illegal back in 2022.
Yeah, I agree completely. I didn't vote for any of these candidates, I voted to impeach the supreme court.
There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.
The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.
I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.
It was extremely amusing. Brazilian election law generally sets 5 p.m. Brasília time as the deadline for closing polls. The judge who made the emergency ruling to pause counting and extend voting hours by 2 hours was Cristiano Zanin Martins - Lula's former personal attorney. The same guy who Lula nominated to the Supreme Federal Court of Brazil in June 2023.
Yeah it’s alarming how much HN users are willing to support corruption so long as it’s their preferred candidate doing it. Really is all just tribalism to most posters in this thread so far
You think a supreme court judge, who was once the candidate's lawyer, ignoring his own court's precedents, to try and help said candidate, is in the same conceptual space as your mom being confused?
It could be argued that the Netflix catalog nowadays is akin to some kind of torture.
What's the point of having all that money and power if you can't actually do the things you want?
It usually kicks in when 10-20 % of the votes have been counted and switches back to raw results near the 90% mark.
Didn't find an exact date when they started using it; an article says "dates back to 1960s" but it's definitely been a staple in 2000s.
The most "sensible" application would be for betting markets I thought.
a) Undermines trust or
b) Creates a more fertile ground to undermine trust
https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/elections/100000009683078/h...
The github link in the article does not work
It was there last night. Now I get a 404.
Lula's Fala.BR platform is a massive step up for free and public access to information for all Brazilians and federal contracting procedures have been standardized and oversight has been massively improved.
Lula represents a massive step towards fighting corruption
Lula went to jail before Bolsonaro came into power and got released while he was president. It's a well remembered case in Latin America and it's easy to correct you on that.
It's not going to end until Lula literally drops dead. This country proved that today.
It's not going to end until the opposition comes up with a competent alternative. Flavio was the worst choice they did.
It can be better than the alternatives and still not good.
It is not great true, but it is not Turkey/Russia-level with president for life (yet). Although it is forming a succession crisis in much the same way.
Even with Germany it turned out that Angela Merkel did grave mistakes and Germans were able to find out about those only after she left office. Being continually in office gives you the ability to hide your trials. The longer you stay the easier it is for you to get elected.
That’s why it is very important to have a time limit in power.
The extreme case which you want to avoid is "politicians" (dictators) desperately clinging to power, because they did things that would get them killed if they ever lost their power, which is a vicious cycle.
In many of the contemporary cultures (e.g., the post-Alexander greek kingdoms), being toppled from the heights of power would result in exile, imprisonment, or worse; in the republic, you could lose a battle as a general or step down from being consul and still lead a peaceful life afterwards.
One could argue that the change in this situation in the late republic directly resulted in it's downfall--Caesar crossed the Rubicon because he feared prosecution and imprisonment by his opponents once he lost his proconsular immunity.
I like the swiss model more where one party never gets full power, even if it means societal changes take more time to happen[1], it seems less risky to me as there is never one power grab whose decision can influence the next election by stuff like redistricting, puting clearly leaning judges to federal court, etc.
[1] famous example is the women right to vote in the general election happened in 1971 which is quite shameful
A "required absence" is a thing in a number of sensitive positions, especially financial/regulated industries.
If it was not clear, I am not stating that anyone who is in office is automatically the most competent. However, the entire point of a democracy is that you have the option to fire bad candidates. And yet, with term limits, when you do get a competent candidate in office, you do not have the option to keep them in office.
Being the chief executive in a system like brazil's results in a lot of power, for several perfectly good reasons, but it does mean you have to build in safe guards against that power growing.
Regular elections are good, but not sufficient, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate.
Term limits are not a solution either, as a study of recent world history would demonstrate. Clearly there is a need to check power, but perhaps the mechanisms that check power should not also ensure you will never have a truly excellent leader && increase instability from flipflopping policies && give more opportunities for people who will abuse power to take office and ignore the term limits because that's what people who abuse power do. A term limit is only effective against a mildly bad candidate who is not truly willing to abuse their power, because if they are willing to abuse their power they can just ignore it. In that way, you've created a system that caps upside but leaves downside uncapped in practice.
Democracies shouldn't have a "leader", they should have functional governments and strong oppositions. Focusing on a single person never ends well.
The fall of that system then came about when politically ambitious characters started developing more personal and long-term relations with their troops.
I'd say that's an argument for term limits: you want them to get good but not set roots permanently.
"Rome's tradition of having to serve in 'lower offices' before the higher ones meant that when aristocrats inevitably ended up in charge of entire armies they had some level of practical experience and learnings to draw on while commanding".
But yes, much is made of Rome's redundancy in terms of military strength and there's a lot of states during that period that had A King who did everything and then died in a battle and then everything collapsed.
What it loses in efficiency, it gains in avoiding centralization, cult of personality, and encouraging standardization.
Obama could have had Bush against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Trump could have had Obama against the wall at the Hague for his war crimes... and then Biden could have had Trump... and on and one we go.
As stated, this is merely a truism, and you have not justified this belief. Would you care to? It seems very irrational to me. High office is one of the most difficult and most impactful jobs in the world. It's easy to do a terrible job and screw everyone over while enriching yourself, of course, but extremely challenging to do a good job. You are responsible for the fate of tens or hundreds of millions of people, and must exercise incredible judgment on the breadth of every macro problem society faces while simultaneously maneuvering both internal support and foreign relations. Why would we not want to make this most important of all jobs a job where people can actually grow into the role and demonstrate expertise in it? You are strictly only eliminating the electorate's options. There is already a corrective mechanism for voters to evict someone doing a bad job [whether they choose to exercise it is another matter, but that's literally democracy in action], but there should be no mechanism to sustain a job well done?
Also... too long in power makes it easier to dismantle the democratic process.
The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
Well how's that working out? There's a reason the rest of the developed democratic world hasn't adopted a strong executive.
Worked out very well for the American system till recently.
Funnily enough, a lot of people who voted for Flávio only did it because they wanted a change from Lula.
Then elect someone else next time. This, however, is a criticism of democracy more than it is a justification for term limits.
> The entire American system of checks and balances is not designed to get optimal leadership, it is designed to limit damage from bad leadership.
How's that working out for you? You got Trump and Biden as a direct result of term limits. The way I see it, your system has selected for the maximally damaging bad leadership possible.
The US only enacted term limits in 1951. Before that time, only two presidents had attempted to seek third terms (another two attempted but failed to secure even a nomination by a political party), and only one was successful.
And, quite frankly, the only president since the 22nd amendment who I could see wanting to run for a third term is Trump, who does seem to be campaigning for one anyways despite being constitutionally barred from it.
> No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.
The 'obvious loophole' is that the text doesn't constrain the number of terms anyone can serve, but instead constrains the number of times someone can be elected as president, so if you run as vice president for someone who agrees to immediately resign to let you be president, you technically don't run afoul of the rule.
(The more likely loophole, following from Trump v Colorado, is that nobody is actually allowed to declare somebody ineligible for president, so the constitution's strictures are meaningless in practice. It truly is a disgusting SCOTUS decision.)
Day one:
- your predecessor had this and this initiative, see pages 4 to 7 - i don't like that, what alternatives exist - we worked this up at the time, here are the projections which were updated six months ago - good, do that instead - we'll need to redo the numbers - then do so, and brief me again next week
I check my brake pads every year. Eventually the incumbent pads lose out to some whipper-snapper from the new pads box. I might vote red again or I might switch to blue. It depends how muddy it is. Either way, it’s both a new/old choice as well as a red/blue choice.
Time-in-office is also a major contributor to corruption. Lukashenko has been winning the same election for 30+ years!
Its a fundamental safeguard and a hedge against tyranny. Its why, in general, countries that are lead by one person for life can be very impressive in the short term but inevitably fall apart once the wrong person eventually takes charge. Because the odds are that eventually the wrong person will take charge.
History and present have many examples of the flawed human tendency to latch onto larger-than-life figures.
A benevolent, wise dictator would be the most effective form of government, but we are humans, not angels.
Per wikipedia.
Wrt to the latter: the Swiss system prefers the elder candidate.
If the latter: Yes, that is actually stupid, but the stupidity lies not in the term limits for politicians, but in the idea that public servants are employed on the grounds of party affiliation.[1]
But replacing large swathes of competent higher officials every time you change government... The only country I know of for sure that does that is the USA. Are you saying that's the way it works in Brazil, too?
___
[1]: Sure, to some extent it exists everywhere, but that's usually only a few sincure posts for old politicians removed from any actual influence by being "promoted diagonally left-upwards". (See, for example, the post of "landshövding" in Sweden.)
It doesn't really show that, though. Putin was not stopped by term limits. Hitler seized power within a year of being elected. Lukashenko established his rigged state within two years. Fujimori launched a self-coup within two years. I'm actually not aware of evidence that term limits have ever meaningfully did anything to impede a would-be wrongdoer.
I'd suggest that term limits are party of a package that rests on strong public faith in democratic institutions. E.g. Macron is about able to hang on, but i doubt he could stay past an electoral defeat because he presides over a nation that won't tolerate it.
I would rather limit not amount of terms, but the age. Not eligible for any kind of elections if you are 60+, both as candidate and as voter.
I really can’t understand how Brazilians (that actually have a multi party system) keep having to choose between two awful candidates.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_surrounding_Jair...
Australia has no term limits and has famously had the longest serving prime minister (12 years) followed by extremely short terms. All seemed to represent the general will of the population.
I’m not a political junkie but that makes sense to me. The critters who get your vote are just part of the system that runs the place.
You might say he introduced a kind of populism, where politicians only care about the next election round and their reputation, to the cost of important decision-making and long-term thinking. Unfortunately this is kind of a working strategy, a weakness of democracy, where the current centre-right government is struggling with all the aggravated problems not dealt with in the past, and the voters think "well, perhaps we have to vote VVD again where these problems didn't exist", or vote more right-wing by populism that makes immigration the cause of all problems.
Today, it’s always either the fault of the other party (who never had a real chance of making big changes), the rich (but if you tax them too much they leave and you’re left with no economy, see France), or the foreigners.
Lula served two terms from 2002-2010, and came back in 2022 (now to serve until 2030, if he lives until then).
I do think term limits are good, but nonconsecutive 16 years is actually an ok limit IMHO. Maybe not the one I'd prefer for my government, but not necessarily objectively bad for democracy.
Still, as you said, this context is important. Lula left in 2010 and came back in 2022 after having been arrested, freed, and then defeating Jair Bolsonaro, who was the current president and a fierce rival.
That said, I think reelections are actually more damaging in the legislative (and it is not uncommon to have congressmen and senators for 20, 30 years straight).
It's wild how closely Brazil's politics have mirrored the US in recent years, at least at a high level. They literally had their own Jan 6 insurrection. Lula, like Biden, was competent enough for a time but ultimately outstayed his welcome and ran for another term when they should have gracefully retired. Unlike Biden, Lula actually imposed some consequences on the people trying to destroy his country's democracy.
Long-term politicians result in "behind the scenes" doing the real work of running things.
Wait a minute ...
In the US, FDR stood 4 terms, and he was hardly the end of democracy.
Of course just because there are technically flaws, doesn't mean it's not an improvement over the status quo.
Instant Runoff Ranked ballots are particularly well suited for electing a single position like a Mayor or President. Given that it's still a majoritarian system like First Pass the Post, it's a much more questionable system to use for other things like electing a parliament.
I remember seeing a 2D chart representing voter preferences on the X and Y axis, coloured by who wins under those preferences (and some symmetry-breaking assumptions). Some systems showed clear biases towards certain outcomes. IRV had a pretty symmetric shape but with a splotch in the middle that was a random jumble of different colours - an unpredictable, chaotic outcome.
The problem IMO is when there's better options but it's hard to get people to care enough to switch systems again. I'm hoping Ranked Robin can catch on so at least places that went to IRV can switch to a better system without new ballots.
The issue is that you can't have 'Later No Harm' and 'Favorite Betrayal' at the same time.
Star Vote scores high on both but it can't be perfect.
See: https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s10602-022-09389-3?sh...
PS for those that don't know:
STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) works in two stages: 1. Voters score candidates from 0 to 5. 2. The two candidates with the highest total scores become finalists. 3. The finalist preferred by more voters wins.
So it combines score voting and runoff. Meaning it favors centrist candidates that are prefered by most people over somebody that can turn out the base.
STAR has been used approximately nowhere. STAR is also one of the few seriously advocated-for voting methods in which it's possible for the first choice of a majority to lose, although that isn't likely to happen in practice.
Same here. The idea of lobbying for a voting system where your vote for a candidate might hurt them, or where you might be better off not voting at all than expressing your honest preference is bizarre to me. If IRV was the only alternative, sure, but we have multiple other systems which don't have as bad tradeoffs. STAR or Ranked Robin would be so much better, but the Equal Vote Coalition doesn't seem to have the power behind it that FairVote does.
Preferential/ranked choice voting allows people to vote third-party while still expressing a preference for one of the majors.
You can vote for or against as many candidates as you want. Take the top 2 score getters and do a runoff. This means in the first round you can have as many candidates as you want. Those with no name recognition get no support. Also it prevents the situation so many find themselves in where both candidates are deeply unpopular but we feel we have no other choices. If the most well known candidates are deeply divisive then they won't get through.
The runoff gives people time to research the 2 candidates.
I am glad the son of a failed coup organizer and a trump puppet didn't get elected and am hopeful for Brazils ability to self govern. Breaking free of US financial monopolies (credit cards) gives me hope they'll continue to produce and innovative into a healthier and competitive world market, but I am also tired of Lula being at the helm and wish someone else could step up and take the reigns. When someone stays in power for so long in a democracy it makes me suspicious of the legitimacy of their power. Are they popular because they are good for the country or are they popular because they have the right people with power, influence, and money on their side.
So voting activation is to push all those people to not vote blank or arbitrarily.
* Turnout. Made all the difference.
8 is a really small sample to consider it as unusual, plus the reversal was not that huge 1.8%
Also I think Lula's campaign successfully highlighted Meta's election interference to the voting base which energized a lot of supporters to turn out
Those weren't, as far as I can see, real predictions; they were people saying "the runner up in the runoff has never won, therefore the runner up in the runoff _cannot_ win". Which is fairly ridiculous; it's a _tiny_ sample size.
A lot of media outlets have been fingering the outage of some data centers due to kinetic action for a worldwide decline in divisive rhetoric, potentially impacting democratic processes.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9y7l0pm8jkko
What are smoking? If you bother to check, United24 clearly describes itself as "The official fundraising platform for collecting donations to support Ukraine."
https://mronline.org/2026/10/16/meta-acknowledges-the-reduce...
If Americans elect Rubio after all this, or resoundingly reelect a Republican congress, I think you have a better claim.
Tl;dr they don't accept it, but they keep getting tricked
They have the supreme court. That is all they really need.
By the end of the next four years, Lula will finish his term with 70% of the seats of the supreme court being filled directly by his party.
They also stacked the lesser courts with judges which support him. Including the electoral court. We had judges who openly declared their vote for him judging his electoral complaints this entire month. Any guess which way the judges leaned?
Did you know one of the supreme court judges used to be Lula's own lawyer?
> and why does that mean that they're popular and win elections?
The supreme court literally engaged in unconstitutional censorship in order to get him elected in 2022. Judges also constantly barred Bolsonaro from doing things in 2022 that Lula was allowed to do this month, like lowering taxes at the gas pump before the election.
The supreme court was so incredibly politically active in 2022, it destabilized the country and led directly to the January 8th nonsense where people asked the military to enact a coup.
There's a saying here: "judges = gods". Actual lawyer told me that. And Lula owns the judges. If you don't see how having literal judge-god-kings on your side can tilt elections, then I don't know what I can possibly say to convince you.
Here's an example from the last four years: Lula implemented a tax on financial operations, our elected congress blocked it, then he went to the supreme court and they rammed it down our throats. Yes, the supreme court raised taxes. Not a single person voted for those judges, by the way. This is the Venezuela governance model.
The whole point of electing the right wing was to make those gods bleed. I'm going to go ahead and deflate my expectations now.
Do you have a source to read up on this?
Surely they're ruling on whether the executive branch has the power to do XYZ, right? So they don't directly endorse a policy, they decide who can do what?
You see the same in the US, with the decisions largely going the other way.
https://agenciabrasil.ebc.com.br/economia/noticia/2025-07/en...
Lula writes up a sort of decree raising taxes on financial operations such as BRL/USD conversions.
Our elected congress blocked it. That is their role.
Supreme court swoops in and "reestablishes" the decree.
Through this simple mechanism, president can bypass our elected congress and senate, and rule monocratically like a king.
The supreme court judges are appointed by the president himself. Lula will stack the court with four additional justices loyal to him by the end of the next four years. He will own 70% of the court. He can do anything.
Bolsonaro was our last chance to fix this shit. Plan was to elect a right wing senate and president, then impeach all of those judges. We managed to elect the senators, but not the president. If we impeach the judges now, it just buys Lula even more seats in the court. It's pretty much over now.
> So they don't directly endorse a policy
That is exactly what they do.
There’s a clear right-wing/centrist majority in Congress, so Lula’s Supreme Court nominations will not be that partisan.
Many Justices do need to be investigated and impeached, and it’s our job now to pressure congressmen in that regard, and then pressure again to make sure future nominees are much better.
I really hope you're right though. If even a single judge suffers consequences, this election will have been a major win.
So in a Republic, the President has the right to issue decrees. That's what makes it the executive branch. Congress can make laws that block specific things but they would need to pass legislation? And assuming this power is granted on the constitution, they can't change this (easily).
> That is exactly what they do.
They rule if the president can issue that decree, no? They don't have the ability to change any of that?
But that doesn't make you wrong. All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove. There are two branches of government with equal claim to popular legitimacy, therefore every presidential republic in the world reels from one constitutional crisis to another like a drunken sailor.
My exploration of this mess ended at around 2019 which is when the "fake news" inquisition began. It's entirely possible that they were abusing their power for much longer, but I sincerely don't know. Please post details if you do.
> But that doesn't make you wrong.
Thank you.
> All presidential republics are like this when push comes to shove.
My impression is this is a Latin American phenomenon. It's how Maduro governed Venezuela, for example. It's the reason why Bukele had to depose the judiciary in El Salvador.
I simply have never heard of or read about anything similar ever happening in the US or Europe. Would appreciate counterpoints.
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/supr...
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/us-supreme-court-ru...
https://www.cato.org/blog/king-v-burwell-clear-example-legis...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/court-allows-trump-to-fir...
https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/01/looking-back-at-2025-the-... (Trump v CASA, Trump v Illinois)
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a966_1b8e.pdf
Unless you're relying on suppressing the capacity of certain parts of your population to vote to win an election, like my country's right wing government has done, because last minute enrollment voters tend to not vote for them.
https://www.justice.govt.nz/about/news-and-media/news/electo...
Polls were closed in some places, voting boxes sealed, and had to be reopened.
While not necessarily bad, it can create fraud suspicions. Just arrange a longer voting time from the get go. Else it looks you are stalling and boosting turnout out for your side.
PS it’s quite common in some countries to put people on buses and make them vote in exchange of money.
Have polling stations open for a week, run them 24 hours on election day. Have so many that there's never a queue, and no one complains that they have to go far. That's democracy. The price is negligible.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50239676
https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2026/Outubro/cor...
https://www.infomoney.com.br/politica/lula-usa-alvorada-em-l...
Bolsonaro was prohibited from running lives inside the Palácio do Alvorada in 2022. Lula does so with impunity, court rejects regulation when denounced.
https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/politica/tse-mantem-restricoes-...
https://jovempan.com.br/colunistas/bruno-pinheiro/tse-nega-p...
Bolsonaro banned from using UN speech during his campaign. Attempts to denounce Lula for the same behavior went nowhere. Judge is known to vote for Lula.
https://www.poder360.com.br/justica/moraes-veta-campanha-sob...
https://www.tse.jus.br/comunicacao/noticias/2026/Outubro/cge...
Bolsonaro prevented from explaining his Auxílio Brasil benefits to the public until after the election. Lula can spam people with the same content all he wants with total impunity.
https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-invalida-emend...
https://noticias.stf.jus.br/postsnoticias/stf-reconhece-que-...
Supreme court invalidates Bolsonaro's benefit increases during the election year. Lula can increase them with total impunity.
I think it's pretty clear at this point that the court will back Lula.
Then Lula asks for one, because his own people placed Lula stickers on busses which is an electoral crime and caused them to be grounded. Suddenly his former lawyer turned supreme court judge is moved to the point of tears at his plight and grants it immediately. The irony is not lost on me.
But, his dad:
> Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted by Brazil's Supreme Court for plotting a coup following his 2022 election defeat
I don’t see how to read it any other way. Explain?
Basically, in Brazil the Supreme Court appears to be directly in charge of the police, and they can and do issue whatever "rulings" they want to impose their will on whatever or whoever they feel like, with no appeals possible. Including elected politicians.
I expect this HN thread to be a disaster zone of badly informed takes, but the Brazilians I know consider Brazil to be a dictatorship and this election to have been stolen. It's a sad day.
Bolsonaro was the last chance we had to fix this. The plan was to impeach those judges and then restrict the court to purely constitutional matters, like the US supreme court. That little project is pretty much done now. We'll be lucky if we can impeach Alexandre de Moraes. It's over.
In Brazil, judges are gods. An actual lawyer told me this, once.
The Supreme Court in Brazil can be as rotten of political as it wants, to make a plan to assassinate political rivals is just completely unacceptable.
And before someone tries to defend the bolsonaros by saying they were not involved in this, don't use a defense that they themselves did not use. The defense that Flávio Bolsonaro said about the incident was "thinking of killing someone is not a crime".
How so?
I don't really follow Brazilian politics, but Jair Bolsonaro was found guilty by the Brazilian Supreme Court of:
participation in an armed criminal organization, attempted violent abolition of the democratic rule of law, attempted coup d'état, qualified damage, and deterioration of protected heritage property.[1]
Flávio Bolsonaro is Jair Bolsonaro's son. "attempted coup d'état" is a failed coup.
There don't seem to be any serious questions that the process was fair and that the Supreme Court was impartial (I mean there are always Trumpian accusations of bias, but I mean ones with any evidence at all).
The only part I could see possible disagreement with is organizer I suppose? But I must be missing something.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_for_the_2022%E2%80%93202...
This is the supreme court that in 2019 launched a perpetual "fake news" inquisition where they are themselves the victims, investigators, prosecutors, judges and executioners of wildcard crimes against themselves with a jurisdiction covering the entire territory of Brazil.
Saying that Bolsonaro was convicted by this court carries less weight to me than saying he was banned by dang.
The whole point of electing a right wing senate and Bolsonaro's son was to impeach and hold accountable the judges of this court. Obviously, that's never going to happen now. Lula will put four additional judges in there, and will rule uncontested until the day that he dies. It's the Venezuela model.
But really, the US has had the same problem you see in Brazil for so long, the president usually doesn't even have to ask the court, because the legislative was already sidelined decades ago. That is the case for the rather important issue of going to war, which of course Trump has also done against legislative approval.
I am convinced that the judiciary is the ultimate weakness of democracy.
no matter the place the judiciary can be stacked to favor a party. in the US right now it's stacked to favor Trump & the republicans.
just like how u r complaining abt the brazilian judiciary.
This isn't right. Judiciary should be impartial. It shouldn't matter who it is, what party it is, the treatment should be equal. Anything less than that is profoundly destabilizing. I couldn't imagine even countries like the US would face the same issue.
Examples:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39966382
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36543423
I also tend to comment on the matter extensively whenever it's brought up.
Here's my recollection of the events that happened before, during and after the 2022 election:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44619572
I think the abuses of the supreme court are well established at this point.
Jair Bolsonaro was tried and convicted of organizing a coup.
Flavio Bolsonaro is his son.
Where's the false part?
Aprende com o nome dele e faz ai um "Já ir". De preferencia no...
Pretty far fetched.
What do you have to say about this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022%E2%80%932023_Brazilian_co...
Currently we see such claims resurfacing on topics like Brexit or other contemporary issues. If you look at the hard data of visibility on the attempts of Russia, they are in a similar spot as their economy. Doing decently poorly.
If any domestic news article or politician points their fingers at Russia, it is probably to distract from something else. Sure, if you are situated in Ukraine, the story is different. The latter does have to swallow the results of the moronic foreign policy of quite a few western nations for that matter and it would be served well if a bit of sensible reflection would be put on the table.
Russian troll factories etc are a documented fact, not an opinion. It goes way beyond just "influencing elections".
As far as I can see it's pretty thin. US interence on the other hand has been open.
https://thebostonreport.com/2026/10/11/russia-brazil-electio...
I guess Putin doesn't really care whether you are red or blue, but who do you align with, or who do you oppose.
This is into "not even wrong" territory. Brazil has a fairly close relationship with Russia, they're a fellow founding BRICS member - and Lula was president when it was formed. What would Putin get from having US (Trump) ally Bolsonaro Jr. over him?
And while it's great that the murder-happy fascist didn't win, it's not exactly a great win for democracy. It's just stopping the bleeding. Besides the obvious problem of being allied with Russia and China, Brazil has a worrying "anti fake news" law. Like elsewhere, it seems the slightly-better guys aren't eager to roll back power grabs that now benefit themselves.
Really? I couldn't tell. In the last debate alone, the main TV network conceded to Flavio's request to not use live fact checking systems on TV. Turns out 75% of his statements were not true. He's facing no consequences for that, nor is the network for hosting and broadcasting his fake facts.
You probably could have constructed a fact checker that would have said that 75% is true, the completely other way around. For most truths or facts that is entirely possible without any contradiction if you change perspective. This basic media literacy isn't optional and it cannot be outsourced.
Why indeed.
Bolsanaro (the fellow in jail/house arrest) is the one favoured by Trump.
It won for Bolsonaro whose campaign nailed it in 2018. It didn’t win in 2022 because he was completely bad in dealing with pandemics (mocking people dying and saying he had nothing to do with it being president).
Now, Lula’s campaign was absolutely dead during the whole time. Until it lost in the legislative by a mile and in the President run had a partial loss in the first round. Then the campaign lit up after the partial upset.
Janones, an energetic young guy elected to legislative with good online presence led the campaign. He achieved creating a WhatsApp group with 11 million people called “Lula’s army”. He would give the directions and the people would obey almost blindly.
The interwebs (basically WhatsApp + Instagram) got flooded with this top to bottom Lula’s campaign.
The first round results made Bolsonaro very favorite. Lula victory was a huge upset. I put the merit in this incessant social media campaign.
The thing is: “centrally planned cohesive campaign” looks a lot like a cult. The point of the campaign is not critical thought or argumentation, it is incessant messaging. Think fandoms.
Bolsonaro voters pejorative nickname from past campaigns was they were all “cattle”. Because that is how they behaved online. Ironically, what worked for Lula voters this year was they behaving like “cattle”. Just reposting and following this central orders on what to post, what to say, what to dress.
The thing is, it works. Cult-like fandoms work in elections. The right won a few elections like this in the world. In Brazil, the left just learned how to do it was well.
The more mindless posters a politician has following their campaign HQ orders, the more votes they have.
What other cases are you referring to? Be specific
He was arrested for the biggest corruption scandal this country ever had. People ratted him out. He was the guy at the top.
Then the supreme court cited some technicality like "his initial judgement took place in the wrong court" and just undid the entire thing. They did it because nobody else could take out Bolsonaro.
Then he ran against Bolsonaro and took him out in 2022. And he just did it again.
It's Brazil. Crime pays. Lula's existence is proof. This country will never truly change.
Besides, Jair Bolsonaro won when Lula was still in jail.
And you're right, Lula's imprisonment changed everything. It was a moment of hope for many of us, and the reason why Bolsonaro even had a chance to begin with. Surely you can understand why the supreme court breaking the guy out of jail and putting him in the presidential race again while censoring everything Bolsonaro said and did would cause people to stop believing in justice?
The first instance judge colluded with the prosecution, and when the supreme court was about to rule on a habeas corpus, a general tweeted a thinly veiled threat of military coup if the sentence wasn't confirmed. And the evidence was scant to begin with. Hardly surprising that the conviction was eventually overturned.
Bolsonaro's condemnation, on the other hand, was backed by much more comprehensive evidence, and resulted from a heavily scrutinized process.
Everything got thrown out because of a "tried in the wrong court" technicality. I'd still be disappointed but I'd have been far more sympathetic if what you posted had been cited as the reason for the maneuver.
Like, I'm not happy that the whole process was thrown out either, because a lot of actually corrupt people got away with it. But another fundamental principle of the justice system is that it NEEDS to err on the side of innocence. So, while it is an unfortunate outcome, I still think that 1) it's better than the alternative, and 2) the blame lays 100% with the partial (and, arguably, corrupt) judge and prosecutor. It was their unscrupulous drive to get 1 guy convicted (with, again, arguably second intentions, since both judge and prosecutor got elect and made a bunch of money with talks and shit) that turned the whole case into trash.
UPDATE: I jumped the gun a bit in the answer, and ended up no addressing the main point: Lula's conviction was not overturned just because it was tried in a 1st instance court, the evidence of partiality of the judge was very much also a factor.
From 2 courts with 5 judges each.
At some point, you cross over from being misguided to an embarrassment to yourself.
No, it is really not. I have no horse in the race and know little about the politics in Brazil. But if anyone frames political competition as a right or left wing debate, it is very, very likely horseshit.
What's your thought process behind your comment:
"If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice."
Given the following facts:
- Climate change is real
- The Amazon stores around 15–20 years of global CO2 emissions. Burning it down would release all that.
- It maintains the rainfall system needed by farms and general Brazilian economy
- There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon and so much unexplored. By protecting it, it preserves biological resources and research relevant to food and medicine.
- Many indigenous people live there (2 million?). So it's OK to just destroy their home?
Any why do you need to burn down the Amazon to build a Brazilian semi-conductor industry?
I think it's clear, if Bolsonaro Jr would have won, he'd continue his father's approach to it, i.e. continue with deforestation and loosen environmental rules.
Every election, someone like Greta Thunberg shows up and tells everyone to vote for Lula to save the Amazon.
What about the Brazilian people? Our industry? Our economy? Our prosperity? Our autonomy? Our independence? Our sovereignty?
They couldn't care less about any of that.
The suggestion that we should slow down our own development "to safeguard the Amazon" is offensive to me.
I'll say it again: if burning that jungle down would magically turn Brazil into China or the US, with high value industries, space program, well equipped military, nuclear weapons... I'd sacrifice it all without losing even one second of sleep.
Note the "if", it's important. There's no reason to burn it all down just for kicks. There must be significant advantage for the trade to be worth it. The point is: the trade is on the table as far as I'm concerned. We can endeavour to preserve it, but if it gets in the way of national interests then it definitely must go.
That said: they too have a point, they've learned the hard way that this is going to end very bad, not just for Brazil but for the whole continent and possibly even the world. And to that extent they should compensate Brazil year on year for maintaining the Amazon as it is today, to make sure that there is no downside to doing the right thing.
I'm not sure if you are familiar with Joe Jackson, he has a beautiful little bit in 'the obvious song':
"There was a man in the jungle Trying to make ends meet Found himself one day with an axe in his hand When a voice said "Buddy can you spare that tree We gotta save this world-starting with your land." It was a rock 'n' roll millionaire from the USA Doing three to the gallon in a big white car And he sang and he sang 'till he polluted the air And he blew a lot of smoke from a Cuban cigar"
And that's it in a nutshell. So what Brazil should do - and I'm not kidding - is to hold the Amazon hostage. If the part of the world that wants it preserved is really serious they should pay up, and Brazil can use the proceeds to improve the lives of Brazilians. That at least would take a part of the sting out. As for the high value industries, the space program, the well equipped military and the nuclear weapons: those are all things with flip sides as well, and some of those flip sides only become apparent once you go down that route. I think a part of that could be realized steering clear from the downsides, but be careful what you wish for, you just might get it.
But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
I get that Lula isn't great, politics is hard. But from the outside it looks like a small majority of Brazilians have voted to say 'not another Bolsonaro'. He would have probably continued like his father and fostered closer ties to Trump and borrowing a few tactics from his playbook, i.e. definitely not good for the average Joe like us.
Good for corporations? Yes - hence why Meta and co tried to push Bolsonaro.
Thank you for listening in good faith.
I supported Bolsonaro because I saw his election as the only possible way to defeat the supreme court judges, who I believe are dictators. To me this was a priority that overrode all other concerns.
I do not at all share his alignment with Trump and Israel, and especially not his privatization efforts. I'd rather Brazil align itself with China. I understand people's rejection of Bolsonaro, and even agree. The very first comment in this thread came from me, and I expressed this opinion through it:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237602
> Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like.
Unfortunately, it's been flagged to death for reasons unknown.
I clarified my overall position here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237862
But the scenario you outlined sounds complicated.
In the end I guess people voted for the person who they think would cause the least damage to the country. That's why the last minute turn out of voters, since they saw Bolsonaro was about to win?
Voting for Bolsonaro would get rid of those supreme court judges, but you'd also get all the downsides with it, i.e. probably have a new leader using the Trump playbook and his father's playbook. And look how 2 years of Trump turned out. Him and his family and friends got immensely rich, increased corruption, while democratic institutions have been dismantled and cost of living has risen immensely.
Or continue with Lula and get marginal improvements but the supreme court stays as is. According to reports I read under Lula poverty and hunger rates have fallen, unemployment rates fell, Economy has grown (but has slowed now), Amazon protection has improved.
I think where he hasn't hit the mark yet is cost of living, but that's a problem all over the world. And that's why it's key to understand it's not left vs right, it's normal folks vs the owner class / monopolistic corporations.
Both of them would have damaged the country in different ways.
I believe the economy would improve under Bolsonaro, but he did want to sell off national industries and resources to foreign countries which is fatal in the long term. Historically speaking, aligning oneself with the US is also just bad in general. They don't have friends, they have interests. China is a much better partner.
Lula will continue to spend lavishly on benefits for everybody, and eventually the costs are going to spiral out of control. His last term set records in government spenditure and tax revenue. This country exports commodities, and there is no real industrialization effort in place, there isn't much room for hope here. I believe the number one factor that held this country together during his last term was the independent central bank which, as always, set monstrous interest rates, over 12%, despite his efforts to lower it. Inflation was still strong even after that. The people are accruing more and more debt, defaulting on debts. Just bad signs all over the place. The worst possible sign is the fact that Lula's is absolutely loved by the banks. They raked in record profits in the last few years.
But I personally wouldn't trust people like Bolsonaro, we've seen how this turned out in other countries, like the US, Hungary as some examples. Luckily Hungary managed to get rid of Orban after many years. People like that don't feel any civic duty to their country and happily sell out their own people in order to gain more power and enrich themselves.
I don't know whether Lula is a net positive for Brazil or not, but putting my global citizen hat on, I appreciate that Lula is trying to protect the Amazon from greedy corporations.
And since you're a doctor, maybe you can appreciate how important the Amazon is for Brazil and our biosphere as a whole. Not just for the current generation but also future generations.
Since the Amazon is important for the whole world, Brazil should setup a fund for protecting the Amazon and allow people to donate to it and make it transparent how that money is spent. I'd happily donate to that fund, so it's not all on Brazilian tax payers.
Destroying something that took millions of years to grow and evolve for the sake of semiconductor plants and related industry is short sighted. Once those species of plants, fungi or animals have been lost, we won't be able to get them back.
But again, you don't need to destroy the Amazon to build a rich and vibrant semiconductor industry. I think Brazilians are smarter than that ; )
Really? Here is a comment you made very recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50228883
> If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice.
If you did a poll based on statements like these, 100% of people will tell you that you need serious help.
Says the guy whose comments are magically upvoted 6 times, every single comment. I don't know who you have to pay to get that unfair advantage, but I've seen several prominent users have this privilege (like @pjmlp x9). Also the opposite, users who are instantly downvoted on every comment. I'm guessing there are rings of puppet users who automatically upvote users such as yourself to amplify their opinion.
If there's an upvoting ring here, they're doing a terrible job.
Lula may well be guilty of corruption, but Bolsonaro (senior) isn't in it for wider Brazil either. I'm not trying to preach disillusionment, but in 2026 in most of the heavily polarised countries, if we start from a position that they are both acting in pure unadulterated self-interest we'll at least not have blinkers on with respect to the saviour fascist "says what everyone is thinking" strongman, or the current polished establishment status quo spokesman, etc.
That's genuinely terrifying. Can you elaborate on what's going on in the US? I haven't been tracking US politics.
I agree with you about Bolsonaro, but he was the only chance we had to defeat Lula and oppose the supreme court. It's all over now.
This is the Bolsonaro I know. I'm here to kindly ask you to free your mind from the shackles of his vile social network and see for yourself what he truly is, including seemingly innocuous "family" whatsapp groups and so on.
I don't think Bolsonaro is a savior. I think he is a traitor to his country and to everybody who ever supported him.
I think that if he had actually had balls, he would have actually attempted a coup. Then he would have either won outright or gone down fighting, and his little prison term would have actually been warranted. What he did instead was hop on a plane to the USA like a rat and let my fellow countrymen take the fall for him. His subsequent arrest was predictable, and I didn't feel sorry for him. I don't even defend him against the coup accusations. My position is that the supreme court enacted its own silent coup in 2019 and usurped all power. His coup would merely be a counter to the supreme court's own coup.
I also don't generally disagree with people when they criticize the Bolsonaro family's calls for sanctions against Brazil as a political maneuver. That is treason. I celebrated the Magnitsky sanctions against the supreme court judges, not the ones Trump enacted against the whole country.
My general position is anti-supreme court. You can find me temporarily aligned with Bolsonaro for the purposes of defeating the influence of the supreme court, an effort that clearly failed as of today. You won't find me defending his plans to privatize and sell off the country to the USA and Israel.
There is exactly one politician which represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. He's dead, and is not at all similar to Bolsonaro. I suggest you read about him if you want to understand what I actually think.
I've also been drawing uncomfortably close to the extreme left wing party PCO. Inexplicably, they share many of the viewpoints that I express here. They too are shunned by the "traditional" left that Lula represents, for the same reasons as yours. Pretty wild.
> inciting the population into dividing themselves
Lula's the one who pioneered the politics of polarization in this country. He feeds off Bolsonarism as much as Bolsonarism feeds off him.
> his vile social network
> "family" whatsapp groups and so on
I participate in exactly zero of such channels. HN is the only forum where I post my political viewpoints, and only on Brazil threads. I don't talk about politics with family members at all.
You could argue that about pretty much every politician and their supporters in India. The right wing keeps winning because the left refuses to address the fears of a majority of the Indian population. Even if those fears are unwarranted - dismissing them as "uneducated" and "blind sheep" alienates people even more.
Fact is, whether you like it or not, the party in power has been in power only for a few years, and has achieved more than the other party did in 60 years.
Do you really believe that the INC would have handled Covid better? They were trying to kill off indigenous vaccines to favour Pfizer etc who (a) refused trials in Indian conditions and (b) wanted $62 per shot.
Do you really believe that they would have managed to keep fuel prices in check given Trump's war on Iran?
Do you really believe that Rahul Gandhi is qualified to run a home owner's association, leave alone a nation of 1.4 billion people?
Take a look in the mirror then next time you use that phrase.
And also because the entire state apparatus was engaged in unconstitutional censorship of his "centrally organized, cohesive, persistent online engagement" machine, which is what wins elections, as you noted.
And now that Janones set up his own "Lula's Army", Brazilian institutions did not manifest even a fraction of the energy they had shown while persecuting Bolsonaro.
Lula was allowed to do everything Bolsonaro was persecuted for in 2022. He even lowered taxes on fuels, and got away with it. The tax cut ends tomorrow.
I remind you that censorship is unconstitutional in Brazil, and political censorship doubly so. The supreme court walked all over the constitution when they censored him.
"Fake news" is still speech and cannot and must not be censored. I question the supreme court's ability to determine whether any political statement is true or false in an impartial manner: they declared fake things which I know are true. They said it was "fake news" that Lula was a friend of communist dictators. After he won, I was forced to watch him literally roll out the red carpet and welcome Maduro to my country with full military honors. It was a nationwide gaslighting campaign.
Your side also pushed plenty of "fake news", only with total impunity. Claimed he was going to end the healthcare system. Claimed he was going to end government benefits. Claimed he was going to abolish female suffrage. Bolsonaro has repeatedly said he was never going to do any of that, yet the pushing persisted, and not a single judge lifted a finger to censor you people.
Must be nice, having literal judge-god-kings on your side.
As is currently observable in the United States, given consolidation of power in the three branches of government, it is no longer necessary to follow the law or the constitution. Minimal research into who from the US government the Bolsonaros associate with tells you what their agenda would have been in the "Bolsonaro 2" government: complete, transparent self-interest and complete disregard for actually administering the country for the benefit of the people.
Taking him at his word in the last three months of the campaign after 20 years of a vapid/nothing political career full of police investigations and associations with organized crime makes no sense.
https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-lula-presidency-saved-a...
for those partying https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vL--PrvsJ0
Now he will face a much bigger opposition in Congress and therefore will have to find a middle ground.
I expect his policies to move even further to the right. This might pave the way for his vice-president Alckmin, a historical right-winger, to run in the 2030 elections — likely against São Paulo’s governor Tarcísio de Freitas, also a right-winger and considered more moderate than the Bolsonaros despite being associated with them.
(reposting my own comment from a related thread)
lula is a little less crazy (compared to bolsonaro), likely not anti-science, preserves the amazon, seems to care about keeping the same constituition and so on, but he heaves his hand when it comes to (mostly populist) spending, like there's no tomorrow.
he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term. so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest. people that likes him usually say they don't like milei, but his incredible debt build up is actually a future-milei magnet.
also, after so much terms and "custo brazil" ("Brazilian (Business) Cost Burden"?) still prohibitive, the country never goes up from its terrible positions in making business rankings. one can just not hope he does anything better now after so much terms. his spending is too demand biased.
There is crazy right and significantly more normal left. And if you want the center to win, you need to ackwnowledge that. Anything else helps the more crazy side.
This is key to his reelection. He literally ran on a "Bolsonaro will end Bolsa Família" campaign.
It's unfortunate. Lula inherited a post-Washington consensus neoliberal Brazil. He had nearly 20 years to undo all that and reindustrialize the country, thereby putting us on China's path.
I would have voted for him regardless of ideology if he had done it, but he didn't. It's just easier to just anesthetize the population and put them on paliative care with free money.
> he thinks he is helping the poor, but it is just for short term.
This "short term" is unbearably long... But I do see signs that the system is reaching its limits. Government was already having trouble paying pensions before Vorcaro.
> so much public debt, in a few years everyone, rich or poor, will have pay the price, with interest.
Bankers love Lula for a reason. Record profits.
Also, nobody can beat Dilma on cutting taxes from the rich.
https://smalands.org/en/the-cold-wars-unholy-war-how-the-cia...
Those, the "we must kill all the criminals!!", the actual nazis and all the other people that identify with the Bolsonaro family add up to about 15% of the country.
The world is more complex than "fascist" vs "communist"
Literally Lula said as much
"We are interested in discussing the defence area, the space area, the scientific and technological area, the education area, and especially, the energy issue area," Lula said.
USSR was famously anti-religion (criteria 8) and pro labor (criteria 9 and 10) so thinking USSR shared 80-90% with Nazis is kind of laughable.
Fascism is more then authoritarianism. It is a set of explicitly right wing and explicitly anti-communist and anti-socialist policies, fascism is extremely pro-business. And it is explicitly racist and nationalistic.
The Soviet Union was explicitly pro-worker, it was explicitly communist, it was explicitly left-wing. Under its first ruler it was even explicitly internationalist (to the extend that the Internationale was their national anthem; But their second ruler was for sure a nationalist). There is no definition of fascism which includes the Soviet Union. If the Soviet Union were fascist, then fascism becomes a useless term completely synonymous with authoritarianism.
If we were to consider the Soviet Union fascist, simply because of their atrocities, than we would have to consider the British rule over India fascist. And there we also run into problem, because the British also fought and defeated fascism (albeit not as decisively as the Soviet Union; leaving fascists in power in Spain and Portugal). And there is even more of a case for fascist UK because unlike the Soviet Union, the British enacted racist ethnodemocratic policies emblematic of fascism.
But we have another name for the types of government which ruled India in terror. And that name is Colonialism. The British government wasn’t fascist, it was colonial. And it committed their numerous atrocities in India under the ideology of colonialism.
Likewise with the Soviet Union. At no point in their history were they ruled by a right wing, pro-business, pro-religion, racist regime. The Soviet Union committed their atrocities not to enrich the business elite, with some ethno-nationalist/religious ideology, but to further the ideology of Communism. Businesses were state owned, education was universal, and unions were elevated. The party elite then put them selves in high paying positions for the state owned businesses, created better schools for their own children, and pushed union leadership loyal to the party. So corruption for sure, but still not fascism. For that we need the unions disbanded, their union leaders executed, ethnic minorities kicked out of schools and into ghettos, and state corporations handed over to the aristocracy, etc.
...so this will play in to Bolsonaro's claims the election was "stolen" then probably, if the polls heavily favored him?
Polymarket was like 80% Bolsonaro Jr to 20% Lula 7pm, 7:15 it changed to 60% Lula. There were multiple reports in the news websites about it favoring Bolsonaro which itself probably made some people vote for him.
I'm quite happy with the result tho. Let's see how the far right opposition will take this loss. I'm already expecting the worse.
I think as humans we are really bad at intuition about probabilities, and it being an election only makes it much worse. I don't think anyone is consciously conflating these with poll numbers but percentages of voters are the numbers we see a lot more than prediction markets, and 80% is idunno an 80% chance of getting between 50% and 54% of the vote or something.
If you bet on 20% chances and they happen 30% of the time you make money. The payoffs are such that you win by being a better predictor than the market. I'm fine criticizing it as a gambling blight (not to mention a corruption payoff) but it is also a prediction market.
Every single factor was pointing towards Bolsonaro, Polymarket was just consistent with that.
He unexpectedly won the first round of the election. His lead was expected to grow since he'd likely get most of the votes of the other candidates. 17 out of 18 polls favored Bolsonaro. Market movements indicated a strong expectation of him winning. The Brazilian Real futures are already down 10% in the last couple hours.
But that's how democracy works, I think this election will be studied many times in the future.
Brutal.
this kind of gambling ought be made illegal along with the explicit in-pocket gambling
want to gamble, go to a physical place,
constant, easy access apps are already showing harm
Surprising to see Bolsonaro lose at this point, but the real upset of this election was caused by the senate. The whole point of electing the right wing was to impeach the judges. So long as that happens, I will be satisfied.
The next four years were going to seriously suck for Flávio. Now the economic bomb is going to explode in Lula's hands. I was tempted to vote for Lula myself just to make that happen. It's the supreme court issue that stopped me.
Lula's barely fit for his position as president too. He might resign and let the vice-president deal with it. Also an acceptable outcome.
Impeachment of the supreme court is precisely what will save this country. They have been ruling monocratically since they launched the "fake news" inquisition in 2019. People can stomach a Lula win, even I have points where I intersect with the guy. The thing is not a single Brazilian voted for those judges.
Unfortunately, Flávio's loss will only embolden them now. Remains to be seen whether the senators will do what we elected them to do.
And so, you feel comfortable foisting your political views on a tech forum, even when you are repeatedly told that your views are unhinged and that you need serious help?
Ironically (or not at all) the man who individually received the most money from that scheme is the head of Flavio Bolsonaro's party, and the party who received the most payoff as a whole was Jair Bolsonaro's party at the time.
Politics in Brazil require a great deal of consensus, obscure dealmaking and corruption.
But it doesn't help that the alternative far-right candidate is an extremist nutjob whose appointment for the presidential race was done for noone other than nepotism (bearing his jailed father name). That alienated alot of his voting base who wanted a more competent candidate.
A directorate where executive power is distributed over multiple people and executive policy is decided on in a concordat it a much better solution.
I don't think "Oooh. Scary muslims!" works any less well if it's required to say "Elon Musk" rather than "American Apple Pie Goodness PAC" or whatever.
It might make a difference for smaller donors, especially if they're more sensitive about their personal PR.
Or, I suppose, you could fix it by abolishing America's Written Constitution so that its legislature can just write legislation for this. I think that would go down like cold sick - Americans love their Written Constitution.
A major reason it isn't working for now is because Donald Trump is, in addition to being a corrupt autocrat, incredibly incompetent. We shouldn't have to rely on that next time.
He did screw up Twitter/X enough that a new competitor managed to make a blip on the map, though. So that leads some credence.
Tesla is the only EV company in the US making a good product. People also like the techieness. Foreign manufactures like Hyundai (what I drive, preferred less tech and real buttons) have tariffs and such applied to them. BYD would wreck them all if allowed.
Well yes. Those were things in EU too. But those didn't override the fact that he tried to control their elections. The US has some people who swore off Tesla in similar protest, but the overall sentiment didn't seem to impact their bottom line.
I personally want to hold out and see if/when the US gives up on tariffing progress. But I have driven a 2008 car for almost 10 years and can't overlook the scenario of needing to replace it one day.
And I'm interested in an FEV for my next car. Tesla is completely out of the question, but I really haven't been impressed with most other offerings when I could peer over the border and see what BYD, Xiaomi, and others are doing. Maybe I compromise short term then trade in when the time comes?
I don't know the specifics of Brazil's system, but at least in the US gerrymandering has nothing to do with the Presidency or Senate, only the House. It's also not without risk. Gerrymandering is bad, but it doesn't change the totals of votes; it attempts to reapportion "excess" votes yielding a large win margin in one area to give winning, but necessarily smaller, margins in more areas. Amongst other challenges though that smaller margin means if there is a wave then a gerrymander can turn into a "dummymander" where previously safe districts get flipped.
>funny business
This is actually pretty dang hard in anything but a total sham, and even then is at least obvious it happened. Some timy fiddling at the margins may be possible to sneak through, and yeah some elections that might make the difference. But that can't counter any serious victory. The more common technique seems to be trying to suppress the vote. But as well as also not being trivial it also too risks backfiring by motivating people much harder. There is a lot of human psychology around "loss", people often absolutely hate things being taken from them even if they were complacent about having them.
Must win by 50% plus 1 of all valid votes on Round 1. If not, 1st and 2nd most voted go for Round 2 a few weeks later. Then, 50%+1 again of all valid votes.
So there's not a direct effect on Presidential elections but there's a second order effect.
Everything else you mentioned also matters. I can't tell you the amount of times that the state of Georgia, suddenly out of the blue, invalidated a lot of registered voters. And if people don't check, like my friend in a minority town outside of Atlanta, they won't realize until election day. Red states are more likely to play this trick. Your conclusion is something I disagree with, though. Voters have lost so much over the last decade, and they don't fight back until it really starts to affect them personally. I think the surge that we might see this election is only due to economics. If the economics were good, it's not out of the question that Trump would be doing fairly decent this election cycle. This is why Iran is playing things very well to try to enact maximum economic pain in the days before the election. But it's all about economics, and that shows you that people truly don't really care.
Well it does change which voters decide the results. A lot of electoral systems seek to constantly redress imbalance by having impartial bodies redraw district lines as populations shift. It is a shame the US does not. Gerrymandering is fundamentally undemocratic.
Need I say more?
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Elon+Musk%2CAl...
Make of that what you will.
It could easily be people writing fanfic about him (ugh) or criticising the pants off him, and may not be related at all. But I'd guess a lot of this was field-adjacent to at least his business interests.
If you have a lot of money and you've managed to stay out of prison, people are generally ready to believe good things about you and want to be in your good graces. If you pay people to continually say good things about you and manage your media appearances for you, there will generally be a lot of impact to that. You're just telling people what they're primed to believe. A lot of people will fluff up your image for free just because they're hoping for patronage.
Musk has a BA in physics that was awarded a couple years after he says he says he completed his studies. Unlike CPSC, leaving a physics program early robs you of some pretty crucial stuff. You generally don't see a lot of rockstar physicists leaving university early to join startups. Despite Musk posing as a rocket scientist, engineering guru, etc., there's no evidence he's one of the scientific or engineering minds behind Tesla or SpaceX's work. He's just a money guy.
The general rule for money guys is that the closer you are to the money, the more of it you can get. This is why CEO's are paid outrageous sums. Musk is the closest guy to the money at his companies, and his one true gift seems to be "getting close" to politicians in order to get the public's money, which Tesla and SpaceX have received gob-smacking amounts of.
If you want a laugh, go look up the episode of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History addendum where he brought Musk on. Carlin typically interviews authors of history books, so why Musk? Why indeed! During this episode, it comes out that Musk used to have models of WWII planes but clearly knows absolutely nothing about history. Despite this, he makes every effort to sound like he does. This is the sort of exposure $$$ gets you but, sometimes, you miss the mark.
Also, what is a brand if not a intentional ‘reality distortion’?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmJI6qIqURA
The right: we need to torture immigrants and more market capture.
The center: I can't decide between these two equally appealing, equally moral options.
Perhaps if the far left and hard right didn't dominate primaries (many reasons for this), we could have less extreme candidates in November. But it is what it is until we start having civil conversations with our friends, family, neighbors, and community. We could be having conversations about how we improve our democracy.
You comment lends to being part of the problem. Please stop demeaning everyone with blanket statements.
As an independent volunteering with Indivisible, my main effort has been to moderate the members on the far left.
The rule of thumb I use is, do they say things like "win at all costs" or talk about how they want to dominate others, forcing their views on all Americans.
lots of top down rules for everyone, rather than the "trickle up" governance experiments we need to runin order to (1) figure out what works in practice (2) convince others they should try it to
quality first comment buddy, leave that stuff on Musk and Zuck Social please
the rest of us want debates and compromise
You don't have much idea what some of our family, friends, and neighbors are like do you? I have nothing to say to fascists, Nazis, and anyone who advocates for the things MAGA advocates for. Spare us the "oh we should just talk it out" BS. The time for discourse ended when people started advocating for racist fascism. And if you're unable to spot the racist fascism, then you likely support it.
Please leave your political extremism at home when coming to HN. Musk Social is the place for that, if you need to let off the steam and yell into the void
There is a reason both extremes are losing support, it's people who say things like you have here. The rest of us are tired of you and you undermine the causes you care about. Touch some grass, talk to people in real life.
I'll have you know, I'm estranged from my parents and a best friend over these things. You do not need to talk to them all, but we do need to talk with them collectively if we are to move minds. I let my sister work on my parents, she has always had a much closer relationship.
You are either are blind to the things going on in this country, or you approve of them. Elon Musk did a Nazi salute at Trump's inauguration. Twice. Trump invited a known white supremacist to dinner. ICE is disappearing people. Trump had his goons raid a sitting congresswoman, in an obvious attempt to intimidate naturalized citizens and immigrants. He is implementing Project 2025, which is white Christian nationalism. He already attempted a coup, and has every intention of interfering in the midterms. Oh and he's clearly a pedo.
And you think people opposed to those things are "extreme"? What exactly do you say to people who support things that Nazis literally supported? As I said, you either support these things, or you are willfully ignorant of them.
There is no center with fascism. You are for or against. I don't give a goddamn if you are tired of hearing about it. People less fortunate than you are living it.
you don't see, you stand on a soap box and tell everyone how bad they are for not saying things exactly like you do
you are part of the problem in this country
do you think relentlessly attacking people is the way to win them to your causes or way of thinking?
I'm opposed to the same things you are, but you don't move people when you say things they way you say them
I'm starting to think you do support all of that. Why else would you whine about anyone mentioning it? What alternative is there? You clearly have no idea about the people you think should be talked to, they cannot be reached because they like what's going on.
It took a goddamn world war to stop Nazis from doing what they did. Talking won't do anything to people like that.
you are as bigoted as you portray them to be, text book projection, because you've never talked with them, you see what bots promote on social media and attribute it to large swaths of humans, that's textbook fascism bud
Have you tried to understand why Trump won the popular vote in 2024?
I was like you, then I swore off Big Social and anything with reposts and quote posts, and the echo chamber media that has replaced newspapers. I found new sources for better information and ideas, and started working with my local political organizations instead. Much happier and healthier these days. Able to make more difference than yelling at people online ever will.
This only gets fixed in meat space, not digital space
Since you keep baiting me with your straw man, I'll address the example: I neither want to torture immigrants nor do I want to give free healthcare to non-taxpayers. So, given your straw man, that would posit I'm in neither party's camp.
You're not even being genuine at this point.
Account created 3 months ago
The word is absolutely meaningless now.
And when you correctly use the word to describe what they are supporting, you are inciting violence.
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Screen Actors Guild–American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
Writers Guild of America
Directors Guild of America
National Education Association
American Federation of Teachers
American Psychological Association
American Sociological Association
Modern Language Association
American Historical Association
Association of American Universities
Columbia University
Harvard University
Yale University
University of California, Berkeley
Oberlin College
Reed College
NPR
PBS
The New York Times
The Washington Post
The Guardian
Human Rights Campaign
GLAAD
Good luck finding examples of the opposite direction.
(Pretend I wrote the exact same list)
Either your list is way out of date or the Overton Window is so far to the right in the US that this statement is somehow possible.
There are many more institutions on that list that are explicitly not left wing by non-US standards.
And FWIW Bolsonaro was also asking the polling stations to stay open longer.
I think you are equivocating. Denying people their vote indeed counts as election tampering but that doesn’t mean giving more people the vote is also bad.
You can check it yourself, the output and log files for each ballot box are already available. I can see that mine opened and closed at the expected time.
There is no contradiction here. When it comes to elections, there should be exactly zero room for doubt.
Gotta look on the bright side. Bolsonaro was closer to US interests than I'd like. If the elected right wing senate manages to at least impeach some supreme court justices next year, I'm going to be OK with this.
I submitted the news too and it got flagged:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237256
Many cities had their mayor cancelling free public transportation and stopping people from going voting. Extending the time is a reaction, not a first action. Furthermore, the ask didn't come just from Lula's party, it came from both candidates [1].
2022 Brazil had the Federal Police Director actively interfering with transportation as well.
[1] - https://www.cnnbrasil.com.br/eleicoes/o-que-diz-o-codigo-ele...
They called for extension back in 2022 too, and it was ruled illegal. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
I don't think it was the same situation last time.
Not sure what axe you have to grind but it sure looks like you love to present only half of the truth.
I think it's a matter of consistency, not agreement. From my perspective it looks like the court only grants things if Lula wants it granted.
I believe it would have been granted even if Bolsonaro hadn't requested it, and I seriously doubt it would have been granted if only Bolsonaro had requested it.
I'm not even accusing anyone of fraud. This is merely evidence of the court's bias and favoritism.
Accuse me of being wrong if you must, but please don't insinuate I'm a bot. These are my actual thoughts.
Also, all that's achieved by extending polls for two hours across is enabling more people to vote. If that helps one or other candidate to win, it can only be because there are lots of people who want to vote for them.
Both candidates supported that decision.
It's also inconsistent with the court's own precedent. Extending voting hours was deemed illegal back in 2022. "Everybody had the chance to vote", said Alexandre de Moraes.
After Lula lost in the 1st round, suddenly it became legal again. The irony is not lost on me. That's the pattern with the leftist judges in the courts. The supreme court judge who decided it used to be Lula's own lawyer.
If Bolsonaro did not want it done in this election, then why did Bolsonaro ask for it to be done in this election?
Bolsonaro's son asked for an extension this election due to heavy rains in the south. As far as I can tell, it was also denied.
Lula asks for an extension this election due to busses being grounded because Lula-aligned syndicates slapped Lula insignias on them which is an electoral crime. Lula's former lawyer turned supreme court judge approves it.
It is obvious that the Brazilian institutions, and these judges in particular, wanted Lula to win. They were going to be impeached otherwise.
Court agreed, they didn't feel everyone had a chance to vote this time. Approved. Legal.
This seems hard for you to wrap your head around for some reason.
This time around, some guy in Lula's party created "Lula's Army", a channel with millions of people in it. Suddenly, it was fine.
They used to cry about "fake news" and call for censorship at every opportunity, and they'd get it because they own the courts. Now they were the ones spreading "fake news" of all sorts. Did they get censored? Nah.
Censorship in Brazil is unconstitutional, by the way. Political censorship is doubly so. It doesn't matter, because they own the supreme court.
There are no laws in Brazil, there is only what the supreme court wants. Whatever they write on a piece of paper becomes law, and police obeys it. They are the true seat of power in this country.
Although fortunately, it didn't seem to be work: it seems Facebook and Twitter largely ignored Brazil's courts and Flavio Bolsonaro had a bigger social media presence despite "Lula's Army".
The selective application of unconstitutional "fake news" rules, which were made up on the spot by the supreme court judges aligned with the left: is it good or bad?
Lula and his party spread a truly absurd amount of "fake news" between the 1st round and 2nd round of presidential elections. Why are they allowed to do it while the right was censored?
Then you don't believe Lula should be censored. Lula wasn't censored, so there's no problem here.
Will you speak out against the persistent censorship efforts against the Bolsonaros?
Do you condone censorship of Bolsonaro?
Please review the HN guidelines:
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Can you explain?
You are right winger but don't like the Brazilian right wing aligning with the US right wing, but do like the politicians who are aligned with the US right wing?
Bolsonaro generally supports privatizing Brazilian state companies and selling them off to foreigners. I don't want that. Especially not to the US and Israel.
Lula on the other hand is better aligned with China, which is also what I want.
Lula and myself are aligned on these two points. So this outcome is not entirely bad for me.
The problem I have with Lula is his party's obnoxious taxation, lack of a real plan for reindustrialization, continuous defense of criminals, and most importantly, his total domination of the supreme court. I voted for the right specifically to see those judges impeached and imprisoned, because I absolutely oppose everything they did in 2022, far more than I ever opposed Lula himself. I'm of the opinion that presidents and elections barely matter anymore, because it's the supreme court that runs the country. It's the Venezuela governance model: president appoints god-like supreme court judges and rules monocratically through them.
The 1st round this month was such an upset not because of Bolsonaro but because of the senate. They are the ones who can impeach supreme court judges, and when Brazil unexpectedly elected a right wing majority in the senate, it struck true fear into the court. This was our chance to completely wipe out that court and forever change the history of this country, like Bukele did for El Salvador.
While in the end the necessary victory didn't materialize, Brazilian senate is still absolute majority right wing now, and they could still impeach those judges. I'm not going to hold out hope for that anymore, but if I see at least one judge bite the dust I'll still call it a major win.
And yet, somehow 100% of your posts are repeating debunked Brazilian right wing propaganda. How curious.
Also, "debunked" is debatable. I don't accept your portrayal of extremely complex issues as settled, and I also don't accept "official" explanations of anything. I always try to reach my own conclusions and form my own opinions.
I came here to discuss my viewpoints in an attempt to find truth for myself. If you don't want to help with that, then kindly don't reply to me again.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44948769
Just as bad as storming the capitol!
However, it is an electoral crime to do things like stamp public transport vehicles with a party insignia to "remind" candidates who provides for them. As such, it's not at all surprising that the busses were grounded.
Also it's a good thing people were afforded more time to vote in case their buses weren't running.
It would be sad for a Bolsonaro voter to not be counted because some cheeky rapscallion stickered a bus.
Thank goodness both candidates sought extension and it was granted.
Both will lead the country to pork-barrel, corruption and government paralysis by debt. Both are "unfortunate".
There are 2 solutions for all Brazilian problems: Guarulhos and Galeão. The rest is just circus.
There is exactly one politician that once upon a time represented me: Dr. Enéas Carneiro. Ironically, his ideas were closest to the Chinese Communist Party. He's dead now.
The left wing has PCO, a real left wing party, and I agree with them on a daily basis. They're shunned by everyone, and were even persecuted by the supreme court along with the right wing.
I'm increasingly resigned to the idea that immigration is the only option by now.