The figure of Javier Milei grew thanks to different fuels, a carom of fires that crossed at the right time and in the right place. This Creole Frankenstein was fed by a mega-businessman who controls part of a channel, the ratings and clicks that began to reward his uncontrolled verbosity, the Peronism that saw its Government disband and chose to inflate the libertarian to divide the opposition, the Macris of life who took advantage of it to take the public discussion to a more extreme place, a psychotizing pandemic, a huge economic crisis without end and a long list of other causes. However, there is a reason that runs through them all, precedes them and explains them: The main protein that made the economist emerge was underestimation.
Milei grew up in that darkness. Humiliated by his father, bullied at school, without recognition in the academy, thrown at the bottom of Corporación América – “the Siberian” they called him, because they had given him an office very far from the rest -, rejected by the world. Being seen as an outcast, as “a crazy person,” was always his natural habitat. As expected, this tendency could only increase when he decided to venture into terrain that he did not know and that he had sworn never to tread until a prophecy revealed by God himself changed his plans. “Neighborhood phenomenon” was the slogan with which he was baptized in his first campaign, something that the libertarian never forgot. The latter is not a way of saying: “They have been lowering my price for years”was one of the first statements he made as soon as he won the legislative election, in a note with Alejandro Fantino.
The story of Milei’s rise to power could be told through that magnifying glass.. With the intention of subtracting votes from Together for Change, Peronism in 2021 assisted him with the bureaucracy that constitutes a party, while in 2023 it gave him monetary, logistical, human, and technical aid and even brought him into the political ring – review the CFK act at the Teatro Argentino in La Plata in April 2023. Macri embraced him in Acassuso with the firm conviction that he would be able to control him later thanks to the numbers he had in Congress. Also noted here is a huge list of journalists who gave him space on their programs and let each of his outbursts pass because “well, that’s Javier,” and different businessmen who patted him on the back or threw him a few thousand dollars in the hope that he would introduce into the conversation those topics that they themselves did not dare to speak in public. The list is very long, but the bottom line is the same: the conviction that the “madman” could be controlled with remote control, used at the necessary moment and then returned to the dark well from which he emerged. Few things helped Javier Milei come to power as much as the idea that Javier Milei was nothing more than a joke.
This coin always had two sides: Along with the libertarian’s underestimation, that of his voters was also born. Virgins, fachos, crazy, stupid, gorillas, garcas, unconscious, cruel, sons of bitches or directly disabled. People who didn’t know what they were doing or why they were doing it. This double operation made it impossible to see what was cooking before their own eyes.
What changed two years later? What lessons does the resounding victory of La Libertad Avanza bring in the midterm elections?
I risk some. The economic, social and political crises that gave rise to Milei remain intact. I dare say that they are worse, the work of this same Government. And maybe they can even continue to get worse and still win again in 2027. Why? For the same reason that they triumphed in the last two elections: in the face of an enormous void of news, proposals, horizons, directions, forms, convictions and faces from other spaces, the figure of the libertarian stands out. Even when it appears in the form of a grotesque joke, postulating the buying and selling of organs, breaking out in a television studio, receiving advice from a dog that does not exist or howling at the Movistar Arena. Even a grotesque joke is funnier than ten years of failed governments.
Now, just like in 2023, The votes for Milei cannot be explained by hatred, anger or fear. Even when those elements are there (who isn’t angry in an impoverished country like this? Who isn’t afraid of the future?), they are not enough. Those reasons are there, they are part of it, but they are not enough. Unicausal explanations are, once again, barely elegant ways of underestimating the phenomenon, its voters and the news it brings.
And there are several of the latter, especially when looked at in the mirror of the other parties or when compared with the main opposition force. And here is where you can begin to guess some reasons for the last vote for the libertarian project. The two years of the Government brought a phenomenal adjustment with a consequent economic paralysis, but also something else unusual: a President who says something is going to happen and that something actually happensa rarity especially after the impotent experience of the Frente de Todos. Milei made the adjustment one of his main campaign flags – understood to such an extent by his voters that the day he took office they spontaneously began to sing “there is no money” in Congress Square – along with a drop in inflation. Both things actually happened. Consumption and purchasing power fell, unemployment, intra-family debt and the average number of hours of daily work rose, that is, this adjustment actually arrived and many people live worse, but at least one variable is in control.
For all those who have been living through hardships for a long time, This economic crisis is not a novelty but is already part of a landscape that is approaching coming of age. For all those who have been going through hardships for a long time, the inflation of the last Peronist government was maddening. For all those who have been going through hardships for a long time, politics and its twists and turns are a nuisance, a noise that comes from the television or cell phone and that generally means bad news. The vast majority just want to live better tomorrow. At least now one of the many torments calmed down.
There are several nuances to observe. One is that without Trump the precarious economic plan would have exploded before going to the polls. And that the intervention also came with an explicit threat about electoral luck. There are others: it is also true that the vast majority of Milei voters do not live better now than they did two years ago. But this is where I think the concepts of “cruelty” or “anti-Peronism” are not enough to explain why they elected him again. That is to say, What other option did they have? What is offered to them if it is not Milei? Once again the mirror of 2023: at that time the Minister of Economy was offered 230% inflation. Who is more “crazy”? The one who talks to Conan in the afterlife or those who now proposed an embarrassed version of herself to that Frente de Todos? What is the difference between this ruling party and this “Homeland Force”? If not even the candidates themselves could explain it – synthesized for history with the Twitter slogan “do nothing, win” – how would non-overideologized voters understand it? Why should they feel summoned, represented, hooked?
The “Fat Dans” are 1% of the libertarian electorate, or maybe less. Almost no one enjoys the images of the repressions of retirees or the cuts in the Garrahan, but they are toads that are willing to swallow as long as no other more tempting option is presented to them. And this last alternative seems light years away from being born. Especially for a Peronism that gives the feeling of having been trapped in a world that ceased to exist a long time ago.
One last idea. I am going to be self-referential only to recognize the difficulty of judging Milei and those who elect him fairly. Since I began following the libertarian, on the first tour of his first campaign until the day he became President, I spent hours and hours trying to insist that the man and his voters were not at all a neighborhood phenomenon. On the day the lists of these elections closed, at the end of June, I wrote in this magazine in that same sense: “Broken, violent, unstable and mystical, his voters translate all this as a new offer. Different. Someone so convinced of his ideas – with such brutal honesty as to propose the sale and purchase of organs or children – that he manages to infect. Create what analysts call ‘story’, the idea that there is a north that can be reached. And that objective is easy to understand and seems possible, and that is why even unusual candidates such as Ricardo Fort’s former fictional girlfriend, a former playboy model or one of Neura’s entertainers become viable electoral options.”
However, on the morning of Sunday, October 26, I woke up absolutely convinced that the Government was headed for a bad election. The various corruption scandals, the endless internal affairs, a currency crisis that ended with a plea to the United States, various presidential ravings and especially the poor economic performance had led me to that certainty. However, the maxim was imposed again: We should not underestimate the libertarian, much less those who elect him. They have plenty of reasons, at least until another phenomenon appears that manages to connect with this era. This is where the roles are reversed and the libertarian is the one who should not overestimate his victory either: although Peronism already seems disconnected from this Argentina, an economic crisis without a solution and the wear and tear of an administration are an ideal breeding ground for another outsider. That ending would be just one more chapter in this science fiction story called Javier Milei.
