Swallowing pride is not easy for anyone. For a politician, who lives with his figure exposed to the entire public, it is even more complex. And not to mention for a leader of the masses, who was twice president and once vice president. But the front page of the leadership, of all stripes, is beginning to accept something that until not so long ago would have been amusing -or terrifying- just to hear it: on August 14, the day after the primaries, the cover of the newspapers are going to say that the most voted candidate in the Argentine Republic is Javier Milei.
This is what the bulk of the polls show, and what Cristina Kirchner believes. She is so convinced that this scenario will be real in just three months that she dedicated a large part of her last public speech to it, on Thursday, April 27 in La Plata. The long minutes and the cataract of criticism that she dispatched to the libertarian – which had their climax at the end of the event, when she got angry and finished off with “what are you coming to fuck with me if nothing ever happened to you? where am I afraid of you? Cheeky ”- ended up placing Milei on the podium of politics.
The economist has the ball under the sole. All the rest will play now at the time he imposes.
Helmet or gloves. CFK’s reappearance was highly anticipated, not only by their own but by the rest of the parties and the red circle. With Alberto Fernández out of the picture, the great doubt that floated at night in La Plata was about his electoral future. All eyes were on her – and on the whistles and crosses that occurred in the audience, like that of Aníbal Fernández with the camporismo – and on the mystery about his candidacy.
But the vice president, although she implied that she would not compete in these elections, did not plan to give an accurate clue about her intentions. In fact, only one thing became clear from the act: the former president decided to turn Milei into the great cuckoo, she pointed out him as her enemy, the place that Mauricio Macri and at some point Horacio knew how to occupy in her speech. Rodriguez Larreta. Cristina criticized the dollarization plan, made a parallel with Cavallo-“the gentleman with light eyes”-and the libertarian-“his disciple of his, also with light eyes”-and rebutted his thesis that “the caste is afraid” . And with that, she gave Milei control of the media agenda for the next few days.
CFK is one of the most experienced politicians in the country. He knew what his words against Milei, at a time when his speech was highly anticipated, could cause. The big question, then, is why she did it. Why he made the decision to get Milei into the ring.
Those who orbit close to the vice president say that in recent weeks she received surveys that worried her. They are all from Buenos Aires, especially from the Conurbano, the historical bastion of Kirchnerism. They show that Milei, from February to this part, has been growing strongly in that area. But the most worrying data is another: many of those who claim to be future voters of the libertarian had elected the Frente de Todos in the past. Peronism is encountering a cuckoo that, when the economist made the leap into politics in 2021 -a time when they claimed that it was only a passing phenomenon typical of a legislative election-, they said it was impossible: the flight of votes It is towards Liberty Advances.
The logic of CFK’s speech, then, is to fight to try to win back that voter. That would be the most linear interpretation, although from the corridors of Kirchnerism others appear. They say that the intention of the vice president is also to deliberately inflate Milei to reduce her chances of Patricia Bullrich, with whom they think it would be more difficult to win in a possible ballotage. In addition, they count from the K plants, there is one more question of the tactical order: with the libertarian in the race and competitive it is more feasible to develop a forceful strategy to take away votes between the PASO and the general elections in October. In fact, it even has a name. It is “the campaign of fear”, a multiplatform plan -networks, media, public billboards- with which an attempt will be made to establish the idea that Milei is the devil himself. CFK, in fact, already laid the first stone of this play, when comparing it with the Minister of Economy of Convertibility.
In the mamushka of intentions that CFK’s decision to confront Milei had, at least one more appears. It is one that has nothing to do with the movements of the Frente de Todos in the face of October, but rather is an internal invitation. The vice president knows that she is in a trap. She built a party so vertical that, fifteen years after beginning her first term, she has no candidate to offer her followers who can get as many votes as her and, as if that were not enough, she is responsible for Fernández being President . With her out of contention, the question of whether she will continue to have the monopoly of Peronism begins to grow within the ruling party. That is where Milei appears: in her public signaling to the libertarian there is a north, a course to follow, it is the promise that she is the guarantor that can prevent evil from dominating the country. It is clear that this does not win an election, but in the absence of a compass in space, this demonization is, at least, something.
Timba. On Monday, May 1, in the middle of a holiday, a key man from Milei’s 2021 campaign returned to his home in the City.
In Las Flores, in Buenos Aires, he saw a peon hitchhiking on the side of the road. He was going to San Miguel del Monte. She picked it up. The man was 60 years old, incomplete studies, a life of hard work on his back. He was missing most of his teeth. The politician at the wheel, with the elections around the corner, could not resist. He asked her who she was going to vote for. “The one with long hair who speaks well,” returned the other. And he finished off with a phrase that, to the person he was handling, sounded like a prophecy. “Everyone there is going to vote for him.” “And if there, which is the interior, deep Argentina, ‘everyone votes’ for him, hold on. He is going to be President, ”says this person who knew how to work shoulder to shoulder with the libertarian.
Can CFK’s move to give Milei so much entity go wrong? The library is divided. “There are no chances of getting Milei into the ring because she has been up for a while. And she has gotten very strong blows. How do you inflate a candidate for whom one in five people is inclined today? You have to politicize the debate with him”, maintains the anthropologist Alejandro Grimson (see box). It is the thesis that the only way to combat the growth of the libertarian is, precisely, by confronting it.
Seven days before the act of the vice president, the strategist Juan Courel -who commanded the Frente de Todos campaign in 2019- uploaded the following to his Twitter account: “Milei is not there as a source of hope but as a weapon of punishment for everyone else. Arguing is giving a map to the disoriented and pointing the way to anger. More useful than fighting against the garbage can is showing that one does not need to be swept.
If CFK’s bet was correct, it will only be known after the generals, although close to Milei they celebrated it as a goal and they assure that it only contributed to his growth.
However, before the time comes to open the polls, it can already be stated that the libertarian has triumphed in several battles. It is that since he took 17% in the 2021 legislatures, Milei won something much more important than a seat in Deputies: he managed to put in check the balance of forces between Kirchnerism and macrismo, the unalterable postcard of Argentine politics since the 2007 to today.
Milei became the ghost that threatens the profitable game of the crack and, with the subtlety of a blow to the jaw, she moved the axis of any discussion. The privatization of all public companies, the dollarization of the Argentine economy, the declared war against progressivism, feminism and “gender ideology”, the destruction of the Central Bank, the total elimination of public works, the free carrying of arms, the abolition of the minimum wage, the denial of the 30,000 disappeared, and the staunch defense of free markets and “freedom” in general became, thanks to him, a stable list of political ideas.
Milei transformed taboo topics into television plaques, media titles, and applause on social networks with such ease and success that he forced the red circle to include him – growth that climaxed in the libertarian’s invitation to the Llao Llao Forum – and to all other political actors to pay attention to his almost magical formula.
For Together for Change it is a big problem. Given the panic due to its growth and the flight of votes, the space swerved. He did what the Popular Party had already done in Spain before the irruption of Vox: forced by the appearance of a big fish in his own fishbowl, he migrated his speech towards much tougher positions. The changeling hawks are now more hawkish than ever and began to yell like Milei, incorporate their theses and pick a fight with their own enemies.
For the opposition pigeons, the challenge is even tougher. Making the great theses of this opposition side, such as dialogue and healthy democratic coexistence, coexist with the new ways and ideas in dance is a task worthy of contortionists. Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, leader of this wing, had to leave his comfort zone to test opinions in which he clearly does not believe. Three months after the election, this sector seems to be losing strength against the hawks, who adapted better to the climate of the time.
For Peronism – and CFK’s speech comes to express this – Milei is a trap. For now the bet seems to be to consider him a tactical ally, to raise him up as the great cuckoo of politics to lower the price of macrismo, the one who could steal votes from the opposition. the north,” said Fernando “Chino” Navarro, a Fernández official, with a burst of sincerity in an interview.
It is that Milei did much more than shake up the scene: she stood at the center of the agenda, forced all the actors to keep up with her and ended up becoming one of the owners of the ball. For two years there has been no plan within the two great political forces that does not consider him – him and his votes – when proposing the strategy for the 2023 election.
Mud. Close to Milei, they maintain that the centrality that CFK’s speech gave them is more than positive, although they believe that it is part of a planned strategy. “It’s hot, you can tell. She sees that her historical voters are now coming with us and she loses her mind. It is finished”, they say from this side of the crack. Among the reasons for the latest growth of the libertarian, they point out that there is the installation of the debate for dollarization, the fact that Milei is the only candidate in space while in the other two there are open-air palace inmates, and, above all, the spiraling of the economic crisis.
In fact, they are doing so well in the polls that a line of interpretation begins to open up, with the recorder turned off, in the ranks of La Libertad Avanza. It’s a fear. “Here we have been screwing around for a while with the same thing: we say that if Javier wins we will last two weeks. In the first he does everything he comes saying he’s going to do. And in the second we leave”, says a leader of this armed group. It is that there are some who are encouraged to say that the space is not really prepared to assume the leadership of the country at the end of the year. That, avoiding any ideological gaze, is still very green for such a challenge. They are saying, in other words, that inflating Milei can be dangerous.
