Congratulation to Brazil, all the best to you all !

By a whooping 1.5% difference, we haven't got a mob boss on the head of the executive power, with an aligned congress and the capacity of putting 2 judges on the supreme court and get a majority there.

So... whew... our democracy will only die slowly now. Beats dying quickly.

This is a relief. This plus Vucic losing in Serbia has made for a pretty good day

Such good news to start the week with. Congrats to Brazil!

Now if only British Columbia hadn't put the conservatives in power there.

On the plus side, from what I've read they're mostly old fashioned sane conservatives rather than Trumpian lunatics. Some of them are on the far right edge but hopefully the rest will keep them in check, the party's actual policies aren't too bad.

The Alberta separatists getting brutally stomped on last week was also very nice.

Let's see how the American midterms go now.

So the good guys won but didn't win hard enough for your tastes.

Just take the W and have a nice night. Now there's an opportunity for improvement, that's a good thing.

A whopping 10 million more people voted for Lula in this second turn of the election, and he had a 4 million voters lead on Flávio. That's not a bad number. Now our job is to push the government in prosecuting all the mayors and secretaries involved in undermining the election.

Muted whimpering from BC

And banning facebook before the next election.

Any good guy was long gone before the candidates were selected.

Still, it's better than Flavio winning.

Alas, "the least-worst candidate who had a plausible chance of winning" is generally the best outcome for most democracies.

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Or the "well he's okay I guess", in this case.

Hey, at least Alberta's UCP lets you look at your conservative party and think about how much worse they could have been.

He's far from ok, though. Our democracy is dying, in large part because of him.

He is just way less worse than that other guy.

Our democracy is dying, in large part because of him.

Can you please explain? I haven't been following what's been going on in Brazil very closely.

Look at the United States.

Joe Biden beat Trump in 2020.

And remember the cheering, and the relief, and the way people felt on that day.

Never forget that day.

It was indeed a good day.

It later got squandered, sure. But that day was good.

I thought that was idaho's job

I spent the entire day dancing, so visceral was my relief. I know I was not the only one

Just the old fashioned neoliberalism we have come to love? Let's let the good times trickle down!

Those are all bad signs for Republicans. With any luck the world is souring on right-wing policy and behaviour.

The most "sane" conservative policies are still murderous.

It depends on the country.

In the UK the democrats are the same as our conservatives for instance.

Vucic losing in Serbia

I had not heard yet -- this is great news!

Congratulations to both Serbia and Brazil for saying NO to autocracy!

The labor party is the sane conservatives in question yes.

Good to see Lula did not let the right-wingers walk all over him and rig the elections without fighting back.

The time for playing nice with cheating foreign agents is over.

Their electoral priorities are to cut sex education and hamstring indigenous treaty negotiations, which is nkt a promising start.

The American billionaires aren't going to like their right wing puppet lost

Sure glad to hear the coup plotter's son wasn't elected

Who is Lula ?

The president of Brazil.

Lula has been mired in corruption charges out the wazoo. Now, it turns out that at least some of them were a result of a corrupt, right-wing judiciary colluding against him, so his initial conviction was rightly overturned. But he was facing a lot of charges, and they were not necessarily all made up. Regardless, they were all swept away, just like that, meaning he has neither been found guilty or innocent of most of the charges of corruption against him.

Among all the people in as populous a country as Brazil, you'd think you'd be able to find a better candidate than an unpopular geriatric, who, rightly so or not, has had an incredulous amount of accusations of corruption against him.

But even if Lula was the second-worst possible candidate in all of Brazil, he is still many, many orders of magnitude better than the candidate he ultimately ran and won against. There's no comparison.

Were they up front about that to voters? Those seem like really dumb things for people to choose to vote for.

There's some differences. Bolsonaro was actually arrested, while the US was too afraid to arrest Trump.

Yup that's a failed democracy.

oh, VERY up front. "SOGI" and "DRIPA" are the relevant Parliamentary search terms. They don't want kids to learn about TeH GaY and they're scaremongering about ebil natives taking all the land from the poor white people.

It is basically government by Facebook outrage.

Do companies like Facebook and Twitter target the publicly facing politicians accounts with specific algorithms to incite this bullshit?

Like nothing is stopping elon& zuck from specifically targeting Trump or these guys with nonsense far right rage bait making them think what they wants? Scaremongering them into these dumb ass positions?

Conservative != Bad

I really have been disappointed over the last few days reading comments here that amount to that.

I haven't voted Conservative since Harper but it was clear that in BC (I'm in Ontario) Eby shit the bed with a vote no one wanted when the system was not prepared. The voters saw through his bullshit and they punished him and the NDP accordingly.

How about we wait and see what they do before we default to "oh no here we go downhill again"?

No, Conservative == Bad. It's a shit political movement that really just consists of wrapping fascism in euphemisms. And yes, that includes your conservative party, whose platform includes cutting taxes, increasing the police force, giving NIMBYs power over zoning decisions, attacking electrification and promoting fossil fuels, repealing DRIPA, increased immigration enforcement, and anti-BDS regulation. You don't need to give them power to find out how awful they are, you just have to read and listen to what they are saying

A man who has been opposing the far right in Brazil since the 70s. He became a union leader after a workplace incident and medical negligence caused him to lose his little finger at 17 years old working in a steel mill, as he had been working there during the nights to be able to afford living. From union leader, he spent many years fighting the far-right USA-backed military dictatorship in Brazil, ending up in prison more than once, and also suffering torture. In 1989, when Brazil recovered its democracy, he ran for president against Collor, a rich asshole from the far right, and then lost because of the far right propaganda of "He is a Communist, he will take your pension money and savings from you!!". What ended up happening though was that Collor himself had that plan, his right-wing government froze the savings accounts of middle class people, and then confiscated it all. A few years later, in 2002, Lula finally won the presidency, and his first and second turns (2003-2010) were the fastest Brazil has ever grown and developed, we went from 12th to 6th economy in the world, and cruised unscathed through 2008 economic crisis. On top of all that, his early government is responsible for saving millions of people from hunger and misery, and for the first time ever Brazil had left the world's hunger map. And then he was reelected back in 2022 and had to repeat the same feat of saving people from hunger and misery yet again, because of what the previous two far-right governments did.

In this case, they didn't make a good impression!

• many candidates have expressed interest in repealing our human rights code
• we are likely to see a sharp downturn in government/ First Nations relations
• the party still tolerates separatists
• pro-american views verging on seditious have not been disciplined
• a bunch of very racist things were said without consequences
• historically, right wing government leads to fiscal hardship in BC
• it's likely to get very rough tor trans people, especially youth
• republican style rhetoric about LGBTQ+ people and programs
• crime and punishment rhetoric (more cops, more enforcement, no address of root causes)
• our housing problems require left-wing solutions

BC has a pretty wacky record on right wing populism, and they're back. UCP vibes.

I guess you haven't been reading the particulars about this batch of mouthbreathers then. We're talking Flu Trucks Clan, 51st state, aggressively stupid.

Half of the Supreme court is involved in a corruption scandal, while he is papering over the problem; Half of the Congress is involved on that same scandal and some half in another large scandal, and he didn't direct the police to investigate (he and the Supreme Court are the only ones that can); We have a new law mandating that common crimes from politicians can only be judge by a court that has no judge, and he was one of the main creators of it... The list goes on and on.

I'm glad for this and enough good people showed up this time. It shouldn't be so close though in all these elections, but the lies work. Canada had to back away from the edge last time and others have still gone to the authoritarian bs. They spread the propaganda more than ever to keep winning with their lies so don't fall for it. See that history shows their ways suck long-term and healthy ways proven in other countries are the way to go. Stay the course of proven healthy policies and demand better! Swinging back and forth is like a wrecking ball, and can't rebuild as fast as destroy. Think critically, refute the propaganda, use Sagan's baloney detection kit to understand accurately, read Democracy In Chains, you can do better!!

Exactly, examine what policies work for healthy society and high quality of life. People value healthcare w/o bankruptcy, paid leave from work and other public benefits that reduce stress from artificial scarcity. Health outcomes, productivity and quality of life all improve with the healthy policies and efficient implementation. Raise all boats and such works, collective well-being over dualism and zero sum punching down. Teach critical thinking and Sagan's baloney detection kit to avoid scams and quackery. Teach SEL and mindfulness too. Many proven practices and polices to use if people really want healthier, educated societies for stronger democracies.

Socrates and Sagan taught us to think rather than obey indoctrination. In a democracy this is foundational. If citizens can't question claims, can't examine assumptions, can't challenge authorities, then democracy becomes theater. Ubi dubium ibi libertas!

Kind of a dumb and dumber choice there, unfortunately. Both are kind of putinist.

But Bolsonaro would've been slightly worse in various other ways so yay I guess.

he has neither been found guilty or innocent of most of the charges of corruption against him

I assumed Brazil's judicial system used the same presumption of innocence as the US. How does it work in Brazil?