Left I on the News

Yesterday morning, when I posted urging people to vote for Hugo Chavez for TIME's "Person of the Year", he was languishing in 7th place (out of 8), with 8% of the vote. Now he's in second place with 15% of the vote! No doubt all thanks to Left I on the News readers! You can still vote here if you haven't. This isn't a democratic election, of course (but then we're used to that), but it may well influence the editors' choice.

Back in the real world, the last we heard about the real election, Chavez had 61% of the vote and the press was intimating it would likely go lower when all the votes were in. Not. The final results show Chavez with 62.89% of the votes cast. He won in every single state. In Zulia and Nueva Esparta, the only states where the opposition governs, he defeated Rosales with 50.57% and 58.49%, respectively. In a full one-third of the states he received more than 70% of the vote, with numbers as high as 75% in one state.

The strength of Hugo Chavez' victory is no minor matter. No only did it totally squelch the possibility of any cries of "foul" from either the opposition or the real opposition (the U.S. government), it very much strengthened the Bolivarian revolution, and in turn the entire left in Latin America. It made it more difficult for the U.S. to take action against Cuba, and strengthened the possibility that Morales in Bolivia, Correa in Ecuador, and even Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua will move decisively further to the left, to the benefit not only of the people of their countries but of the entire world.

Viva Hugo Chavez! Don't forget to vote for him!