Wednesday Morning Rant

There was a European election a few months ago and it was perhaps an example of Our Sacred Democracy in action. At the end of November while the dust was still settling around Trump's re-election and the mad scramble was fully underway, Romania had an election of its own. A man called Calin Georgescu got enough votes in that election to proceed to the runoff. His platform is unacceptable, as he is a nationalist, a Ukraine skeptic, a COVID skeptic and, if reporting is to be believed, also a Nazi, a moon-landing denier and a stooge of Putin.

He was, of course, a "far-right candidate." Whether that's true or not, I have no idea. But in the wake of his electoral surge, there was an inevitable recount. He won that, too. Then it went to court. The opponents to the election outcome argued not that the election was fake, but that it was manipulated by Russian social media operations, unleashing dormant TikTok accounts and buying off influencers to back Georgescu without disclosure, in violation of the law.

Russia and Georgescu, of course, denied this. In the days after the election, however, the Romanian high court tersely annulled the election after being briefed by Romanian intelligence. As near as I can tell, nobody argued that the vote was manipulated or faked. They argued that there's no way Georgescu could have won absent foreign interference, pointed out some potentially suspicious social media activity, blamed Russia and voided the election.

This may be an example of the grand European electoral tradition of "the wrong guy won, so the election was canceled." In that fine tradition of European democracy, the Romanians will have a chance to vote right next time, when they have their replacement election in May. Like Ireland and France before them, the voting shall continue until the outcome improves. To help ensure the correct outcome, the Romanian government charged Georgescu criminally a couple of weeks ago. Is any of it true? Is Georgescu a Nazi, a Russian stooge, a money launderer or a moon-landing conspiracy theorist? I have no idea. It's possible, of course, but the press is also in the business of lying. There's no way that I as an outsider can know.

True or not, however, the fact remains that in Europe, canceling elections or even nullifying them when the wrong person or cause wins is fairly routine. Ireland and France both did it with the European Constitution debacle (which they eventually rammed through as a treaty instead). Vance had plenty of content when he sternly dressed down Germany and Europe more broadly during his recent visit to Munich. AfD was not forbidden from participating in their elections a couple of weeks ago, but the other parties are refusing to consider cooperation with the country's second-largest - and officially-labeled "right-wing extremist" - party to ensure it remains marginalized. This is the same country where a left-wing party allegedly came "back from the dead" thanks to TikTok - the same phenomenon behind Romania's annulment of its election.

On our own continent and more recently, it's more of the same. Trudeau fake-resigned until his party could determine a replacement, and will likely hang on for a bit until he finally begrudgingly hands the reins over to Carney. Our own elections weren't exactly an exemplar of honesty in '20. Occasionally, a Trump '24 slips through the cracks, but it's fairly rare and it's fairly rare by design and the operators gear up to thwart it when it happens.

For the ruling class, elections aren't usually a problem. Their systems are designed to obviate them.

posted by Joe Mannix at 11:00 AM

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