SOMETIMES DEMOCRACY MEANS YOU LOSE AN ELECTION.

That doesn't stop some people from claiming that when their favored candidate loses, it's The End of Democracy as We Know It.  Now they're crying over an outcome in Argentina.

"Are Argentineans so weary that they are willing to risk their hard-earned democracy? We’ll find out on Sunday.”

Journalists keep using that word democracy, but I don’t think they know what it means.

They tell us that voting for someone they don’t like will destroy democracy. It is hard not to root for the populist over the elitist.

Sometimes the populists are on the side of the people.

Populism—the phenomenon whereby the wrong candidate wins a democratic election and thereby “threatens democracy”—had a good week. A very good week. Two candidates without official hall passes from the global elites—Milei in Argentina and Wilders in The Netherlands—romped to victory without the permission of the media. Viktor Orban twisted the knife by sending congratulations to Milei and announcing that he’d travel to Argentina to attend Milei’s inauguration. If Trump were to go, newsrooms everywhere would start drinking Kool Aid.

It's gotten so bad on the left that Matt Yglesias is confused.

I don’t really have a handle on Javier Milei, who keeps getting shorthanded in the media as a radical libertarian and also as an Argentinian Trump.

This is maybe my small-minded literalism, but whenever I think about this situation, my brain keeps tripping over the fact that these descriptions are wildly at odds with each other.

Small details.  Whenever the Wrong People win an election, it must be because the voters are having a temper tantrum.  "You could almost hear the collective gasps of newsrooms throughout the campaign—'You can’t elect this guy! His hair is even worse than Trump’s!'  'Forget menacing red MAGA hats—his use of chainsaws at campaign rallies is frightening!'"  What matters to the left is that Trumpian populism, Reagan conservatism, and Friedman libertarianism have in common their antipathy to leftist malaise as usual.

Javier Milei—a far-right admirer of former U.S. President Donald Trump who says that climate change is a "socialist lie" and who pledged to take a "chainsaw" to social programs—will be Argentina's next president after winning a decisive victory in Sunday's runoff.

Sergio Massa, Argentina's Peronist economy minister, conceded defeat Sunday evening to the 53-year-old Milei, a radical libertarian economist often called the "Trump of Argentina" who will take office amid a looming recession, triple-digit inflation, and a nearly 40% poverty rate in Latin America's third-largest economy.

It's not that the Common Dreams types have a lot of regard for Peronism, about the best that can be said for that government is no foolish attempts to liberate the Falklands or take Communists swimming from helicopters.

Nor is it that the socialists have much better a record.

Juan Grabois, a prominent leftist who likens Milei to the Pied Piper of Hamelin, said electing this “figure of chaos” would have dire consequences for a nation already experiencing its worst financial crisis since the 2001 meltdown. The poor would suffer most.

Nevertheless, Grabois said he understood perfectly why many downtrodden informal workers – including many of his own voters – were drawn to Milei, having been “economically destroyed” by the two traditional political forces that have governed for the past two decades.

“Everyone’s tired. There’s a sort of suicidal temptation,” said Grabois, who supports Massa’s Peronist coalition. “It’s not that they think Milei will win and everything will improve. It’s that they want everything to go to hell. It’s about scorching the earth and starting from scratch.”

“They have nothing to lose,” Grabois added. “You say: ‘We’ll be plunged into the abyss’. But they’re already in the abyss … there’s nothing beneath that.”

Milei allies express similar sentiments. “Lots of people say Milei is a leap into the dark,” said Fernando Cerimedo, the digital marketing guru running Milei’s communications. “And lots of people reply: ‘OK, I’ll leap into the dark then since I already know the others are just going to fuck me. They’ve spent the past 20 years bankrupting me, so I prefer to leap into the dark.’”

Simplified: It sucks to be poor. Governments that claim power with the offer of a preferential option for the poor tend to prolong the suckitude.  Maybe the best way for the government to help people escape the suckitude is to stop pretending it's helping.

Mileístas hail their leader as a genuine inspiration, a charismatic life coach whose books and broadcasts have allowed them to glimpse a more prosperous future.

At his home in Villa Soldati, a working-class area on the fringes of Buenos Aires, Francisco Jiménez beamed with enthusiasm as he explained how Milei’s aspirational conservative message had helped him escape poverty in a shantytown where he said many locals had grown over-dependent on benefits or scavenged for food in the trash.

Perhaps a "paradigm shift" (or is it disruption) is in order?

Milei proposed a paradigm shift: to return Argentina to the classical liberal tradition that made that country one of the richest on the planet a century ago.

His campaign speeches focused on the importance of freedom, long lost under the weight of an oversized Argentine state. Before a national public, he incessantly repeated his definition of liberalism (in the classical sense), borrowed from the distinguished Argentine liberal Alberto Benegas Lynch Jr., whom he cites as a sort of national hero: “Liberalism is the unrestricted respect for the life project of others based on the principle of non‐aggression and the defense of the right to life, liberty, and private property.”

Guided by this vision, Milei proposes to shrink the state and expand the role of the private sector and civil society. In practice, he proposes a significant reduction in public spending and taxes; dollarization and the elimination of the central bank; free trade; the elimination of bureaucratic obstacles; the reform of public administration; labor sector flexibility; and education reform that includes increased competition and school vouchers, among other proposals.

Will he be able to accomplish this ambitious agenda? It will not be easy. The economy is in crisis and the outgoing government has left an economic time bomb that any incoming government would have to deal with. Argentina has an annual inflation rate above 140 percent, a fiscal deficit exceeding 5 percent of GDP (or about 10 percent of GDP depending on how it’s measured), poverty above 40 percent of the population, a bankrupt central bank, interest rates over 130 percent, government debt at an all‐time high, a recent splurge in public spending, debt payments coming due soon, and a shrinking economy. Any adjustment—which will include significant hikes in the price of gasoline, electricity, transportation, and so on—will be harsh.

Moreover, Milei does not have the support of Congress. His party has only thirty‐eight deputies in a chamber of 257 deputies. Of the seventy‐two senators, only seven are from his party. His possible coalition also falls short of a majority in the Chamber of Deputies or the Senate. Milei has a popular mandate and will try to use it to promote his agenda. But it is a given that the opposition will obstruct him in the legislature, in the courts, and in the streets. He will face obvious political limits on what he can achieve.

But he will be able to make important changes. As president, he can repeal some of the previous government’s regulations. He can free up prices by decree and, in due course, get rid of capital controls. He can cut some subsidies and reduce the number of ministries by decree.

I wonder if there are fans of the Imperial Presidency who would like to have as much executive power as that final paragraph suggests, that is, as long as Donald Trump doesn't have it.  The divided government he confronts is in part consequences of an electoral reform that will be material for a future post.  Argentina is in a tougher monetary and fiscal situation than Dementia Joe faces, but he'd just as soon spend more money and find ways to force the prices of electricity and gas higher.