PRD Content with Last Place

Mexico's leftist party, the PRD, has just ensured its third place finish in next year's election. When given the opportunity to nominate Mexico City's progressive and technocratic mayor, Marcelo Ebrard, the party instead opted to move ahead with an odd nominating poll of 6,000 anonymous Mexicans.

Somehow this resulted in Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador being selected to lead the fatally divided PRD into the 2012 vote, presumably as a follow up act to his deeply unimpressive 2006 campaign. Six years ago his campaign benefited greatly from the petty and very public efforts of Mexico's two other major parties to keep him out of the race on spurious criminal charges and Mexicans gave him a commanding lead a couple of months out from the election. Then he decided to skip out on the debates and feed the fears of middle class Mexicans with strange and paranoid pronouncements. This of course was nothing compared to what occurred after he questionably lost a razor thin election. More paranoia ensued and Mexico City streets were shut down for months.

Assuming the PRI walks away with this election, perhaps it was smart for Ebrard to sit this one out. Six years, though, is a long time.