That seems to be what they’re figuring out. The right wing candidate didn’t even submit their voting tallies to the Supreme Court or participate in any of the investigations while everyone else did (including other anti-Maduro candidates). What are they supposed to use to determine popular will? Screenshot of papers printed in Machado’s basement?

I wouldn’t be surprised if some shenanigans happened until they publish their results by polling location, but until then all we have to go on is uncooperative opposition and US-based think tanks (the country that’s tried to coup Venezuela basically every other year since Chavez).

Well that’s depressing. But makes sense.

I also didn’t realize Spain had a liberal government before the Civil War. I guess I always figured it was a monarchy like everywhere else, but a quick read on Wikipedia shows it was a democratic liberal government and the monarchy was deposed 5 or so years earlier. Thanks for that interesting fact and unique case.

Between this and the Russia example, I wonder if the beginning of a liberal bourgeois democracy is it at its weakest. Socialism feels so hopeless now in the US, with how strong and entrenched it’s liberal bourgeois institutions are now. But then the Roman Republic fell after hundreds of years, and we haven’t really had capitalism that long yet, so maybe it’s possible with the right conditions.

Totally forgot about that. Although in my defense, I’m still getting to that point in the Revolutions podcast (the Tsar just stepped down) and I definitely need to do more reading on that period since I heard the podcast will probably start getting pretty lib soon. I was predicting that it was going to be a more nominally socialist democratic government than liberal democracy because Kerensky was an SR and I was predicting the Bolsheviks were going to take it over from the SR’s or Mensheviks or something, but like I said, haven’t reached that part yet and haven’t done enough reading on the period yet lol.

I forgot about the fact that the Tsar was down by the time the Bolsheviks took over. I thought they took it over from other socialists, though, because he was an SR. I’m still getting to that point in the Revolutions podcast admittedly lol, and need to do more reading on that period lol.