Bernd 02/11/2022 (Fri) 02:18:47 No.46398 del
>>46391
>Does he still campaign knowing he is well ahead?
Of course, there are many months ahead and a lot can change, he can't get complacent. Though lately the news seem more focused on the other candidates.
>does he have a explicit position on the social/cultural "wars" coming from anglo-land (like Bolsonaro had previously)?
Clearly on the side of the Western "cultural revolution". He may not talk about it all the time but his party has a clear position, activists are loud about it and government programmes during elections have sections about gender equality, racism, "LGBTI+ citizenship" and the like. The wider left follows up on Western trends, last year it was colonizer statue burning. NGO money flows in and the left has cared more and more about this as the years went on.
Bolsonaro got a lot of votes by reacting to this, even though once in power he has no accomplishments to speak of on this matter. All the way back in 2019 the Supreme Court criminalized homophobia (one point in Haddad's government program), creating legislation is a Congressional prerogative but they decided that for legal purposes homophobia is racism, which is already a crime. Last year Congress created a law defining psychological violence against women and Bolsonaro did not veto it. Those causes keep winning victories in the institutions on autopilot. On the second round Lula will surely present himself as a Christian family man but under his government there'd be more legislative proposals and government departments to advance these topics, so there is a difference.
Bolsonaro did try to wage the cultural war on one topic, the memory of the military dictatorship, but that's not as important as other areas and his approach is stupid. Naturally, he's lost in his attempts.
There's a non-culture war topic on which the Worker's Party has an unpopular stance: crime. Bolsonaro's calls for harshness were popular. In power he's achieved little actual change on this (security is mainly a state, not federal responsibility) but murders have declined. Lula will have to be careful, as being open about going lax on crime will lose him votes.
>Supposing he wins the presidency, will he have an agreeable or combative congress?
The core of Congress are ideology-less parties who will back anyone as long as they get their fair share of the budget and cabinet. Lula can bribe them perfectly well, that's what the 2005 Mensalão was about. Dilma's fall was the exception, but that was under specific circumstances - the president was weak and those parties opportunistically took over.
Oppositionist Lula is a rough, angry creature but in power he became a successful pragmatist. However, this isn't 2003 Lula, who got in power for the first time and had to win prestige. He has been humiliated a lot in the past years and certainly has a taste for vengeance. He won't be a pure pragmatist, I speculate he will also want symbolic victories over his old enemies.