In the old days of the Soviet Union, there was one choice and the Incumbent Party won with a 99 7/10% of the vote.  (Citation:  Walt Kelly’s Pogo, 1952).  These days the Incumbent wins the lion’s share, and there are several other pre-selected Incumbent supporting choices to pick from.  (The Incumbent opposing selections are barred from running.)

Also they may just switch the rules, from four year terms to six year terms, if they want to.

And here, they are… the Russian election results.

  As you see, the Communist Pavel Grudinin came in second.  A total role reversal from the Soviet days when the Communists were Numero Uno, now they’re Numero Dos.  Who are the other guys?  Oh, your Libertarians, your Greens, your Natural Law Party…

… oh, maybe not.

Note too the election map.  No clue what this shows in terms of politics.  I’d have to go back to Masha Gessen’s book to recall just where on the map that version of Nixon’s hardhat anti-protester construction worker made Department of Labor Head (Putin’s anti-protester factory boss made something or other) to denote some kind of geopolitical thingy.

Well… one American trend hasn’t picked up.

The race also included Ksenia Sobchak, a former reality TV host, and veteran nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – they got less than 2% and about 6% respectively.

Maybe the former reality tv host can run to win in six years?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 19th, 2018 at 4:15 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.