Milei’s second year: The validity of the miracle

Argentina is a dizzying country and very difficult to understand. That is why the analyses being made by international journalists to explain why, just this year in May, they told their audiences that Milei triumphed resoundingly in the elections in the nation's capital; then, in September, they told their readers that Milei had been brutally defeated by Kirchnerism in the province of Buenos Aires, and that he could hardly finish his term; and then yesterday they said that the Argentine president had a landslide victory that almost assured him a second term.

Understanding what happened this Sunday requires understanding some local dynamics, some international aids and a zeitgeist that serves to account not only for Argentine politics, but also for a change of paradigm that applies to the rest of the liberal democracies.

Let's go from minor to major, appealing to the grace and patience of the reader who knows that complex processes are not understood by reading posts on X.

What happened last night?

The party of Argentinean president Javier Milei, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), won the midterm elections with almost 41% of the vote. The opposition, Kirchnerist Peronism, was almost 10 points behind. Milei won in the historic bastion of Peronism: the province of Buenos Aires, where he had lost by 14 points last month in the district elections. What happened for the Government to win after an express mega-crisis that forced an intervention of the US Treasury, the resignation of the most important candidate entangled in allegations of narco financing, the fall of ministers who jumped ship hours before the election and an unleashed internal palace extended to a bloody fight in the mud of social media?

Milei happened, plain and simple. The only supporter of an unprecedented worldwide phenomenon. The mystique of an anti-system, preaching so powerful that it managed to overcome the multiple mistakes that his Administration has made in these two years, has passed. The man who, without experience, structure, manners, or any of the elements necessary for a traditional political career, managed to represent the discontent with a form of administration and representation that today is in crisis all over the world.

With this alone, Milei, despite all the external attacks and internal shots in the foot, still retains a positive differential. And now he has triumphed in the elections where many others with better conditions of governability have failed, since in most of the mid-term elections the Argentinean ruling parties were defeated.

Now the Argentinean president will have serious parliamentary blocks. The modest objective set by President Milei himself in his low hours was comfortably surpassed. The Government has secured such an important bloc that, with some allies, it is within its reach to obtain its own quorum. If the pure legislators plus those of the Macrismo party and some deputies who will now be orphans and will surely seek the official shelter are added, the President could manage the parliamentary agenda that was so elusive in the first half of his administration.

A grouping of governors that planned to confront him was stillborn, and its humiliating failure leaves on a platter for the Government the possibility of taming the provincial governors who were responsible for the voracious parliamentary moves made in the run-up to the elections. On Sunday, all their papers were burned. In the Senate, the Government went from having only 6 representatives to managing a block of 26 legislators, to which senators with similar interests may suddenly be added. Appointing Court judges will now be a walk in the park.

If Milei manages to dominate his own deputies and senators (many of whom joined his party due to an ill-fated territorial arming that the president badly delegated and that caused him the worst sorrows), he will have managed to avoid demagogic and often directly destitutive laws. Finally, the president will have to analyze the drop in the percentage of voters, which represented one of the lowest marks in the history of elections, and which may be a symptom of a discontent waiting for a politician to catalyze this discontent in some opposing facet that today has no channel.

This leads us to talk about the opposition:

I see dead people

The impulse of Milei and his ideas in yesterday's triumph is as important as the fact that there are many more people who hate Kirchnerism than the political and media imaginary wishes.

This obvious truth has been well known to Cristina Kirchner since 2019, the year in which she decided to remove from the sarcophagus a vile character like Alberto Fernández, because even he had a better image than her to compete in the presidential election. The repudiation to Peronism in any of its forms is a growing phenomenon, including in the bastion of the province of Buenos Aires. That is why the September election awakened the alarm of a demotivated segment, which does not agree very much with Milei, but prefers him a thousand times over Kirchnerism. It could be said that the opposition "lost by winning", because it awakened the fear that another defeat would weaken the Government and Peronism would return.

With the defeat, Cristina's "successor,” the governor of the province of Buenos Aires, Axel Kicillof, went from being the leader of Peronism and a presidential candidate to the scapegoat of the defeat. Cristina Kirchner is going to bill him for having split the district election and generated this fear of the return of Kirchnerism, but the governor of Buenos Aires could reproach that the fear of the return of Kirchnerism is fundamentally centered on the figure of Cristina Kirchner. This impossible-to-resolve internal conflict was manifested last night, when Cristina danced on her balcony while her group lost the election. Apart from these two lost characters, Peronism has absolutely nothing. In other words, the most important opposition party depends on the fight of a prisoner and a dead politician.

The Single Paper Ballot (BUP), the big winner

The Government boasted of another victory that it can claim: for the first time at national level the BUP was voted, a lethal shot to the way of campaigning of Peronism in recent decades. It happens that the Peronist proselytism had been done with long electoral ballots that were printed in "friends" premises and that papered the districts during the campaign. These ballots, expensive and easily falsifiable, demanded for their creation and distribution the state apparatus, so that the election depended on the power of the "territorial apparatus" that distributed them before and during the election as a way of convincing-imposition. Countless frauds and deals depended on these pieces of paper that were distributed everywhere, including churches and schools. All that vanished with the BUP.

How much of the victory does Milei owe to Trump?

Milei's tenure has had ups and downs that resulted in a reconfiguration of citizen support. A powerful start was followed by a period of amesthetization, if not regression, both on economic issues and within the framework of other promised and forgotten reforms.

His most fanatical supporters argue that the lack of progress on issues such as the reform and downsizing of the State, the lack of real reduction of spending or the delayed reduction of taxes and opening of markets is due to his parliamentary weakness. This is a half-truth, which in any case is about to change due to the new conformation of the Congress, so that Milei has two years left to show whether what he preaches in international scenarios will finally be translated into national facts, or will be diluted in another lost opportunity, as it happened with Mauricio Macri.

But there is one aspect in which Milei is far superior to former President Macri, and that is in his foreign policy. Milei stood firm in his geopolitical positioning, and it was his greatest success outside the control of inflation. Polls assessing support for the president rate this as the most positive. Milei's international agenda is exceptional for a country that for decades was aligned with the most totalitarian governments in the world.

In that sense, the Argentine president never hesitated to deepen his support for Trump, even when this was not convenient during the Biden Administration, and the Republican seems to appreciate that gesture. As a result, the Trump Administration spared no support for the Argentine and threw its weight behind him both politically and economically. Trump's endorsement gives Milei a chance to make the necessary reforms to the economic program, and that air has been key to this victory.

Again, international journalists will have to explain to their readers how they went from saying that Milei's economy was a smashing success to having to explain the reasons for the aid package that Scott Bessent had to give him to get to the elections without drowning; because, according to President Trump, "they are dying". But the truth is that, even with the Republican's statements that made the Buenos Aires markets tremble, both leaders have established an asymmetrical but symbiotic relationship, which has undoubtedly yielded substantial benefits to the libertarian.

Is there a lesson for Milei in this election, and can it be extrapolated to the rest of the right wing world?

The victory that gave the Argentine Government a comfortable situation in Congress did not ease the tensions within the Cabinet. Milei will have to put himself again above the disputes of his red circle and not make the mistake of believing that the euphoria of the triumph orders the internal.

The Argentinean President understood that in the campaign the most important thing was his direct message, and that is why he made a turn in the strategy and put the campaign on his shoulders: he became the subject of the election, with a clear message that allowed him to recover a significant part of the independent electorate. With him as the protagonist, the attempts to destroy his government were useless. A strong message such as "I know there is still a lot to do, this is not the time to hesitate," changed the course of public opinion.

Many of those who voted for LLA again identified with Milei because of his recent performances, but they are also tired of the lack of results and the government's mistakes. Milei should not disappoint them but take advantage of this second opportunity given to him by the people, which may deteriorate quickly, as it happened with Macrismo. The sectors that today gave Milei the victory support his ideas, but may believe that they are poorly implemented. The Government should understand that their votes are not unconditional.

The change of an era

The support received by Milei reaffirms the legitimacy of his proposal before a citizenry eager for deep, permanent, and structural changes aimed at individual freedom, free markets, friendship with the pro-capitalist and pro-Western axis, and respect for property. Milei has managed to strengthen this demand even in sectors that until recently were skeptical. His ability to channel these demands has allowed him to consolidate a significant support base, despite his eccentric ways, his ridiculous internals, and the grotesque scandals.

Facing the immediate future, the challenge lies in maintaining that hope, that expectation, and the clarity of his original proposal and of the program that gave him relevance and put him in power. His circles of support may be important for his person, but they represent nothing for the rest of the voters and supporters. Milei was wrong to want to forcibly promote leaderships that generated logical rejection of nepotism and added neither epic nor narrative to it. At the moment of truth, in order to win the election, his figure, and his charisma, which is not contagious, no matter how much it hurts the president, were once again necessary.

The Argentinean electoral result cannot be read only in a conjunctural key, or by campaign or management strategies. There is a deep social mutation prior to Milei's appearance, which was the indispensable condition for his project to come to power. This mutation is today transversal in the rest of the liberal democracies and that is why his case exemplifies a process that is not isolated.

The administration of democratic states is less and less responsive to the concerns of a society that perceives itself asphyxiated and betrayed. The same is true of the traditional political representations, what we call "state parties", which are trying to ignore the sense of disappointment of an increasingly skeptical electorate. After the miracle of winning the presidency and two hard years in office, Milei continues to face a plebeian rebellion that today has more power and more strength. If he succeeds in converting it into concrete and lasting reforms, his government could be remembered as the beginning of a genuine and inspiring republican restoration for the rest of the region. Not only Argentines, but all those who value freedom in the world, are counting on that.