#elena bruhn
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Elena Bruhn German Journalist and TV Presenter
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intertextuality
desire / eating disorder / hunger: «to be the girl who lunges at people−wants to eat them» (letissier) / «a way to take all hungers and boil them down to their essence–one appetite to manage–just one» (knapp)
trauma / trauma theory / visceralities of trauma
writers
ada limón, adrienne rich, agnès varda, alana massey, alejandra pizarnik, alice notley, ana božičević, anaïs nin, andrea dworkin, andrew solomon, angela carter, angélica freitas, angélica liddell, ann cvetkovich, anna akhmatova, anna gien, anne boyer, anne carson, anne sexton, anne waldman, antonella anedda, aracelis girmay, ariana reines, audre lorde, aurora linnea
barbara ehrenreich, bell hooks, bessel van der kolk
carmen maria machado, caroline knapp, carrie lorig, cat marnell, catharine mackinnon, catherynne m. valente, cathy caruth, césar vallejo, chris kraus, christa wolf, clarice lispector, claudia rankine, czesław miłosz
daniel borzutzky, daphne du maurier, daphne gottlieb, david foster wallace, david wojnarowicz, dawn lundy martin, deirdre english, denise levertov, detlev claussen, dodie bellamy, don paterson, donna tartt, dora gabe, dorothea lasky, durs grünbein
édouard levé, eike geisel, eileen myles, elaine kahn, elena ferrante, elisabeth rank, elyn r. saks, emily dickinson, erica jong, esther perel, etty hillesum, eve kosofsky sedgwick
fanny howe, félix guattari, fernando pessoa, fiona duncan, frank bidart, franz kafka
gabriele schwab, gail dines, georg büchner, georges bataille, gertrude stein, gilles deleuze, gillian flynn, gretchen felker-martin
hannah arendt, hannah black, heather christle, heather o'neill, heiner müller, hélène cixous, héloïse letissier, henryk m. broder, herbert hindringer, herbert marcuse
ingeborg bachmann, iris murdoch
jacques derrida, jacques lacan, jade sharma, jamaica kincaid, jean améry, jean baudrillard, jean rhys, jeanann verlee, jeanette winterson, jenny slatman, jenny zhang, jerold j. kreisman, jess zimmerman, jia tolentino, joachim bruhn, joan didion, joanna russ, joanna walsh, johanna hedva, john berger, jörg fauser, joy harjo, joyce carol oates, judith butler, judith herman, julia kristeva, june jordan, junot díaz
karen barad, kate zambreno, katherine mansfield, kathrin weßling, kathy acker, katy waldman, kay redfield jamison, kim addonizio
lacy m. johnson, larissa pham, lauren berlant, le comité invisible, leslie jamison, lidia yuknavitch, linda gregg, lisa diedrich, louise glück, luce irigaray, lynn melnick
maggie nelson, margaret atwood, marguerite duras, marie howe, marina tsvetaeva, mark fisher, martha gellhorn, mary karr, mary oliver, mary ruefle, marya hornbacher, max horkheimer, melissa broder, michael ondaatje, michel foucault, miranda july, miya tokumitsu, monique wittig, muriel rukeyser
naomi wolf, natalie eilbert, natasha lennard, nelly arcan
ocean vuong, olivia laing, ottessa moshfegh
paisley rekdal, patricia lockwood, paul b. preciado, paul celan, peggy phelan
rachel aviv, rainald goetz, rainer maria rilke, rebecca solnit, richard moskovitz, richard siken, robert jensen, roland barthes, ronald d. laing
sady doyle, sally rooney, salma deera, samuel beckett, samuel salzborn, sandra cisneros, sara ahmed, sara sutterlin, sarah kane, sarah manguso, scherezade siobhan, sean bonney, sheila jeffreys, shoshana felman, shulamith firestone, sibylle berg, silvia federici, simone de beauvoir, simone weil, siri hustvedt, solmaz sharif, sophinette becker, soraya chemaly, stephan grigat, susan bordo, susan sontag, suzanne scanlon, sylvia plath
theodor w. adorno, thomas brasch, tiqqun, toni morrison
ursula k. le guin
valerie solanas, virginia l. blum, virginia woolf, virginie despentes
walter benjamin, wisława szymborska, wolfgang herrndorf, wolfgang pohrt
zadie smith, zan romanoff, zoë lianne, zora neale hurston
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2020 Olympics Germany Roster
Boxing
Hamsat Shadalov (Berlin)
Ammar Abduljabbar (Hamburg)
Nadine Apetz (Haan)
Canoeing
Sideris Tasiadis (Augsburg)
Hannes Aigner (Augsburg)
Sebastian Brendel (Scwedt)
Conrad-Robin Scheibner (Berlin)
Tim Hecker (Berlin)
Jacob Schopf (Berlin)
Max Hoff (Troisdorf)
Max Lemke (Mannheim)
Tom Liebscher (Dresden)
Ronald Rauhe (Berlin)
Max Rendschmidt (Bonn)
Ricarda Funk (Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler)
Andrea Herzog (Meissen)
Lisa Jahn (Berlin)
Julie Hake (Olfen)
Caro Arft (Bochum)
Sophie Koch (Berlin)
Sabrina Hering-Pradler (Hannover)
Sarah Brüssler (Mannheim)
Tina Dietze (Leipzig)
Fencing
Peter Joppich (Koblenz)
Benjamin Kleibrink (Düsseldorf)
André Sanita (Solingen)
Luis Klein (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Max Hartung (Aachen)
Matyas Szabó (Dormagen)
Benedikt Wagner (Bonn)
Leonie Ebert (Würzburg)
Karate
Jonathan Horne (Kaiserslautern)
Noah Bitsch (Siegburg)
Ilja Smorguner (Idstein)
Jasmin Jüttner (Aschaffenburg)
Pentathlon
Patrick Dogue (Ludwigshafen)
Fabian Liebig (Potsdam)
Annika Schleu (Berlin)
Rebecca Langrehr (Berlin)
Sailing
Philipp Buhl (Immenstadt)
Erik Heil (Berlin)
Thomas Plössel (Oldenburg)
Paul Kohlhoff (Kiel)
Svenja Weger (Heidelberg)
Luise Wanser (Hamburg)
Anastasiya Winkel (Hamburg)
Susann Beucke (Kiel)
Tina Lutz (Landschulheim)
Alica Stuhlemmer (Kiel)
Climbing
Alexander Megos (Erlangen)
Jan Hojer (Cologne)
Swimming
Lukas Märtens (Berlin)
Lucas Matzerath (Berlin)
Eric Friese (Potsdam)
Ole Braunschweig (Kassel)
Christian Diener (Potsdam)
Jacob Hiedtmann (Pinneberg)
Philip Heintz (Mannheim)
Marco Koch (Darmstadt)
Marius Kusch (Datteln)
Rob Muffels (Elmshorn)
Fabian Schwingenschlögl (Erlangen)
David Thomasberger (Leipzig)
Florian Wellbrock (Bremen)
Damian Wierling (Essen)
Henning Mühlleitner (Emmendingen)
Poul Zellmann (Potsdam)
Marek Ulrich (Dessau)
Christoph Fildebrandt (Wuppertal)
Lisa Höpink (Berlin)
Hannah Küchler (Berlin)
Leonie Beck (Augsburg)
Annika Bruhn (Karlsruhe)
Isabel Gose (Berlin)
Franziska Hentke (Bitterfeld-Wolfen)
Sarah Köhler (Hanau)
Laura Riedemann (Berlin)
Celine Rieder (Wittlich)
Finnia Wunram (Eckernförde)
Marie Pietruschka (Leipzig)
Leonie Kullmann (Dresden)
Anna Elendt (Berlin)
Taekwondo
Alexander Bachmann (Stuttgart)
Wrestling
Gennadij Cudinovic (Köllerbach)
Etienne Kinsinger (Püttlingen)
Frank Stäbler (Böblingen)
Denis Kudla (Schifferstadt)
Eduard Popp (Heilbronn)
Anna Schell (Aschaffenburg)
Aline Rotten-Focken (Krefeld)
Archery
Florian Kahllund (Kiel)
Michelle Kroppen (Kevelaer)
Charline Schwarz (Nuremburg)
Lisa Unruh (Berlin)
Athletics
Steven Müller (Kassel)
Marvin Schlegel (Frankenberg)
Amos Bartelsmeyer (Aschaffenburg)
Robert Farken (Leipzig)
Mohamed Mohumed (Mönchengladbach)
Gregor Traber (Tettnang)
Joshua Abuaku (Oberhausen)
Luke Campbell (Brunswick, Maryland)
Constantin Preis (Pforzheim)
Karl Bebendorf (Dresden)
Nils Brembach (Berlin)
Leo Köpp (Berlin)
Christopher Linke (Potsdam)
Carl Dohmann (Hannover)
Jonathan Hilbert (Mühlhausen)
Nathaniel Seiler (Baden)
Amanal Petros (Bielefeld)
Hendrik Pfeiffer (Düsseldorf)
Richard Ringer (Überlingen)
Deniz Almas (Calw)
Lucas Ansah-Peprah (Stuttgart)
Joshua Hartmann (Berlin)
Julian Reus (Hanau)
Jean Bredau (Potsdam)
Manuel Sanders (Dülmen)
David Wrobel (Stuttgart)
Daniel Jasinski (Bochum)
Clemens Prüfer (Potsdam)
Tristan Schwandke (Kempten)
Mateusz Przybylko (Bielefeld)
Bernhard Seifert (Hildburghausen)
Johannes Vetter (Dresden)
Julian Weber (Mainz)
Fabian Heinle (Musburg)
Bo Lita-Baehre (Düsseldorf)
Torben Blech (Siegen)
Oleg Zernikel (Landau In Der Pfalz)
Max Hess (Chemnitz)
Niklas Kaul (Mainz)
Kai Kazmirek (Torgau)
Alexandra Burghardt (Mühldorf Am Inn)
Lisa Mayer (Giessen)
Tatjana Pinto (Münster)
Lisa-Marie Kwayie (Berlin)
Jessica-Bianca Wessolly (Mannheim)
Corinna Schwab (Schwandorf)
Christina Hering (Munich)
Katharina Trost (Freilassing)
Caterina Granz (Berlin)
Hanna Klein (Landau In Der Pfalz)
Konstanze Klosterhalfen (Königswinter)
Ricarda Lobe (Landau In Der Pfalz)
Carolina Krafzik (Niefern-Öschelbronn)
Elena Burkard (Baiersbronn)
Gesa Krause (Ehringshausen)
Lea Meyer (Loningen)
Saskia Feige (Potsdam)
Melat Kejeta (Baunatal)
Deborah Schöneborn (Troisdorf)
Katharina Steinruck (Leipzig)
Rebekka Haase (Zschopau)
Gina Lückenkemper (Hamm)
Laura Müller (Dudweiler)
Ruth Spellmeyer-Preuss (Göttingen)
Nadine Gonska (Duisburg)
Marike Steinacker (Wermelskirchen)
Claudine Vita (Frankfurt)
Kristin Pudenz (Herford)
Samantha Borutta (Mannheim)
Marie Jungfleisch (Freiberg Im Breisgau)
Imke Onnen (Langenhagen)
Christin Hussong (Zweibrücken)
Maryse Luzolo (Frankfurt)
Malaika Mihambo (Heidelberg)
Sara Gambetta (Lauterbach)
Katharina Maisch (Gelenau)
Christina Schwanitz (Dresden)
Neele Eckhardt (Ostercappeln)
Kristin Gierisch (Zwickau)
Vanessa Grimm (Frankfurt Am Main)
Carolin Schäfer (Bad Wildungen)
Badminton
Kai Schäfer (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Mark Lamsfuss (Saarbrücken)
Marvin Seidel (St. Ingbert)
Yvonne Li (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Isabel Herttrich (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Basketball
Isaac Bonga (Koblenz)
Joshiko Saibou (Cologne)
Maodo Lô (Berlin)
Niels Giffey (Berlin)
Jan Wimberg (Oldenburg)
Johannes Voigtmann (Eisenach)
Robin Benzing (Seeheim-Jugenheim)
Victor Wagner (Berlin)
Lukas Wank (Altenberg)
Danilo Barthel (Heidelberg)
Johannes Thiemann (Trier)
Andreas Obst (Halle)
Cycling
Nikias Arndt (Buchholz In Der Nordheide)
Maximilian Schachmann (Berlin)
Emanuel Buchmann (Bregenz, Austria)
Simon Geschke (Berlin)
Stefan Bötticher (Leinefelde-Warbis)
Maximilian Levy (Berlin)
Roger Kluge (Eisenhüttenstadt)
Theo Reinhardt (Berlin)
Maximilian Brandl (Landshut)
Manuel Fumic (Kirchheim Unter Teck)
Lisa Brennauer (Kempten)
Lisa Klein (Saarbrücken)
Hannah Ludwig (Heidelberg)
Liane Lippert (Friedrichshafen)
Trixi Worrack (Cottbus)
Lea Friedrich (Dassow)
Emma Hinze (Hildesheim)
Franziska Brausse (Metzingen)
Elisabeth Brandau (Schonaich)
Ronja Eibl (Balingen)
Lara Lessmann (Flensburg)
Diving
Patrick Hausding (Lichtenburg)
Martin Wolfram (Dresden)
Timo Barthel (Würselen)
Jaden Eikermann-Gregorchuk (Monheim)
Lars Rüdiger (Berlin)
Tina Punzel (Dresden)
Christina Wassen (Eschweiler)
Elena Wassen (Eschweiler)
Lena Hentschel (Dresden)
Equestrian
Michael Jung (Bad Soden Am Taunus)
Daniel Deusser (Wiesbaden)
Christian Kukuk (Warendorf)
André Thieme (Plau Am See)
Maurice Tebbel (Emsbüren)
Jessica Von Bredow-Werndl (Aubenhausen)
Dorothee Schneider (Mainz)
Isabell Werth (Issum)
Sandra Auffarth (Delmenhorst)
Julia Krajewski (Langenhagen)
Field Hockey
Alexander Stadler (Heidelberg)
Mats Grambusch (Mönchengladbach)
Lukas Windfeder (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Linus Müller (Düsseldorf)
Martin Häner (Berlin)
Paul-Philipp Kaufmann (Mannheim)
Niklas Wellen (Krefeld)
Johannes Grosse (Berlin)
Constantin Staib (Münster)
Timm Herzbruch (Essen)
Tobias Hauke (Hamburg)
Jan Rühr (Düsseldorf)
Justus Weigand (Nuremburg)
Martin Zwicker (Köthen)
Florian Fuchs (Hamburg)
Benedikt Fürk (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Niklas Bosserhoff (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Timur Oruz (Krefeld)
Kira Horn (Hamburg)
Amelie Wortmann (Hamburg)
Nike Lorenz (Berlin)
Selin Oruz (Krefeld)
Anne Schröder (Düsseldorf)
Lena Micheel (Hamburg)
Charlotte Stapenhorst (Berlin)
Sonja Zimmermann (Frankenthal)
Pauline Heinz (Berlin)
Lisa Altenburg (Mönchengladbach)
Maike Schaunig (Dinslaken)
Julia Ciupka (Mönchengladbach)
Franzisca Hauke (Hamburg)
Cécile Pieper (Heidelberg)
Pia Maertens (Duisburg)
Viktoria Huse (Berlin)
Jette Fleschütz (Hamburg)
Hanna Granitzki (Hamburg)
Soccer
Florian Müller (Saarlouis)
Benjamin Henrichs (Bocholt)
David Raum (Nuremburg)
Ohis Uduokhai (Annaberg-Buchholz)
Amos Pieper (Lüdinghausen)
Ragnar Ache (Frankfurt Am Main)
Marco Richter (Friedberg)
Maximilian Arnold (Riesa)
Cedric Teuchert (Coburg)
Max Kruse (Reinbek)
Nadiem Amiri (Ludwigshafen)
Svend Brodersen (Hamburg)
Arne Maier (Ludwigsfelde)
Ismail Jakobs (Cologne)
Jordan Tournarigha (Chemnitz)
Keven Schlotterbeck (Weinstedt)
Anton Stach (Buchholz In Der Nordheide)
Eduard Löwen (Idar-Oberstein)
Luca Plogmann (Bremen)
Golf
Maximilian Kieffer (Düsseldorf)
Christopher Long (Heidelberg)
Caro Masson (Gladbeck)
Sophia Popov (Weingarten)
Gymnastics
Lukas Dauser (Ebersberg)
Nils Dunkel (Berlin)
Philipp Herder (Berlin)
Andreas Toba (Hanover)
Kim Bui (Ehningen)
Pauline Schäfer (Chemnitz)
Elisabeth Seitz (Altlussheim)
Sarah Voss (Dormagen)
Handball
Johannes Bitter (Oldenburg)
Uwe Gensheimer (Mannheim)
Johannes Golla (Wiesbaden)
Finn Lemke (Bremen)
Hendrik Pekeler (Itzehoe)
Juri Knorr (Flensburg)
Steffen Weinhold (Fürth)
Philipp Weber (Schönebeck)
Kai Häfner (Schwäbisch Gmünd)
Marcel Schiller (Bad Urach)
Andreas Wolff (Euskirchen)
Julius Kühn (Duisburg)
Jannik Kohlbacher (Bensheim)
Timo Kastening (Stadthagen)
Paul Drux (Gummersbach)
Judo
Moritz Plafky (Siegburg)
Sebastian Seidl (Nürtingen)
Igor Wandtke (Lübeck)
Dominic Ressel (Kiel)
Eduard Trippel (Rüsselsheim Am Main)
Karl-Richard Frey (Troisdorf)
Johannes Frey (St. Augustin)
Katharina Menz (Backnang)
Theresa Stoll (Munich)
Martyna Trajdos (Bełchatów, Poland)
Giovanna Scoccimarro (Hanover)
Anna-Maria Wagner (Ravensburg)
Jasmin Grabowski (Speyer)
Rowing
Oliver Zeidler (Dachau)
Stephan Krüger (Rostock)
Marc Weber (Lich)
Jason Osborne (Mainz)
Jonathan Rommelmann (Mülheim An Der Ruhr)
Max Appel (Ratzeburg)
Hans Gruhne (Berlin)
Tim Naske (Hamburg)
Karl Schulze (Dresden)
Laurits Follert (Duisburg)
Malte Jakschik (Bonn)
Torben Johanssen (Hamburg)
Hannes Ocik (Rostock)
Olaf Roggensack (Berlin)
Martin Sauer (Wriezen)
Richard Schmidt (Trier)
Jakob Schneider (Ihringen)
Johannes Weissenfeld (Herdecke)
Leonie Menzel (Mettmann)
Annekatrin Thiele (Sangerhausen)
Frieda Hämmerling (Kiel)
Franziska Kampmann (Berlin)
Carlotta Nwajide (Hanover)
Daniela Schultze (Cottbus)
Shooting
Oliver Geis (Limburg)
Andreas Löw (Neuendettelsau)
Christian Reitz (Löbau)
Jolyn Beer (Hanover)
Monika Karsch (Regensburg)
Nadine Messerschmidt (Suhl)
Doreen Vennekamp (Gelnhausen)
Carina Wimmer (Mühldorf)
Skateboarding
Tyler Edtmayer (Lenggries)
Lilly Stoephasius (Berlin)
Surfing
Leon Glatzer (Pavones, Costa Rica)
Table Tennis
Timo Boll (Erbach)
Dmytro Ovtcharov (Düsseldorf)
Patrick Franziska (Bensheim)
Han Ying (Tostedt)
Petrissa Solja (Kandel)
Xiaona Yong (Berlin)
Tennis
Dominik Koepfer (Tampa, Florida)
Philipp Kohlschreiber (Kitzbühel, Austria)
Jan-Lennard Struff (Warstein)
Alexander Zverev; Jr. (Monte Carlo, Monaco)
Kevin Krawietz (Munich)
Tim Pütz (Usingen)
Mona Barthel (Neumünster)
Anna-Lena Friedsam (Neuwied)
Laura Siegemund (Stuttgart)
Triathlon
Justus Nieschlag (Hildesheim)
Jonas Schomburg (Hanover)
Anabel Knoll (Ingolstadt)
Laura Lindemann (Berlin)
Volleyball
Julius Thole (Hamburg)
Clemens Wickler (Starnberg)
Karla Borger (Heppenheim)
Julia Sude (Friedrichshafen)
Laura Ludwig (Berlin)
Maggie Kożuch (Hamburg)
Weightlifting
Simon Brandhuber (Deggendorf)
Nico Müller (Obrigheim)
Sabine Kusterer (Leimen)
Lisa Schweizer (Schwedt)
#Sports#National Teams#Germany#Fights#Boxing#Races#Boats#Argentina#Maryland#Basketball#Austria#Animals#Hockey#Soccer#Golf#Poland#Costa Rica#Tennis#Florida#Monaco
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The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Andrés Manuel López Obrador nodded at the sea of red T-shirts and flag-waving devotees jammed into a plaza in Guadalajara.
Never before had such a crowd welcomed him here. In his previous campaigns for the president’s office, residents of Guadalajara, the wealthy capital of the state of Jalisco, shunned him, considering his leftist platform too radical.
But this time, only days before one of Mexico’s most important elections in decades, the cheers reflected a nationwide shift — and the ability of Mr. López Obrador to ride it.
“We have had three transformations in the history of our country: our independence, the reform and the revolution,” he told the crowd. “We are going to pull off the fourth.”
As corruption and violence gnaw at Mexico’s patience, voters have turned to a familiar face in Mr. López Obrador, a three-time candidate for president who once shut down Mexico City for months after a narrow loss, refusing to accept defeat.
Brandishing a deep connection with the poor, built over more than a decade of visits to every corner of this country of 120 million, he has managed a staggering lead ahead of Sunday’s vote.
If the poll numbers bear out on Election Day, Mr. López Obrador — who has promised to sell the presidential plane and convert the opulent presidential palace into a public park — could win by a landslide, putting a leftist leader in charge of Latin America’s second-largest country for the first time in decades.
He is currently 20 to 30 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, a stunning reversal for a politician whose future was far from clear just a few years ago. But a broad disgust with Mexico’s political establishment has brought him back into the graces of the electorate.
Now, he may confront an American president whose broadsides against Mexico have plunged relations between the two nations to their lowest point in recent history.
But for all the brash, confrontational stances he has taken, Mr. López Obrador has been surprisingly moderate on the topic of President Trump, adopting a pragmatic approach that sounds a lot like the Mexican establishment figures he hopes to topple.
“We are going to maintain a good relationship” with the United States, Mr. López Obrador said in an interview. “Or rather, we will aim to have a good bilateral relationship because it is indispensable.”
In fact, Mr. López Obrador has earned more than a few comparisons to Mr. Trump.
Both men lash out at their critics and perceived enemies. Both are suspicious of the press and checks on their power. A sense of nationalism and nostalgia for a lost past are central to their platforms and appeal.
But where Mr. Trump tacks right, Mr. López Obrador goes left. And while Mr. Trump has made Mexico a favorite target, Mr. López Obrador describes the North American Free Trade Agreement as a vital part of Mexico’s livelihood.
“I mean, the Brazilians, the French can fight with the U.S., but Mexico, for geopolitical reasons, we simply cannot,” he added. “We have to come to an agreement.”
For much of his career, Mr. López Obrador has focused on two central issues, poverty and corruption, national scourges he views as inseparable. For the masses in Mexico, the twin pillars of his platform hold a powerful appeal.
He vows to increase pensions for older citizens, and educational grants for the young. He promises to reduce the top salaries in government, including his own, and lift the wages of the lowest-paid public workers instead. He says he will fight corruption and use the billions of dollars a year in savings to pay for social programs.
Many doubt he can eliminate graft or come up with the windfall he has promised. But after spending the past 18 years vacillating between Mexico’s two dominant parties, voters appear increasingly willing to try something else.
Mr. López Obrador’s positions are largely unchanged from his time as a young organizer for indigenous communities in his home state, Tabasco.
What has changed is the political climate of Mexico.
Stubborn poverty rates and vast inequality, coupled with corruption scandals and a rise in violence, have pushed voters toward Mr. López Obrador, who last held elected office in 2005 as mayor of Mexico City.
Beyond that, young people, who are expected to make up about 40 percent of the vote in this election, have widely embraced Mr. López Obrador, who, at 64, happens to be the oldest candidate in the race.
“It’s sort of like a pox on all their houses,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, the former American ambassador to Mexico. “He was the only one who could successfully paint himself as an outsider — and there are a lot of people in Mexico who feel that they are outside.”
Indeed, Mr. López Obrador’s electoral prospects owe as much to the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, as to his populist language and promises to take on the powerful.
Presidents in Mexico are allowed just one six-year term, and Mr. Peña Nieto’s tenure was marked by corruption. After it was revealed that his wife had bought a luxury home at a steep discount from a government contractor, a federal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.
After his administration’s plodding response to the disappearance of 43 students was challenged by outside experts, they were essentially kicked out of the country. After evidence of illegal spying on journalists and human rights activists surfaced, a government investigation went nowhere.
Mr. López Obrador is now reaping the rewards of Mr. Peña Nieto’s missteps.
Notably, the election debate has had little to do with Mr. Trump, who has taken aim at many aspects of life in Mexico, especially trade and migration.
But all the main candidates in Mexico have been united in their opposition to Mr. Trump’s threats. The primary drivers of this election are domestic issues — corruption, violence, poverty — that play right into Mr. López Obrador’s hands.
As for a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, even some of Mr. López Obrador’s closest aides said they were unsure how Mr. López Obrador might react to the insults that the current president of Mexico has taken on the chin.
Mr. López Obrador, for his part, says Mr. Trump is simply playing to his base.
“Trump is a politician, more than what people assume, he acts politically, and it worked for him, his anti-immigrant policy and anti-Mexican rhetoric, the wall,” he said. “He tapped into a nationalist sentiment in certain sectors of American society.”
Mr. López Obrador has instead focused internally, frightening many Mexicans with his vow to take on the “mafia of power,” his shorthand for the business and political elite.
He says he can save more than $20 billion a year by attacking corruption, a figure he wields in speeches but whose provenance is unclear.
To critics, his crusade is representative of the dangers a López Obrador presidency might bring. Some fear he oversimplifies the problem of graft and the task of eradicating it — as well as the price tag for his grand ambitions.
These same critics note that when he ran Mexico City, despite his broad popularity, he was unable to rid it of corruption.
Mr. López Obrador is keenly aware of the ways Mexicans, who have long suffered at the hands of the wealthy and powerful, can be drawn into his orbit.
In both style and message, he conveys simplicity. He lives in a modest two-story townhouse, flies coach to his campaign events and owns just a handful of suits.
But behind the humility of his approach is a complex and unflinching ambition to reshape Mexico. For some, arguably including Mr. López Obrador himself, he is something of a messiah, the chosen leader to cure his nation’s ills.
“He genuinely thinks he is the best outcome for Mexico,” said Kathleen Bruhn, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara who has studied Mr. López Obrador’s career. “But I don’t think that is incompatible with him wanting to accumulate a lot of power.”
“People talk about his rhetoric and how he will be like Hugo Chávez,” the polarizing and domineering former president of Venezuela, Ms. Bruhn added. But “there is a streak of pragmatism that I hope comes out.”
For others, his imperious temperament and sense of destiny are recipes for disaster.
Mr. López Obrador often divides the world in two: the good versus the elite, who have robbed the country of equality and justice.
His division between good and bad extends to critics and institutions that he feels do not serve his agenda. Many worry that his assumed moral authority will put him at odds with the same institutions he should protect.
He has fought with the Mexican news media, accusing it of corruption and bias. And while the news media here has long survived on government money, which heavily influences coverage, his anger is a sign to many of a worrisome characteristic: an inability to take criticism.
Much like Mr. Trump, he often attacks critics personally, and is a master of name-calling.
Members of the rich elite are referred to as fifis, the equivalent of bourgeois. But civil rights and pro-democracy groups are also sometimes dismissed by Mr. López Obrador, despite being among the few counterbalances to the rampant impunity in Mexico.
Many of the nation’s most prominent anti-corruption advocates are fearful of a López Obrador presidency, worried that their nascent movement will be all but frozen out of the discussion.
When Mr. López Obrador was mayor of Mexico City, organizers planned a march to protest the rising number of kidnappings, a tragic outcome of the nation’s war on drugs.
He initially refused to meet with the organizers, derisively referring to their initiatives as projects of the wealthy.
María Elena Moreira, who now runs the nonprofit group Common Cause and helped organize the march, said she worried that Mr. López Obrador would marginalize outside efforts to improve Mexico’s democracy.
“You have to understand how to institutionalize this change, not tie all of it to just one person’s mission,” she added.
Mr. López Obrador has essentially been campaigning full-time for more than a decade, and his party, Morena, is built entirely around him. Now, it is on the cusp of upending politics in Mexico, leaving longtime parties on the brink of ruin.
Few thought that a leftist leader could take the helm of Mexico. It remains by the standards of Latin America a very conservative, Catholic nation.
But Mr. López Obrador has managed to stitch together a broad movement that includes unions, far-right conservatives, religious groups, traditional leftists and some of the same tarnished officials he spends his days railing against.
In some respects, what Mr. López Obrador has built resembles the current president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI — a party willing to incorporate just about everyone within its walls in the pursuit of power. Some members of the PRI have already defected to Mr. López Obrador’s party, fearful of the drubbing to come.
He has also tapped a television executive from a station widely reliant on government money — precisely the kind he attacks as compromised — to serve as his secretary of education if he wins.
While some view his closeness with the unions and the far-right as contradictory, others view the alliances as evidence of his pragmatic side.
As mayor of Mexico City, he maintained tight limits on spending and worked with the private sector, including the telecom magnate Carlos Slim. He built a highway to ease congestion, a project that largely benefited the middle class, not his typical base.
If elected president, he has promised to practice fiscal austerity. To reassure the business community, he has promised not to nationalize businesses.
When he left office, Mr. López Obrador enjoyed close to an 80 percent approval rating. The presidency did not seem out of the question. But the conservative National Action Party, which held the presidency, managed to paint him as a radical and a threat to democracy.
In a hard-fought battle, Mr. López Obrador lost by less than 1 percent in the 2006 election, and almost immediately took to the streets to protest what he claimed was widespread fraud. His supporters took over the central plaza downtown and blocked one of the main traffic arteries through the city, Reforma Avenue.
He then held an inauguration ceremony for himself and named a shadow cabinet to govern the nation, declaring himself the rightful president.
The move seemed to validate some of the harshest criticisms of him, alienating some of his supporters. Eventually, he packed up and moved on, and many commentators wrote him off.
He lost again in 2012, by a significantly larger margin. But Mr. López Obrador continued to build his coalition and prepare for another run.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Once Deemed Too Radical for Mexico, He Now May Be President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The post The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls appeared first on World The News.
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The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Andrés Manuel López Obrador nodded at the sea of red T-shirts and flag-waving devotees jammed into a plaza in Guadalajara.
Never before had such a crowd welcomed him here. In his previous campaigns for the president’s office, residents of Guadalajara, the wealthy capital of the state of Jalisco, shunned him, considering his leftist platform too radical.
But this time, only days before one of Mexico’s most important elections in decades, the cheers reflected a nationwide shift — and the ability of Mr. López Obrador to ride it.
“We have had three transformations in the history of our country: our independence, the reform and the revolution,” he told the crowd. “We are going to pull off the fourth.”
As corruption and violence gnaw at Mexico’s patience, voters have turned to a familiar face in Mr. López Obrador, a three-time candidate for president who once shut down Mexico City for months after a narrow loss, refusing to accept defeat.
Brandishing a deep connection with the poor, built over more than a decade of visits to every corner of this country of 120 million, he has managed a staggering lead ahead of Sunday’s vote.
If the poll numbers bear out on Election Day, Mr. López Obrador — who has promised to sell the presidential plane and convert the opulent presidential palace into a public park — could win by a landslide, putting a leftist leader in charge of Latin America’s second-largest country for the first time in decades.
He is currently 20 to 30 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, a stunning reversal for a politician whose future was far from clear just a few years ago. But a broad disgust with Mexico’s political establishment has brought him back into the graces of the electorate.
Now, he may confront an American president whose broadsides against Mexico have plunged relations between the two nations to their lowest point in recent history.
But for all the brash, confrontational stances he has taken, Mr. López Obrador has been surprisingly moderate on the topic of President Trump, adopting a pragmatic approach that sounds a lot like the Mexican establishment figures he hopes to topple.
“We are going to maintain a good relationship” with the United States, Mr. López Obrador said in an interview. “Or rather, we will aim to have a good bilateral relationship because it is indispensable.”
In fact, Mr. López Obrador has earned more than a few comparisons to Mr. Trump.
Both men lash out at their critics and perceived enemies. Both are suspicious of the press and checks on their power. A sense of nationalism and nostalgia for a lost past are central to their platforms and appeal.
But where Mr. Trump tacks right, Mr. López Obrador goes left. And while Mr. Trump has made Mexico a favorite target, Mr. López Obrador describes the North American Free Trade Agreement as a vital part of Mexico’s livelihood.
“I mean, the Brazilians, the French can fight with the U.S., but Mexico, for geopolitical reasons, we simply cannot,” he added. “We have to come to an agreement.”
For much of his career, Mr. López Obrador has focused on two central issues, poverty and corruption, national scourges he views as inseparable. For the masses in Mexico, the twin pillars of his platform hold a powerful appeal.
He vows to increase pensions for older citizens, and educational grants for the young. He promises to reduce the top salaries in government, including his own, and lift the wages of the lowest-paid public workers instead. He says he will fight corruption and use the billions of dollars a year in savings to pay for social programs.
Many doubt he can eliminate graft or come up with the windfall he has promised. But after spending the past 18 years vacillating between Mexico’s two dominant parties, voters appear increasingly willing to try something else.
Mr. López Obrador’s positions are largely unchanged from his time as a young organizer for indigenous communities in his home state, Tabasco.
What has changed is the political climate of Mexico.
Stubborn poverty rates and vast inequality, coupled with corruption scandals and a rise in violence, have pushed voters toward Mr. López Obrador, who last held elected office in 2005 as mayor of Mexico City.
Beyond that, young people, who are expected to make up about 40 percent of the vote in this election, have widely embraced Mr. López Obrador, who, at 64, happens to be the oldest candidate in the race.
“It’s sort of like a pox on all their houses,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, the former American ambassador to Mexico. “He was the only one who could successfully paint himself as an outsider — and there are a lot of people in Mexico who feel that they are outside.”
Indeed, Mr. López Obrador’s electoral prospects owe as much to the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, as to his populist language and promises to take on the powerful.
Presidents in Mexico are allowed just one six-year term, and Mr. Peña Nieto’s tenure was marked by corruption. After it was revealed that his wife had bought a luxury home at a steep discount from a government contractor, a federal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.
After his administration’s plodding response to the disappearance of 43 students was challenged by outside experts, they were essentially kicked out of the country. After evidence of illegal spying on journalists and human rights activists surfaced, a government investigation went nowhere.
Mr. López Obrador is now reaping the rewards of Mr. Peña Nieto’s missteps.
Notably, the election debate has had little to do with Mr. Trump, who has taken aim at many aspects of life in Mexico, especially trade and migration.
But all the main candidates in Mexico have been united in their opposition to Mr. Trump’s threats. The primary drivers of this election are domestic issues — corruption, violence, poverty — that play right into Mr. López Obrador’s hands.
As for a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, even some of Mr. López Obrador’s closest aides said they were unsure how Mr. López Obrador might react to the insults that the current president of Mexico has taken on the chin.
Mr. López Obrador, for his part, says Mr. Trump is simply playing to his base.
“Trump is a politician, more than what people assume, he acts politically, and it worked for him, his anti-immigrant policy and anti-Mexican rhetoric, the wall,” he said. “He tapped into a nationalist sentiment in certain sectors of American society.”
Mr. López Obrador has instead focused internally, frightening many Mexicans with his vow to take on the “mafia of power,” his shorthand for the business and political elite.
He says he can save more than $20 billion a year by attacking corruption, a figure he wields in speeches but whose provenance is unclear.
To critics, his crusade is representative of the dangers a López Obrador presidency might bring. Some fear he oversimplifies the problem of graft and the task of eradicating it — as well as the price tag for his grand ambitions.
These same critics note that when he ran Mexico City, despite his broad popularity, he was unable to rid it of corruption.
Mr. López Obrador is keenly aware of the ways Mexicans, who have long suffered at the hands of the wealthy and powerful, can be drawn into his orbit.
In both style and message, he conveys simplicity. He lives in a modest two-story townhouse, flies coach to his campaign events and owns just a handful of suits.
But behind the humility of his approach is a complex and unflinching ambition to reshape Mexico. For some, arguably including Mr. López Obrador himself, he is something of a messiah, the chosen leader to cure his nation’s ills.
“He genuinely thinks he is the best outcome for Mexico,” said Kathleen Bruhn, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara who has studied Mr. López Obrador’s career. “But I don’t think that is incompatible with him wanting to accumulate a lot of power.”
“People talk about his rhetoric and how he will be like Hugo Chávez,” the polarizing and domineering former president of Venezuela, Ms. Bruhn added. But “there is a streak of pragmatism that I hope comes out.”
For others, his imperious temperament and sense of destiny are recipes for disaster.
Mr. López Obrador often divides the world in two: the good versus the elite, who have robbed the country of equality and justice.
His division between good and bad extends to critics and institutions that he feels do not serve his agenda. Many worry that his assumed moral authority will put him at odds with the same institutions he should protect.
He has fought with the Mexican news media, accusing it of corruption and bias. And while the news media here has long survived on government money, which heavily influences coverage, his anger is a sign to many of a worrisome characteristic: an inability to take criticism.
Much like Mr. Trump, he often attacks critics personally, and is a master of name-calling.
Members of the rich elite are referred to as fifis, the equivalent of bourgeois. But civil rights and pro-democracy groups are also sometimes dismissed by Mr. López Obrador, despite being among the few counterbalances to the rampant impunity in Mexico.
Many of the nation’s most prominent anti-corruption advocates are fearful of a López Obrador presidency, worried that their nascent movement will be all but frozen out of the discussion.
When Mr. López Obrador was mayor of Mexico City, organizers planned a march to protest the rising number of kidnappings, a tragic outcome of the nation’s war on drugs.
He initially refused to meet with the organizers, derisively referring to their initiatives as projects of the wealthy.
María Elena Moreira, who now runs the nonprofit group Common Cause and helped organize the march, said she worried that Mr. López Obrador would marginalize outside efforts to improve Mexico’s democracy.
“You have to understand how to institutionalize this change, not tie all of it to just one person’s mission,” she added.
Mr. López Obrador has essentially been campaigning full-time for more than a decade, and his party, Morena, is built entirely around him. Now, it is on the cusp of upending politics in Mexico, leaving longtime parties on the brink of ruin.
Few thought that a leftist leader could take the helm of Mexico. It remains by the standards of Latin America a very conservative, Catholic nation.
But Mr. López Obrador has managed to stitch together a broad movement that includes unions, far-right conservatives, religious groups, traditional leftists and some of the same tarnished officials he spends his days railing against.
In some respects, what Mr. López Obrador has built resembles the current president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI — a party willing to incorporate just about everyone within its walls in the pursuit of power. Some members of the PRI have already defected to Mr. López Obrador’s party, fearful of the drubbing to come.
He has also tapped a television executive from a station widely reliant on government money — precisely the kind he attacks as compromised — to serve as his secretary of education if he wins.
While some view his closeness with the unions and the far-right as contradictory, others view the alliances as evidence of his pragmatic side.
As mayor of Mexico City, he maintained tight limits on spending and worked with the private sector, including the telecom magnate Carlos Slim. He built a highway to ease congestion, a project that largely benefited the middle class, not his typical base.
If elected president, he has promised to practice fiscal austerity. To reassure the business community, he has promised not to nationalize businesses.
When he left office, Mr. López Obrador enjoyed close to an 80 percent approval rating. The presidency did not seem out of the question. But the conservative National Action Party, which held the presidency, managed to paint him as a radical and a threat to democracy.
In a hard-fought battle, Mr. López Obrador lost by less than 1 percent in the 2006 election, and almost immediately took to the streets to protest what he claimed was widespread fraud. His supporters took over the central plaza downtown and blocked one of the main traffic arteries through the city, Reforma Avenue.
He then held an inauguration ceremony for himself and named a shadow cabinet to govern the nation, declaring himself the rightful president.
The move seemed to validate some of the harshest criticisms of him, alienating some of his supporters. Eventually, he packed up and moved on, and many commentators wrote him off.
He lost again in 2012, by a significantly larger margin. But Mr. López Obrador continued to build his coalition and prepare for another run.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Once Deemed Too Radical for Mexico, He Now May Be President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The post The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls appeared first on World The News.
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The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls
GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Andrés Manuel López Obrador nodded at the sea of red T-shirts and flag-waving devotees jammed into a plaza in Guadalajara.
Never before had such a crowd welcomed him here. In his previous campaigns for the president’s office, residents of Guadalajara, the wealthy capital of the state of Jalisco, shunned him, considering his leftist platform too radical.
But this time, only days before one of Mexico’s most important elections in decades, the cheers reflected a nationwide shift — and the ability of Mr. López Obrador to ride it.
“We have had three transformations in the history of our country: our independence, the reform and the revolution,” he told the crowd. “We are going to pull off the fourth.”
As corruption and violence gnaw at Mexico’s patience, voters have turned to a familiar face in Mr. López Obrador, a three-time candidate for president who once shut down Mexico City for months after a narrow loss, refusing to accept defeat.
Brandishing a deep connection with the poor, built over more than a decade of visits to every corner of this country of 120 million, he has managed a staggering lead ahead of Sunday’s vote.
If the poll numbers bear out on Election Day, Mr. López Obrador — who has promised to sell the presidential plane and convert the opulent presidential palace into a public park — could win by a landslide, putting a leftist leader in charge of Latin America’s second-largest country for the first time in decades.
He is currently 20 to 30 percentage points ahead of his closest rival, a stunning reversal for a politician whose future was far from clear just a few years ago. But a broad disgust with Mexico’s political establishment has brought him back into the graces of the electorate.
Now, he may confront an American president whose broadsides against Mexico have plunged relations between the two nations to their lowest point in recent history.
But for all the brash, confrontational stances he has taken, Mr. López Obrador has been surprisingly moderate on the topic of President Trump, adopting a pragmatic approach that sounds a lot like the Mexican establishment figures he hopes to topple.
“We are going to maintain a good relationship” with the United States, Mr. López Obrador said in an interview. “Or rather, we will aim to have a good bilateral relationship because it is indispensable.”
In fact, Mr. López Obrador has earned more than a few comparisons to Mr. Trump.
Both men lash out at their critics and perceived enemies. Both are suspicious of the press and checks on their power. A sense of nationalism and nostalgia for a lost past are central to their platforms and appeal.
But where Mr. Trump tacks right, Mr. López Obrador goes left. And while Mr. Trump has made Mexico a favorite target, Mr. López Obrador describes the North American Free Trade Agreement as a vital part of Mexico’s livelihood.
“I mean, the Brazilians, the French can fight with the U.S., but Mexico, for geopolitical reasons, we simply cannot,” he added. “We have to come to an agreement.”
For much of his career, Mr. López Obrador has focused on two central issues, poverty and corruption, national scourges he views as inseparable. For the masses in Mexico, the twin pillars of his platform hold a powerful appeal.
He vows to increase pensions for older citizens, and educational grants for the young. He promises to reduce the top salaries in government, including his own, and lift the wages of the lowest-paid public workers instead. He says he will fight corruption and use the billions of dollars a year in savings to pay for social programs.
Many doubt he can eliminate graft or come up with the windfall he has promised. But after spending the past 18 years vacillating between Mexico’s two dominant parties, voters appear increasingly willing to try something else.
Mr. López Obrador’s positions are largely unchanged from his time as a young organizer for indigenous communities in his home state, Tabasco.
What has changed is the political climate of Mexico.
Stubborn poverty rates and vast inequality, coupled with corruption scandals and a rise in violence, have pushed voters toward Mr. López Obrador, who last held elected office in 2005 as mayor of Mexico City.
Beyond that, young people, who are expected to make up about 40 percent of the vote in this election, have widely embraced Mr. López Obrador, who, at 64, happens to be the oldest candidate in the race.
“It’s sort of like a pox on all their houses,” said Roberta S. Jacobson, the former American ambassador to Mexico. “He was the only one who could successfully paint himself as an outsider — and there are a lot of people in Mexico who feel that they are outside.”
Indeed, Mr. López Obrador’s electoral prospects owe as much to the current president, Enrique Peña Nieto, as to his populist language and promises to take on the powerful.
Presidents in Mexico are allowed just one six-year term, and Mr. Peña Nieto’s tenure was marked by corruption. After it was revealed that his wife had bought a luxury home at a steep discount from a government contractor, a federal investigation cleared him of any wrongdoing.
After his administration’s plodding response to the disappearance of 43 students was challenged by outside experts, they were essentially kicked out of the country. After evidence of illegal spying on journalists and human rights activists surfaced, a government investigation went nowhere.
Mr. López Obrador is now reaping the rewards of Mr. Peña Nieto’s missteps.
Notably, the election debate has had little to do with Mr. Trump, who has taken aim at many aspects of life in Mexico, especially trade and migration.
But all the main candidates in Mexico have been united in their opposition to Mr. Trump’s threats. The primary drivers of this election are domestic issues — corruption, violence, poverty — that play right into Mr. López Obrador’s hands.
As for a personal relationship with Mr. Trump, even some of Mr. López Obrador’s closest aides said they were unsure how Mr. López Obrador might react to the insults that the current president of Mexico has taken on the chin.
Mr. López Obrador, for his part, says Mr. Trump is simply playing to his base.
“Trump is a politician, more than what people assume, he acts politically, and it worked for him, his anti-immigrant policy and anti-Mexican rhetoric, the wall,” he said. “He tapped into a nationalist sentiment in certain sectors of American society.”
Mr. López Obrador has instead focused internally, frightening many Mexicans with his vow to take on the “mafia of power,” his shorthand for the business and political elite.
He says he can save more than $20 billion a year by attacking corruption, a figure he wields in speeches but whose provenance is unclear.
To critics, his crusade is representative of the dangers a López Obrador presidency might bring. Some fear he oversimplifies the problem of graft and the task of eradicating it — as well as the price tag for his grand ambitions.
These same critics note that when he ran Mexico City, despite his broad popularity, he was unable to rid it of corruption.
Mr. López Obrador is keenly aware of the ways Mexicans, who have long suffered at the hands of the wealthy and powerful, can be drawn into his orbit.
In both style and message, he conveys simplicity. He lives in a modest two-story townhouse, flies coach to his campaign events and owns just a handful of suits.
But behind the humility of his approach is a complex and unflinching ambition to reshape Mexico. For some, arguably including Mr. López Obrador himself, he is something of a messiah, the chosen leader to cure his nation’s ills.
“He genuinely thinks he is the best outcome for Mexico,” said Kathleen Bruhn, a professor at the University of California Santa Barbara who has studied Mr. López Obrador’s career. “But I don’t think that is incompatible with him wanting to accumulate a lot of power.”
“People talk about his rhetoric and how he will be like Hugo Chávez,” the polarizing and domineering former president of Venezuela, Ms. Bruhn added. But “there is a streak of pragmatism that I hope comes out.”
For others, his imperious temperament and sense of destiny are recipes for disaster.
Mr. López Obrador often divides the world in two: the good versus the elite, who have robbed the country of equality and justice.
His division between good and bad extends to critics and institutions that he feels do not serve his agenda. Many worry that his assumed moral authority will put him at odds with the same institutions he should protect.
He has fought with the Mexican news media, accusing it of corruption and bias. And while the news media here has long survived on government money, which heavily influences coverage, his anger is a sign to many of a worrisome characteristic: an inability to take criticism.
Much like Mr. Trump, he often attacks critics personally, and is a master of name-calling.
Members of the rich elite are referred to as fifis, the equivalent of bourgeois. But civil rights and pro-democracy groups are also sometimes dismissed by Mr. López Obrador, despite being among the few counterbalances to the rampant impunity in Mexico.
Many of the nation’s most prominent anti-corruption advocates are fearful of a López Obrador presidency, worried that their nascent movement will be all but frozen out of the discussion.
When Mr. López Obrador was mayor of Mexico City, organizers planned a march to protest the rising number of kidnappings, a tragic outcome of the nation’s war on drugs.
He initially refused to meet with the organizers, derisively referring to their initiatives as projects of the wealthy.
María Elena Moreira, who now runs the nonprofit group Common Cause and helped organize the march, said she worried that Mr. López Obrador would marginalize outside efforts to improve Mexico’s democracy.
“You have to understand how to institutionalize this change, not tie all of it to just one person’s mission,” she added.
Mr. López Obrador has essentially been campaigning full-time for more than a decade, and his party, Morena, is built entirely around him. Now, it is on the cusp of upending politics in Mexico, leaving longtime parties on the brink of ruin.
Few thought that a leftist leader could take the helm of Mexico. It remains by the standards of Latin America a very conservative, Catholic nation.
But Mr. López Obrador has managed to stitch together a broad movement that includes unions, far-right conservatives, religious groups, traditional leftists and some of the same tarnished officials he spends his days railing against.
In some respects, what Mr. López Obrador has built resembles the current president’s Institutional Revolutionary Party, known as the PRI — a party willing to incorporate just about everyone within its walls in the pursuit of power. Some members of the PRI have already defected to Mr. López Obrador’s party, fearful of the drubbing to come.
He has also tapped a television executive from a station widely reliant on government money — precisely the kind he attacks as compromised — to serve as his secretary of education if he wins.
While some view his closeness with the unions and the far-right as contradictory, others view the alliances as evidence of his pragmatic side.
As mayor of Mexico City, he maintained tight limits on spending and worked with the private sector, including the telecom magnate Carlos Slim. He built a highway to ease congestion, a project that largely benefited the middle class, not his typical base.
If elected president, he has promised to practice fiscal austerity. To reassure the business community, he has promised not to nationalize businesses.
When he left office, Mr. López Obrador enjoyed close to an 80 percent approval rating. The presidency did not seem out of the question. But the conservative National Action Party, which held the presidency, managed to paint him as a radical and a threat to democracy.
In a hard-fought battle, Mr. López Obrador lost by less than 1 percent in the 2006 election, and almost immediately took to the streets to protest what he claimed was widespread fraud. His supporters took over the central plaza downtown and blocked one of the main traffic arteries through the city, Reforma Avenue.
He then held an inauguration ceremony for himself and named a shadow cabinet to govern the nation, declaring himself the rightful president.
The move seemed to validate some of the harshest criticisms of him, alienating some of his supporters. Eventually, he packed up and moved on, and many commentators wrote him off.
He lost again in 2012, by a significantly larger margin. But Mr. López Obrador continued to build his coalition and prepare for another run.
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Once Deemed Too Radical for Mexico, He Now May Be President. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
The post The Firebrand Leftist Far Ahead in Mexico’s Presidential Polls appeared first on World The News.
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Elena Bruhn German Journalist and TV Presenter
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