This article appeared in Nueva Sociedad. It was translated into English by the ISP.

A victory for the Morena (National Regeneration Movement) and its satellites was expected in the elections to parliament, governors and mayors on June 6. It was supposed to be a resounding victory that would have confirmed the equilibrium that emerged from the 2018 landslide for Morena, which would have strengthened the government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). However, it was an election in which, lacking the intensity of a presidential election and with a low turnout typical of mid-terms, the government lost support without losing the absolute majority in Congress. But it expanded its regional control. And the opposition, grouped in the Va por México (Going for México) coalition, gained, but had little impact on the composition of the Chamber of Deputies.

Although Morena was confirmed as the leading party with more than a third of the votes while winning important governorships, it fell short of its expectations. AMLO’s party and allies (collectively called Obradorismo) lost the super-majority needed to propose constitutional reforms. It leans on the Partido del Trabajo (Workers Party, or PT) and the Green Ecologist Party of México (Partido Verde Ecologista de México, or PVEM, which is not really ecologist) for its daily parliamentary activities. And it shows unsettling limits in several localities, such as México City, where several mayoralties were left in the hands of the opposition alliance that united the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) and the Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD).

Putting aside the vote tallies, which do not radically change the political scenario, the symbolic balance of the battle leaves AMLO’s coalition disappointed but not defeated and the opposition comforted but not victorious. However, more than the appeal of the right wing, the underlying political factor is that Morena and its allies, the Juntos haremos historia (Together we will make history)coalition, seemed to pay the price of its own contradictions. The project of the Fourth Transformation (4T) thus shows its limits and opens a flank that could resurrect—sooner than expected—the most conservative and reactionary forces in the country.

The right-wing dominated opposition coalition, which lacks coherence and an alternative program, did not “reap what it sowed”, but indiscriminately gained allies and tried out arguments, resorting to controversial statements and stunts, caricaturing the political scene, and played to a “democracy vs authoritarianism”discourse rather than to the less believable one of “liberalism vs socialism”.

The opposition cannot claim victory since, although it slowed down the “Morenization” of the national political landscape, its own growth was barely a couple of percentage points for the PAN and the PRI. Meanwhile the PRD, despite having jumped on the right-wing bandwagon, shrunk and is on the verge of extinction. Paradoxically, the Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizen Movement, or MC) that bet on staying outside the big political blocs, grew.

Even with the support of the most influential and backward core of the ruling classes and the media, the right wing managed to fight to a draw, when all were predicting a resounding defeat like the one of 2018. At the same time, it is not a catastrophic standoff because none of the contenders is interested in escalating the conflict. Rather, they would rather preserve what they’ve gained in light of the next and most important showdown. While the right wing will have to think of something more consistent and constructive to offer to re-conquer the Presidency of the Republic, Morena will have to recover from its wounds before 2024. Eventually, Morena may try to raise its head in August, waving the anti-corruption and accountability flag, if it manages to obtain massive participation on the referendum that would enable the trials of former presidents.

Although the elements that influenced the electoral setback of Obradorismo are evident, it is not easy to say which factor was most important. In México City, for example, it is possible that the recent tragedy of the train accident on Metro Line 12 weighed heavily. But there is also a class-based inertia that is deeply rooted geographically, in the urban distribution of wealth, as well as in the patterns of daily living and the common sense that corresponds to them.

On the other hand, on a national scale, Morena’s need to expand led it to indiscriminately recruit leaders with highly questionable backgrounds and trajectories, under a pragmatic logic that follows the “principle of endogenous reproduction” of the political class. It only minimally opened itself to generational replacement by incorporating younger people, whose interest in and ability to renew traditional political practices remains to be seen.

The selection of candidates was particularly rushed, carried out through process of appointment from above, the so-called “dedazo”, mediated only occasionally by opinion polls—when these, however debatable, were considered mandatory by party rules. Morena never became the party-movement it promised to become in its declaration of principles, and since López Obrador became president, it has definitively abandoned any type of educational or participatory action. It has become an electoral apparatus and an organism of mechanical and automatic support to the government—with a leadership that venerates realism and opportunism as its values.

The June 6 electoral process was another lost opportunity to mobilize, raise awareness and politicize those social sectors that Obradorismo claims to represent and whom the 4T pretends to emancipate. Reproducing the vacuous schemes of traditional electoral campaigns, without any communication or participatory innovation, the abstention levels of the previous mid-term elections (around 50%) were roughly maintained, and it can be assumed that “lesser evil” voting increase on both sides of the electoral divide, to the detriment of casting a vote for conviction. If there is disillusionment with the hope for change that AMLO tried to raise, undoubtedly skepticism about the possibilities for an ideal and functional alternative to the political elite continues to spread. Electoral campaigns are not seen as opportunities for debating and deciding on contrasting worldviews, but rather become fights over pantomime versions of these. In this imaginary, a right-wing coalition pretending to be a democratic opposition to a populist dictatorship seems to have confronted a ruling coalition pretending to be a project of inter-class revolutionary transformation, besieged by coup-plotters from the national oligarchy, the mass media, middle-class NGOs, the National Electoral Institute (INE), the CIA and The Economist.

Behind the rhetorical excesses were the overheated spirits of the actual stakeholders in this election: around 20,000 government posts and seats that, besides being career goals, guarantee access to public funds and the possibility of steering a series of public policies. But the entire political class had to provide some meaning to an electoral campaign in which, instead of virtue, the wretchedness of both sides surfaced. Politicians had the challenge of establishing enough difference between them to counteract the vague sensation that, as the popular saying goes, “it is not the same, but it is the same” and where the “lesser evil” gets worse by the day.

Returning to the labyrinth of the 4T, the charismatic leadership of López Obrador, on display at his morning press conferences, is clearly proving to be a double-edged sword. The Mexican president arouses both sympathy and antipathy.He personalizes and embodies the virtues and vices of the 4T. He is a guarantee of its scope but also a reason for its limits.In any case, he encourages enthusiastic support, albeit passive and disorganized, just as he becomes the target that drives the opposition.

Therefore, the phenomenon that moves, shakes and polarizes México is Obradorismo, not the 4T. The 4T transformation that was supposed to overcome neoliberalism—or what is understood as such—and that, by presidential decree, should be the equivalent to independence, the President Benito Juarez’s liberal reform and the Mexican Revolution. This tension between neoliberalism and post-neoliberalism was the backdrop of the election, even though, paradoxically, neither the right wing claims to be for neoliberalism nor does AMLO claim to be for post-neoliberalism. Nor is it clear what would be the medium-term features of a sovereign and redistributive transformation through specific reforms—which, by the way, do not seem to change the reigning structures of power.

Indeed, one of the twists and turns of Obradorismo’s labyrinth is that, despite the rhetoric, it wants to avoid drawing a sharp line between transformation and conservation. It seeks to deftly combine the two, pondering certain ingredients of regaining public leadership in the field of energy resources, of some type of wealth redistribution (via subsidies and minimum wage increase) and other progressive measures—without provoking the reaction of the national and international ruling classes. It wants to respect their property and their proprietary control of the productive process, while inviting them to join patriotically to a projectof getting richer but moderately, “for the good of all.”So, the sum is easily transformed into subtraction: the cross-class equation can leave the subordinate classes unsatisfied while failing to achieve the collaboration of the dominant groups. This isn’t even to mention the universe of civil rights, in particular gender equality and the defense of the environment, in which Obradorismo and the 4T are the most conservative and undermine their ability to retain the vote of progressive urban middle-class sectors.

It is evident that López Obrador does not possess the philosopher’s stone that can guarantee the alchemy of change that, although limited, upsets balances, generates expectations and alters consolidated positions. So, despite showing a certain mastery of political gymnastics, AMLO will walk a tightrope until the end of his term. At the same time, social transformation cannot be the task of a single person and a group of close associates, without generating conditions for a real change in the balance of forces from the intervention of the popular classes in the political arena. Otherwise, we could end up with the dramatic paradox of a restoration without a revolution, or anything resembling it.