Everyone has a plan until the first punch (Ignacio Camacho in ABC)
In ABC, Ignacio Camacho analyses Sánchez's strategy for Spain's election: aiming for a respectable result that avoids disaster and keeps alive his chances of holding on to the party leadership.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Pedro Sánchez goes into the election with an official goal, staying in power, and an undeclared one: achieving a respectable result that, even in defeat, avoids a debacle and leaves him some chance of keeping the leadership of the PSOE (Spain's Socialist Party). The strategy involves absorbing the far-left's space.
Columnist **Ignacio Camacho** writes in **ABC** an analysis of the election campaign arguing that all candidates start out with a plan that reality almost never respects. The quote that gives the article its title is from **Mike Tyson**: everyone has a strategy until they take the first punch. In politics, that punch usually lands the day after the election.
## Two goals on Sánchez's mind
The Prime Minister is running in the election with an official purpose: to stay in power. He knows the odds border on the miraculous, though he does not entirely rule it out, especially if his opponent keeps sabotaging himself. Even his most optimistic supporters admit the margin is narrow and that the most likely outcome points to fiasco.
Hence plan B, admitted without much pretence in his circle: to get a respectable result that prevents a debacle and keeps alive some chance of holding on to at least the party leadership. It is not a far-fetched hypothesis. Leaving power leaves many people out of a job, and parties freshly ousted from government tend toward nervousness or outright chaos.
## Absorbing the far left to avoid disappearing
The strategy does not change depending on the scenario: it is about occupying the far-left's space by taking over its proposals. That shift began with the eviction of the elderly woman **Maricarmen**, which set off the emergency lights at La Moncloa (the Prime Minister's official residence). Since then, the discourse has included intervention in the housing market, discrediting Parliament, and a climate of street agitation that the unions will heat up with a strike.
His advisers run the numbers: this path is not enough to recreate the investiture bloc, but it could turn his ballot into the leading force if the **PP** (centre-right People's Party) remains stagnant in the face of the growth of **Vox**, which benefits from extreme polarisation. The scheme even contemplates a trench-warfare opposition that destabilises and shortens the predictable mandate of the two right-wing parties.
## The plan depends on too many pieces
The design rests on so many contingencies that it borders on counting your chickens before they hatch. For the dream to come true, many things would have to happen in a short space of time. One not insignificant: that the leader emerges unscathed from the succession of scandals awaiting him in the courts.
Camacho recalls that politics never reserves a pleasant fate for the defeated. Nearly two months remain until the election and there are already those trembling under the dust of uncertainty. The knives, he says, have long been sharpening.
## Judicial uncertainty accompanies the campaign
The article does not go into the details of the proceedings, but places the courts as one of the variables that can topple any calculation. Spanish politics has been operating for months with that sword hanging over the table.
None of this is a prediction. It is a portrait of a campaign where the official plan and the real plan coexist, and where the first punch has not yet landed.
Columnist **Ignacio Camacho** writes in **ABC** an analysis of the election campaign arguing that all candidates start out with a plan that reality almost never respects. The quote that gives the article its title is from **Mike Tyson**: everyone has a strategy until they take the first punch. In politics, that punch usually lands the day after the election.
## Two goals on Sánchez's mind
The Prime Minister is running in the election with an official purpose: to stay in power. He knows the odds border on the miraculous, though he does not entirely rule it out, especially if his opponent keeps sabotaging himself. Even his most optimistic supporters admit the margin is narrow and that the most likely outcome points to fiasco.
Hence plan B, admitted without much pretence in his circle: to get a respectable result that prevents a debacle and keeps alive some chance of holding on to at least the party leadership. It is not a far-fetched hypothesis. Leaving power leaves many people out of a job, and parties freshly ousted from government tend toward nervousness or outright chaos.
## Absorbing the far left to avoid disappearing
The strategy does not change depending on the scenario: it is about occupying the far-left's space by taking over its proposals. That shift began with the eviction of the elderly woman **Maricarmen**, which set off the emergency lights at La Moncloa (the Prime Minister's official residence). Since then, the discourse has included intervention in the housing market, discrediting Parliament, and a climate of street agitation that the unions will heat up with a strike.
His advisers run the numbers: this path is not enough to recreate the investiture bloc, but it could turn his ballot into the leading force if the **PP** (centre-right People's Party) remains stagnant in the face of the growth of **Vox**, which benefits from extreme polarisation. The scheme even contemplates a trench-warfare opposition that destabilises and shortens the predictable mandate of the two right-wing parties.
## The plan depends on too many pieces
The design rests on so many contingencies that it borders on counting your chickens before they hatch. For the dream to come true, many things would have to happen in a short space of time. One not insignificant: that the leader emerges unscathed from the succession of scandals awaiting him in the courts.
Camacho recalls that politics never reserves a pleasant fate for the defeated. Nearly two months remain until the election and there are already those trembling under the dust of uncertainty. The knives, he says, have long been sharpening.
## Judicial uncertainty accompanies the campaign
The article does not go into the details of the proceedings, but places the courts as one of the variables that can topple any calculation. Spanish politics has been operating for months with that sword hanging over the table.
None of this is a prediction. It is a portrait of a campaign where the official plan and the real plan coexist, and where the first punch has not yet landed.
Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (0 replies).
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