Can Chavez’s Ghost Swing Spain’s Election This Year

If it looks like a communist, walks like a communist, quacks like a communist, but national elections are less than a year away, it’s a social democrat. It’s Pablo Iglesias.  (“The guy with the ponytail.”) The good buddy of Venezuela’s deceased Caesar, Hugo Chávez. The young university professor who jumped from TV debates and Twitter to the head of the political class.  The man who, last year, won a surprising five seats in the European Parliament with Podemos, his extreme left party created only months before the elections.And today, it would seem, Podemos (which means, very roughly translated, “Yes We Can”) is the most popular party in Spain, according to all the polls. The latest of them lead us to two clear conclusions: that Pablo Iglesias is an excellent television commentator, and that Spain has turned communist but doesn’t know it. Afraid people will find out, Podemos has ordered a formal shift toward social democracy, even if, in the archives, the paeans to Lenin survive. More…