Thread by @mlq3

A thread on political earthquakes, which starts with what sooner or later depends on the character and personality of candidates. You know which of these two candidates actually likes the Filipino people. If you didn’t before, it’s become quite clear by now. Which leads to…

This thread by Bart: and it’s true, the songs are just part of a phenomenon of not just expression and innovation but of political renewal. These songs and pictures and even hashtags all come from the public and in many ways have overwhelmed “official” efforts. Consider that even

The color itself, pink, did not come from the campaign or the core group of the (then potential) candidate but from those self-organizing to get her to run: it came about as the color it succeeded, had come about, from below. You will remember that I myself had misgivings about

some of the decisions at the top level of the campaign once it became precisely that: a formal campaign. #letlenilead had come from much of the same places as pink: from the grassroots and not the formal campaign so to speak and had an effect. Well, the story for some time had

become, on one hand, what I had always thought was the most moving imagery for understanding what was going on: the parable of the widow's mite to describe both the candidate's humbleness and the humble people giving what little they had, to the common cause. This contrasted, I

felt, with what seemed the confused and even discouraging direction of things like the official ads. I don't know if that was ever solved, not least because something started happening that showed the precise nature of the campaign itself: whatever was happening on top, something

started happening. Was it the lifting of Covid restrictions, that finally unleashed what was just waiting to get going, a people's campaign? Was it the sudden recognition, as the oldies might say, that "Hindi ka nag-iisa?" Was it new alliances?

Probably: all of the above. But the identification of a new way of taking the public pulse beyond the old surveys, suddenly added to the growing sense that something, somehow, was changing.

But how do we know this is not just GroupThink? Collective self-blinding? To me, the proof that what we sense is true, is that it is also being sensed by the people of Voldemort Jr. And we know this because of their messaging.

Contrast this and many more like it, suddenly appearing when up to now, their chorus line had repeatedly shouted, victory was not just inevitable, it was going to be massive. Suddenly, besides bringing up tried-and-tested old lines, they've started to insist a plot is at hand....

All of a sudden, their tone and mood is changing. Why should that be, if not for what their worst nightmare might be: people are wisening up to their tricks, but before election day. So the verdict can change and they will have to rely on tried and tested ways to change results.

Before I go further, let's ponder the implications of this, if indeed this is what's happening. We know the people themselves suggesting Google searches may be a better pulse-taker than surveys, say the surveys will sooner or later reflect what they already see. Fine. We know...

That the top down ways perfected by the Marcoses --and here let me underscore, the Marcos campaign represents the peak evolution of the old+new Machine+Money Online+Ground Campaign; the ongoing dynamics (often noisy messy and emotional) in the Leni Coalition represents the...

thing that is impossible for the old (not just Marcos, but everyone) Campaign up to now: the driver's seat being occupied as much by the independent-minded volunteers on the ground as it is by the candidate herself; or put more accurately, by a kind of unstructured connection...

that in many ways made the top-down efforts redundant in some ways. I don't know if this is ever something that can be replicated; but it is historic. I'd long (well, for some years now) argued we came to the end of a 30 year era in 2016. quezon.ph/2022/02/24/117…

I was wondering what might take it place. There's a battle going on about what will take it's place, and ironically, half of the battle is with the side that could claim it won in 2016 but is obviously still highly insecure about whether it actually won or not

because --and here's the clincher-- just when it thought it finally won a 30-year battle for the soul of the nation, something else was born out of the old conflict. Something that owes part of it but not all of it, to what came before, and which is finding its own way forward.

Older folks will understand where I'm coming from. It's partly mystical, mainly electrical, because transformative. When Marcos was holed up in Malacañan in 1986 the song played to get on his nerves was the Mambo Magsaysay: not least because RM was the... chirb.it/2A0kJN

opposite of FM but because part of the spirit of the 1953 elections: against fraud, etc., animated the 1986 elections. But of course the movements and leaders were different but quite a few then had taken part in 1953. So it is today.

New ways of cooperating, of acting, of doing, means a new kind of coalition and a new kind of connection unique to this campaign and its candidate(s) and the allies and alliances previously impossible but now causing the Marcoses to suddenly get nervous. That anxiety is being...

communicated to their faithful and to the keepers of their online kennels. So back to my other point. If all these things are happening, it's a political earthquake; but even if only some of it is true: what if, for example, it's going to be close, but not close enough, what...

has been born is something that will still grow, and go in directions both expected and unexpected. And that, in itself, contains the prospect for a renewal of not just our institutions but our fundamental dealings with each other.

In the end, check out this thread. Let's end where I began. Enough time has passed so we know which candidate really likes the people. And which one thinks the people are something to endure.