What I learned about the Bolivian elections

BBC: "President Morales" easily crushed his adversary in the ring

Tomorrow is election day in Bolivia and everyone knows that Evo Morales and his MAS party are going to win big time, oh yeah. But how should we understand such political success? Let's consult our trusty English language press sources to find out, fun after the jump!:

• According to BBC correspondent Andres Schipani wrestling matches qualify for investigative journalism on the Bolivian elections. Hey BBC, if you guys pay me instead I will give you the low down on some way kinkier night "wrestling" matches going on in La Paz and call it journalism, wink.
  

• Jim Schultz clears up any confusion out there by explaining that the Bolivian election is not about "issues"... just those outlined by his unpaid(?) assistant in the remainder of the post... like, I don't know, applying that New fucking Constitution.

• Angus Reid Global Monitor: The only measure of a democratic society is whether political candidates exchange prepared remarks on TV for 90 minutes. No wonder the United States is the leader of the free world.

• Evo Morales threatens journalists with ethics and threatens political opposition with impartial rule of law

• Wall Street Journal: Eduardo Gamarra thinks Morales is responsible for the lack of credibility worthless neoliberal hacks like himself retain.
  

• Bloomberg: Morales tightens his communist grip on the economy by making Bolivia the fastest growing economy in Latin America.

• The secret key to Morales' political power: the crazy fascists trying to kill him.

• Heritage Foundation: The only hope for democracy in Bolivia is if the United States has the manly balls to destroy democracy in Bolivia.

• Stanford journalism professor Joel Brinkley has decided Morales is coercing voters into supporting him and has already anointed himself dictator for life, so I guess we better believe him and ignore the record number of international election observers present and the more than one million people who showed up in El Alto on Thursday for Morales' final campaign rally.

• Annie Murphy at NPR points out that maybe programs like universal maternal healthcare has something to do with Morales' popularity. Silly hippies.

• Some towel heads say the majority of Bolivians support Morales because he brings them "dignity after years of exclusion and discrimination." Or what Frank Bajak of the AP called "dismantling the last vestiges of oppression that U.N. investigators in May described as 'forced labor and servitude.'" Yawn.

• Update: Simon Romero and Andres Schapini (birds of a feather flock together) team up to tell us that Morales is popular, running a booming economy, addressing social injustice and discrimination, but a authoritarian bad guy none the less because a bunch of worn out and discredited political hacks from former governments say so. What would we ever do without the New York Times?