I guess I should begin by saying that I'm oh-so-very excited to cast my own vote on Tuesday for lackluster Tennessee Democrat Harold Ford, Jr, who is guided by his faith in God, voted for the war in Iraq, is pro-life (he supports abstinence and "character education" for school-age girls, whatever that means) and likes women and football. At least he's not a Republican, right?

But I suppose that voting Democrats back into control of the House and Senate might convince the Bush administration to stop invading other countries, which could mean that there will be a little money leftover for social security when I'm 65. North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Syria, Bolivia... I am reminded almost daily of Ernesto "Che" Guevara's 1967 Message to the Tricontinental, in which he told the original group of non-aligned nations:

"...we could look into a bright future, should two, three, or many Vietnams flourish throughout the world...with their everyday heroism and their repeated blows against imperialism, impelled to disperse its forces under the sudden attack and the increasing hatred of all peoples of the world!"

Boy, we walked right into that one, didn't we.

And it looks like the unfettered democratic process may just add another "Vietnam" to the list: My favorite country, Nicaragua, could actually re-elect Daniel fracking Ortega, president of Nicaragua during the Contra War of the 1980s, to its highest office. Why? Because my favorite presidential candidate, black sheep Sandinista (he was the capitalist who built post-revolutionary Nicaragua's first all-inclusive resort) and former Managua Mayor Herty Lewites, went and died of a heart attack while on the campaign trail. Drag. And yes, it was evidentally a real one and not some crazy underworld assassination, so get that tin-foil hat off your head right now. So it's Daniel versus a plethora of candidates who could easily divide the "Nicaraguans for a sane, normal country" vote.

I was on beautiful Isla Ometepe for the last election cycle, when Nicaragua voted the Sandinistas - today less revolutionary Marxists than Western European-style social democrats - into the majority of mayoral offices for the first time since the end of the Contra War. Finca Magdalena is a very basic lodge and coffee plantation at the foot of Volcán Maderas, run by a revolutionary-era Sandinista cooperative of about 30 members, who still go through all the communist rigmarole of achieving total consensus before doing anything at all, like, say, replacing those god-awful cots with real beds. Which is probably a good thing for cheapo travelers like me, who would balk if they raised the prices on their $2.50 rooms to pay for actual mattresses.

Anyway, when the election results came in, the collectivized owners of Finca Magdalena's means of production threw a grand old party, with firecrackers, live music, dancing, lots of guaro (a dirt-cheap sugarcane liquor) and other assorted festivities that would have kept us tourists up all night even if we'd had beds and mosquito nets. It was fun and, really, I have no problem at all with the FSLN; honestly, I think a lot of local Sandinista leaders are great. I just consider Daniel Ortega dangerous - his finest moment came when he signed the 1986 Esquipulas Peace Plan and then actually implimented some of the requirements, such as calling for real elections and stepping down when he was defeated. Which he didn't have to do. But he did, and he's been using every nasty Machiavellian trick in the book to get back into office ever since.

When I returned to civilization from the Finca, hungover and bleary-eyed from the party, I grabbed some rice and beans at this tiny shack of a restaurant tuned into the nightly news. And who was sitting on the tarmac of Managua International Airport, holding a press conference with current Nicaraguan President Enrique Bolaños? Donald Rumsfeld himself. He was blathering on about Nicaragua's stash of SAM-7 missiles while reaffirming the Bush administration's support for Bolaños and his conservative Liberal Party, apparently oblivious to the fact that his little show only made the already beset president look worse, even to Nicaraguans who still supported his relatively pro-US government. What a dumbass.

Similarly, this Sunday is going to be part normal presidential election, and part referendum on which is worse: Daniel Ortega or the Bush administration. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been funding Ortega's campaign, making all sorts of petroleum promises (in a nation beset by chronic energy shortages, that's gold) and basically trying to transform Ortega into an international issue. Add to that the tens of thousands of rural voters who were given their farms by the Sandinistas during the land reforms of the 1980s (and who therefore feel personally indebted to Ortega), and things are looking better for the FSLN than they have since about 1982.

What would an Ortega win mean for Nicaragua? Who knows. I guess they'd get a raft of cheap oil from Venezuela, which would be a good thing in the short term. The entire eastern half of the country, populated by primarily pro-Contra indigenous groups who hate the FSLN with a passion, would feel even more isolated, which would be a very bad thing. And our own Dear Leaders in DC? Well, it'd be the equivalent of a kick in their collective balls, as much of the current Bush administration's senior staff was involved in the Iran-Contra Affair, which tried and failed to get Ortega out of power the first time around.

While part of me would enjoy that kick on a visceral level, I don't think an Ortega presidency would be good for Nicaragua even without whatever sort of expensive, mean-spirited retribution Bush loyalists are planning somewhere in the bowels of the Pentagon. If we decided to implement economic sanctions or, worse, some kind of covert or direct military action, it would just starve lots of innocent Nicaraguans already teetering on the edge of survival, strengthen a bombastic Ortega regime and "prove" that Hugo Chavez is right to even more Latin Americans - that the USA is run by the bad guys and must be resisted by any means necessary. Awesome.

I'm going to spend Sunday on the edge of my seat.

 

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