That sound you hear right now is the sound of a can of whoop-ass being opened on the Golob government. In today’s referendum, the SDS-backed NO vote won with as much as 93 percent of the vote, which is about as clear a result as you can get. The coalition gambled by calling for a vote boycott and lost. Bigly.
Maybe now Levica and GS will finally learn that calling for electoral boycotts is not really their thing. True, this referendum was an uphill battle for them from the start. But by choosing not to play and hoping for the best is not a strategy, either.
Despite the one-sided result, the fundamentals basically stayed the same. The NO vote amassed about 400,000 votes, which more or less corresponds to their 2022 election result. And with a 26% total turnout, this is not the breakthrough the Janša and SDS are claiming it to be. Especially if one accounts for a portion of disgruntled voters who would not vote for SDS directly but are pissed off enough to vote against the government.
On the other hand, Janša’s last government had its ass handed to it in a similar fashion in the Summer of 2021, on a referendum on the Waters Act. Back then the Glorious Leader and his Party had hoped that the result was just voters blowing off steam, and that things will sort themselves out come the 2022 parliamentary election. Well, we know how that turned out.
Fundamentals didn’t change…
So, there will be no dramatic developments as a result of this evening’s vote, no matter how loudly Marshal Twito will be calling for a snap election and how much SDS rank-and-file will be crowing about owning the libs and putting the woke degenerate leftards in their place.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t lessons to be learned. And the coalition better learn them fast. Chief among them is that refusing to play is not really a strategy. Just as importantly, the upcoming campaign season will be brutal and the opposition will take no prisoners. Everything this government has achieved in the past three years will be on the chopping block. Especially since the list is not that long.
So, if anyone on the coalition side had any plans to take another look at whatever grand campaign strategy there is, now would be the time to do it. But since it is far more likely that noone has even begun to think about campaign strategy, this would be a really good time to get of their fucking asses and start developing one.
…but tactics should
Because once again we saw the fundamental difference between the right-wing and left/liberal bloc. Voters of the latter are simply too heterogenous to count on them to vote as a bloc. The SD understood that and did not support the boycott. It didn’t matter terms of the result but it will be interesting to see if it will matter in terms of coalition dynamics.
And for fuck’s sake, someone please stop Levica from making tactical calls. For them, this was simply embarrassing.
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