If it were a video game it would be like that. At each level jump the field narrows: ten square meters, seven, then five. The space is smaller each time but they always play the same, by number and by name. The winner is whoever saves himself in the center and, by making more allies, sinks the enemy. The allies do not want to ally themselves, they make spite that are good for the enemy who does not sink, on the contrary, advances. The troops called to fight desert: there is Vasco’s concert, there is the sea, there is – growing – lack of love. Tetris is perhaps more compelling, but this is the electoral system and you have to be there.
The first concern to ask yourself, if you want to do it, is how tight the square will be on the next lap. This time half of the electorate went to vote, in some cities the candidate won in the first round even with less, between 40 and 50 percent of those who had the right to choose. The winner, therefore, is always the majority of an (almost) minority: five out of ten go to vote, three of those five choose the mayor for everyone. It is not “a wake-up call”, as we hear repeated. It’s a death knell that hasn’t stopped ringing for years. We live in a dying system, we are in the throes of the tail. We are witnessing, privileged survivors of the twentieth century, at the end of representative democracy. Certainly not the best system, not the most agile and suitable for making lightning-fast decisions, however up to now – over the centuries – the winner for the manifest inferiority of the alternatives. But let’s ignore it, come on, the important thing is who takes stock: even if the sports hall has become a bowler, let’s see among us four elderly people who toast tonight. Seniors, it is a theme.
The ballot boxes are also empty because the old people die and the young don’t go there. The old people had democracy at heart: they built it, they believed in it at the cost of their lives, they observed the discipline of maintenance with tenacity superior to growing discouragement. Time passes majestically, however, generations follow one another. In the middle one, discouragement has taken over, with some good reason: every promise of change is followed by a disillusionment, often even victories have become defeats. The referendum on public water, to say the least, despite being won has remained a dead letter. We don’t talk about the hope for change embodied by new leaders and new movements, we know how it ends. Finally, the younger ones don’t go to vote because they don’t like politics, reciprocated. A specular and symmetrical feeling: lack of love, indifference are reciprocal.
So, returning to the very narrow field in which we play it is not yet said for how long, let’s see the game as it is. We always go back to the Center, we said. At the Center, so says the rule of engagement, you win. It is not proven, it is an undisputed dogma. The problem is that at the center no one is strong enough to win alone, not even the neo-Catholic Pd Rosé which today rejoices as the first party. There has been no one to the left of the Democratic Party for some time: in the previous rounds Sel, Possible, Civic and rainbows, green and orange and every color had been eliminated, let’s not talk about obsolete post-communisms and radicalisms: all riotous, in fact, at transfer to moderate area. The void on the left (some voters may have been lost in this way: for the disappearance of representation) was accompanied by a proliferation of centrist parties that now define themselves as the “Draghi-Macron” area: practical people, in short, people of action. They would be natural allies of the Democratic Party, from which in fact they often come or from which they have passed, but categorically exclude allying with each other or – worse – joining the hated axis: Pd-Cinquestelle. The allies who do not ally bring themselves back to that famous dilemma, nothing is ever new: the goat, the cabbage and the wolf to take to the other shore without losing anyone, saving goat and cabbages, they say the rest. Hard. Italia Viva, Action and + Europe are very focused on hitting each other and all together with Enrico Letta, moreover also in this case reciprocated for reasons that at times draw on understandable suspicions of disloyalty rooted in the past. Stay calm you do not forget. It therefore happens, for example, that if Italia Viva proposes a shareable candidate to Palermo, Davide Faraone, the Democratic Party does not even respond and brings another, which loses. Of course he would also have lost Faraone, in the poisoned field of Palermo: it is just an example, everyone has his favorite – in these hours. On the right, meanwhile, the brawl over Berlusconi’s legacy is underway with the deceased still alive: the party at 4-5 per cent, the branches of the large family taken to eliminate each other. Salvini the Russian is at a minimum, now besieged within the League by “reasonable governors” and by “esteemed ministers” by Draghi. Conte in free fall – to have him today the yellow-green government would be a club of losers – with the Cinquestelle who elect fewer advisers than Renzi and the analysts who say it is the end of populism, but who knows. In this game, whoever sinks in one turn can return to the field in the next, perhaps with other brands and alliances. What is certain is that focusing on Conte, for Enrico Letta, with the goal of the “wide field” seems, let’s say, out of date. We will see after the internal reckoning of the Movement if Di Maio will be the next “resource” for the center, for the left in the center. The only security is Giorgia Meloni: who surpasses Salvini, continues to grow and aims to win policies and govern the country. She talks about it, even in Rai where the diviners of power live, as of a certainty.
So the program, the goal shared by everyone is to defeat Giorgia Meloni. Here we understand, humanly speaking, Salvini’s personal anxiety, the concern of the Democratic Party. Less clear is how “sinking Meloni” can be a long-term political program. If it were a video game, maybe. But if we have to imagine the future of a country and of several tens of millions of people: it is a little bit. However, the strategists are already at work. They have identified the winning weapon for the next level: changing the electoral law. This is how I will be able to make a wide field in a very narrow field, play again. But not now, when it’s hot and we’re on vacation. In September, if anything.