We pretend to eagerly await the electoral projects of the candidates, at least in Bucharest, where the campaign has already started quite intensively.
As if then, miraculously, we will put an end to the garlic, accordion, kissing children and puppies, eating pies at fairs, and all of us, electorate, candidates, and parties, will analyze with a pencil in hand the proposed ideas.
I have serious doubts that, apart from a minority, and that partially obliged professionally to analyze the projects, there are a lot of people interested in the candidates' proposals. And this for several reasons.
Discrediting of programs
First of all, because the vast majority of promises are and remain mere scraps, so the very idea of a project, a political program, has been discredited in repeated electoral cycles.
Then, because very few generally contain more than generalities and desires to be good, very few contain clear, well-explained solutions, and therefore, easy to understand and follow.
And, last but not least, because a large part of the electorate is, not only with us, quite superficial, more sensitive to emotional stimuli, positive or negative, rather than rational ones.
Pseudo-programs also fall into the same category, such as the economic one announced by AUR, with nationalizations, people's tribunals, and other stupidities that, although technically called projects, actually address negative emotions, responding to anti-European, anti-capitalist, neo-communist frustrations cultivated, moreover, not only by this party.
All in all, unfortunately, I do not expect us to engage in a genuine debate of ideas, solutions, and I have serious doubts that many people truly desire it, although it is always invoked with desperate sighs.
Who raises the wave
What characterizes, in my opinion, this campaign's beginning is that it unfolds in almost hermetically antagonistic bubbles, which will make it difficult to transfer sympathizers from one candidate to another based on arguments.
Those who like Piedone, I don't think can be convinced to abandon him regardless of how many press revelations regarding the clan, businesses, the balance sheet from Sector 5, etc., will appear and no matter how much he is attacked.
Those who like Mr. Nicușor Dan, I don't think are receptive to any argument showing not that he shouldn't be voted for, but, much more modestly, that he is not perfect.
Cătălin Cîrstoiu doesn't have a bubble, doesn't generate, at least for now, emotion, and the hard cores of the two parties are also opaque to arguments.
Who will make the difference? Probably again negative emotion. The candidate who will manage to raise a larger wave of rejection towards the others from the undecided zone will win.
Who will achieve a more efficient demonization operation of the adversaries, thus generating more intense emotion, will be the winner.
From this point of view, Piedone is the one who can make the game in both directions. As I already wrote, if he pushes the grotesque beyond bearable, he could generate the exasperated reaction in favor of one of the other two candidates.
But still, Piedone also raises the wave of the frustrated, for whom there was no accessible candidate of their own, who would take them into account and who believe that, finally, someone cares about them.
The axis of emotion is currently Piedone - Nicușor Dan, and the clash of these waves will dictate the victory. That's why I expect a colorful, intense campaign, but also very difficult to bear.