Brazil’s Election Comeback and What America Can Learn

How do you turn a losing campaign into an election victory in just three weeks? Prof G Media’s Laura Jáner, reporting from São Paulo, speaks with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of Americas Quarterly, about Lula’s surprise victory over Flávio Bolsonaro. They unpack the WhatsApp army behind his turnaround, the economic frustration shaping voters’ choices, and what American campaigns can learn from Brazil. Plus, why a country that reelected a leftist president is still moving right. Follow Brian, @BrazilBrian. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:32Speaker 02

  Lula lost the first round of elections to Flavio and trailed in the polls for most of the race.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  No one expected this result, and he ended up winning by 3.5 points. That's 4 million votes.

• 1:47Speaker 00

  Today's Prof G Plus deep dive is on the biggest election you probably didn't follow: Brazil, where voters just re-elected their president, Lula, to a historic fourth term. Lula, a veteran of the left, who first took office in 2003, beat Flavio Bolsonaro, the right-wing senator and son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, 51.8% to 48.2. He's now the first four-term president in Brazil's history. He's also the first candidate to lose the first round and come back to win the runoff since Brazil reinstated direct elections in 1989. The result surprised almost everyone. For most of the three weeks before the runoff, the polls had Flavio in front by as much as six points. The outcome also defied a broader regional shift. Since Trump returned to office,

• 2:32Speaker 00

  Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras have all moved to the right. The biggest country in Latin America, Brazil, went the other way. Lula's win comes with a catch, however. Voters also elected the most conservative Congress since Brazil's return to democracy, and Bolsonaro's party and his allies are set to control both chambers. Lula will be governing against that Congress with an economy under real strain. Brazil has one of the highest real interest rates on the planet, more than 9% after inflation. That's higher than Russia's, a country at war, and four times what peers, including Chile and South Africa, pay. In the U.S., it's close to zero. Even so, inflation is running at 4.6%

• 3:16Speaker 00

  above the central bank's tolerance range, a record of nearly 85 million Brazilians are behind on their debt payments, and public debt has surged more than 10 points during Lula's current term to over 82% of GDP. Why should we care? Brazil is the largest economy in Latin America and the fourth-largest democracy on Earth, and Donald Trump had a candidate in the race. Last year, he hit Brazil with 50% tariffs, at the time the highest he'd imposed on any country, and tied them directly to the prosecution of Jair Bolsonaro, who's now serving 27 years in prison for plotting to overturn the 2022 election. Flavio promised his father amnesty. If that sounds familiar, or could be increasingly familiar,

• 4:00Speaker 00

  trust your instincts. Trump's tariffs on Canada helped hand Mark Carney a victory, and in Brazil, they helped turn a weakened incumbent into a nationalist hero. To unpack what comes next, our associate producer Laura Genere, a Brazilian herself, sat down with Brian Winter, editor-in-chief of America's Quarterly and vice president of Policy at the America Society and Council of the Americas. Brian spent a decade reporting from Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico for Reuters. Here's Laura in conversation with Brian.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Brian, it's great to have you with us today. Thank you so much for doing this.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  It's a pleasure to be here.

• 4:40Speaker 02

  I'm currently in Sao Paulo, where we just lived through a historic election. Incumbent and left-wing president Lula won a fourth term, beating right-winger Flavio Bolsonaro, the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro. And it was a pretty stunning comeback. Lula lost the first round of elections to Flavio and trailed in the polls for most of the race. No candidate had ever done that and still won the presidency since Brazil returned to direct elections in 1989. Investors also had priced in a Flavio win as well. But for anyone who doesn't follow Brazil closely, it's the fifth-largest country in the world by area and the seventh by population, with more than 213 million people. It's Latin America's largest economy, and by the IMF's latest count,

• 5:25Speaker 02

  the 10th-largest economy in the world, on track to pass Italy and Russia next year. It's also the fourth-largest democracy on Earth. And if you drank coffee this morning, there's a good chance some of it came from here. Brazil is the world's biggest coffee exporter and supplies about a third of what Americans drink. But we'll get into how Lula pulled off the win and what it means for Brazil. But first, Brian, for people who don't follow Brazilian politics, why is this an election they should have been watching?

• 5:55Speaker 03

  Well, that's a great question. And you mentioned coffee. I've had a lot of it over the last several days in the wake of this election result, which, as you mentioned, nobody saw coming. You know, I speak to people on both sides of the political debate, in Brazil, on left and on right. And in the Lula camp, no one expected this result because he lost by two percentage points in the first round. And their best hope was that maybe he'd just barely eke out a victory in the runoff. And he ended up winning by 3.5 percentage points. That's 4 million votes. To the question of why people should care about Brazil, a couple of basic things. The United States and Brazil

• 6:38Speaker 03

  are the two largest democracies in the Western Hemisphere. It's also the home to 2/3 of the Amazon rainforest, which is critical to the present and future of the planet. And there's also, you know, these bizarre parallels that we've seen between the United States and Brazil over the last 10 years or so. Ironic in a way because I spent the first half of my career telling U.S. audiences, "Hey, look, guys, like, Brazil is its own country, has its own history, its own energy. Let's not be so self-obsessed and self-regarding to think that what happens in the United States will have an impact on the politics of Brazil." But there have been so many parallels, really, since the election of Donald Trump in 2016

• 7:23Speaker 03

  and then the election of Jair Bolsonaro, two years later. So I think there's a lot that our countries have in common as well. So when it comes to why we should care, I would start with those things.

• 7:33Speaker 02

  I'd love to come back to the parallels because, as you said, there are definitely many, especially with the recent Biden and Trump election. But just to get back to the win, Lula's win. So he went from trailing to winning in like a pretty shocking three weeks. As we said, he gained roughly 10 million votes between the rounds compared to like 3.6 million for Flavio, mostly through like higher turnout and picking up voters from eliminated candidates. And as the sitting president, Lula also made some big policy moves in that window. Congress passed a constitutional amendment ending Brazil's six-day work week, guaranteeing workers two days off with no pay cuts. For context, the five-day work week is pretty standard in most developed economies. And Lula also raised Bolsa Família,

• 8:18Speaker 02

  which is Brazil's main welfare program he himself started a couple decades ago, with bigger payments starting six days before the vote. And he also cut federal taxes on gasoline and launched a new debt relief program. But I'd love to ask you, what do you think really made the difference in those three weeks? Just so we can add some color to this sort of surprising turnaround. And one last follow-up. It's the U.S. midterms are, as this is released this week. So is there anything in how Lula turned this around that the American campaigns on either side should also kind of pay attention to? What do you think of the three weeks between the first and second round?

• 8:55Speaker 03

  Well, Laura, as you mentioned, there were a variety of things that happened, including this big bill that he ran up of more than $40 billion worth of tax breaks and extra spending on welfare programs and so on. And that's part of the reason why financial markets were upset that Lula won. They had been counting on a Flavio Bolsonaro victory. But they, along with the rest of us, were wrong. And I have to say that these have been humbling days for me because I certainly, you know, we all sensed that the momentum was shifting in Lula's direction, but none of us expected it would swing quite this much. And I do wonder if there are lessons

• 9:39Speaker 03

  for Democrats in the United States or perhaps anybody, anywhere, looking to run a campaign in 2026, where, you know, the technological landscape has changed so much. And I would start with this basic fact. Lula, at the age of 80, acquired his first smartphone in the final two weeks of the campaign. And you know, part of your audience may think, whoa, why didn't he have one before? And that's a good question. You know, he was an old school politician, really a man of the 20th century.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  That was when he had his political rise was during the 1970s and the 1980s. But this is also a story of a modern digital operation that came out of nowhere in the space of three weeks between the first round of voting, which Lula lost by two points, and the second round, which of course he ultimately won. And the stories that are coming out suggest that Lula was prevailed upon to allow a small group of young aides to go crazy. You know, online and specifically on WhatsApp,

• 11:04Speaker 03

  which is such a huge platform in Brazil, along with others like Instagram and TikTok. I think it's important to pause here and note that there are various studies that show that Brazil is one of the countries in the world with the highest rate of engagement with social media. According to one study, on average, more than six hours a day. And that includes WhatsApp as well as other platforms. And so this was perhaps a country that was especially ripe for this kind of campaign. So what happened? There was this young, this one young congressman named Andrés Janonis, very close to Lula, but who had been kept somewhat at arm's length during the first round.

• 11:49Speaker 03

  And they liberated him, so to speak, to build out a digital army in the hopes of staging a comeback. And that's exactly what he did. He took a group that he had of some 50,000 people and just started, he renamed it Lula's Army, and he just started building it out with constant content. That, you know, it was an interesting dynamic because the foot soldiers in the army, so to speak, were allowed to post. It was, it was all him and a couple of other people. And they were given orders to post things online and so on. By the end of the campaign, this group had 10 million people.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  And if you had to point to one thing that turned Lula's campaign around, it was that. And of course, look, I mean, the campaign would have never worked had there not been actual content and ideas to use those channels for. But I can confirm for you, I've had conversations with people all over Latin America, including politicians, over the last couple of days since this election result. And this is what they're all asking about, seeking to replicate for themselves. Because prior to that, it had really only been the right in Brazil that seemed to know how to use social media. This is something that, you know, progressive groups all over the world

• 13:13Speaker 03

  have struggled to match the engagement that the right has been able to muster. So perhaps this really will turn into a case study that others around the world will, will look at.

• 13:24Speaker 02

  But to that point, I'd love to ask you, how much do you think this win, we can credit to Lula himself versus, how much do you think he was simply riding like an anti Bolsonaro wave? And for some context, there's like high rejection to the Bolsonaro name in Brazil because of their association with an attempted coup in 2022, for which Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving 27 years. Again, Jair Bolsonaro is Flávio Bolsonaro's father. Since the Bolsonaro name is pretty tainted at this point. And, and even the choice to put Flávio Bolsonaro forward as the candidate that would, you know, represent sort of the right in Brazil was, people see it as a mistake because there's a lot of voters in Brazil

• 14:06Speaker 02

  who see the presidential vote as a lesser of two evils. Like who's least bad is it Lula or is it Bolsonaro? And using Bolsonaro against Lula might lead a lot, a lot more people who aren't necessarily pro-Lula to vote for Lula because they're so scared of the Bolsonaro name as, you know, they have the sort of threat to democracy staying attached to, to the, their reputation because of Jair's involvement with the coup. The Lula name is being floated as such an epic story in Brazilian politics, which is definitely true. But he is, he's actually turning 81 today. It's his birthday today. You know, what elected him this time around? Do you think it was really? Do you think you can credit his sort of cult of personality?

• 14:49Speaker 02

  Or was it really just more of like, we're scared of Bolsonaro?

• 14:53Speaker 03

  I'm not sure Lula himself knows the answer to that question as we sit here today. This is what everyone's trying to figure out. I mean, look, there, there are philosophical questions in, that you've raised about why people vote the way they do. Do they go into the ballot box thinking, oh gosh, I'm so happy to cast a vote for this candidate? Or do they fear or hate the person who they feel like they're casting a vote against? Many political scientists who have tried to understand this question in Brazil think it's the latter, that especially in a second round runoff,

• 15:34Speaker 03

  like the Brazilian system has, that it's usually about opposition to, yes, people who want to avoid somebody coming back in, to power. But look, I think that some of this is inevitably wrapped up with Lula's story as well. And this is where, you know, the Brazilian case probably is not replicable elsewhere because there's nobody else in Latin American politics quite like Lula. If he completes this fourth term to which he's been elected, and I think it's fair to raise that, given that he would be 85 by the time it's over. He will have been the main figure of Brazilian politics for an entire half century, for 50 years,

• 16:19Speaker 03

  dating from the 1979 strike in which he was a labor union leader under dictatorship, who very bravely took a stand in favor of better working conditions for metalworkers and others in Brazil, at a time when, when strikes were illegal. And since that moment, you know, he ran for president for the first time in 1989. And he actually lost three elections before he won one. He finally won in 2002. This long career was one of Lula's weaknesses during the campaign for a US equivalent. Lots of people compare Lula to Joe Biden.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  And that makes sense because Lula was about the same age Biden was during his campaign. We all know how that ended. And I have to say that Lula has not shown, at least as far as I've seen, any of the visible signs of physical or mental decline that the former president Biden did. But I actually think that the proper analogy would be with Bill Clinton. Because Bill Clinton was elected for the first time in 1992. And we think about how long ago that was in our politics. Well, imagine if Bill Clinton had run in four elections since then. And that's roughly how Brazilians see Lula. But look, you have to give the guy credit.

• 17:48Speaker 03

  He was able to put together one last winning campaign. I think a lot of it was centered around his biography and the connection that he has with Brazil's working classes. Because he is one of them. He's somebody who grew up, you know, under very precarious circumstances, who sold oranges and cashews on the streets of Sao Paulo when his family moved there from northeastern Brazil, a very drought-stricken, poorer part of Brazil when he was just a kid. And, you know, that magic of his biography and his connection that he has with the working classes in particular are what carried him over the top.

• 18:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm sure. I mean, I was born in 2001, so I have never known Brazil without Vite, which is Lula's party. And most of it was Lula himself, except for the, for years of Bolsonaro we had in 2018 to 22.

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• 22:01Speaker 02

  I would love to get to kind of the big theme, which is corruption and trust. And corruption has hung over Brazilian politics on both sides for decades. Lula himself was jailed before his conviction was annulled, and Jair Bolsonaro is now serving 27 years for Poliana Kub. Also, Flávio Bolsonaro is under active investigation. Actually, in the news just before we joined, he seems to have fled the country after the federal police in Brazil, like FBI, requested his passport. But anyway, it's a developing situation. I feel like at this point, voters on both sides kind of assume their own candidate

• 22:45Speaker 02

  is tainted, and I feel like corruption, this year we had a big financial corruption scandal, Banco Maestro, which seemed to have reached kind of every Brazilian business and politics elite, including not Lula himself, but maybe some of his allies and Flávio himself. So I would love to know kind of the outside view. So you've covered Brazil from the inside, and you're now based in New York. How does Brazil's corruption problem look to sort of investors, governments abroad, compared with how us Brazilians experience it? Because it's become such a kind of commonplace theme in how we think about our politics,

• 23:28Speaker 02

  but also especially given the way corruption has become seemingly more entrenched in American politics as well, with Trump in power and insider trading scandals and whatnot. So I'd love to know your perspective.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Well, you've stolen my thunder a bit, because what I was going to say was, is as an American who follows Brazil, I have to start by acknowledging that corruption is a problem in our politics as well.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  That's my starting point. Look, on the subject of corruption specifically in Brazil, a lot has happened over the last 10 to 15 years or so, including most famously, the Lava Jato scandal of the 2010s.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 24:06Speaker 03

  This was another scandal that, when it broke, splashed onto, I mean, not everybody, but close, politicians, business leaders, all across the political spectrum were wrapped up in that corruption scheme.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 03

  We've seen something happen similarly this year. Another scandal that seemed to be connected to everybody. The path to changing that over the longer term is hard, because these are systems that take root over long periods of time. And I guess for me, one of the takeaways is it's hard to build a judicial system that works.

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  And that applies justice equally. You know, we're never perfect, but I think Brazil's got some work to do on that front. As far as its impact on the election, it's very, again, and I'm sorry to sort of weave a bit around this question, but it's hard to speak about in absolute terms, because it seemed, at various points during this campaign, like corruption was the number one issue for voters. Like, this was what people were really watching and reacting to. And then, at the end, it was as if the narrative changed, and people became more focused on

• 25:36Speaker 03

  the culture wars, on pocketbook issues, on worries about Brazilian democracy, if the Bolsonaro family were to return to power. You know, the bottom line is, don't blink. Because the focus of a campaign and the narrative of a campaign, in the age of smartphones, in the age of social media, can change so fast. I mean, I don't know that I've ever seen momentum change as dramatically, as quickly, as I did in this Brazilian race. And I don't think that was just because it was Brazil.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  Right.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  I think this has to do with, you know, with the way politics are now. When I visited Brazil on several occasions in 2026, I was struck by how hard it was to find anyone who was excited about either candidate. And so I think that was a dynamic where, you know, you had people who were declaring who they wanted to vote for to pollsters and others, but they weren't as sure as we thought they were.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 26:44Speaker 03

  And so, you know, maybe that's another broader lesson as well.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  Totally. I'd love to come back to the US parallels. I'll start with one that I'll pose, which is the vibe session, a term that's kind of used in the US. And I think it applies to Brazil, because on paper, Lula's economy seemed to be doing well. You know, unemployment was low and wages were growing, but Brazilians don't feel it. In a September poll, 49% of Brazilians said the economy had gotten worse over the past year, and only 19% said it had gotten better. And Americans surely will recognize this from the Biden years. But I mean, on the unemployment point, a lot of the explanation is what kind of jobs those are. Nearly four in 10 Brazilian workers are in the informal economy, and almost 2 million

• 27:31Speaker 02

  now drive or deliver full-time for apps like Uber and other delivery apps, mostly because they couldn't find another job. And The Financial Times had a recent article about this, where they described it as the Uber-ization of Brazil. So the low unemployment number, at least, we can't take it face value. And another part is the debt. A record of nearly 84 million Brazilians are behind other payments at some of the highest interest rates in the world. I would love to know how you square the headline numbers that, you know, growth was fine and, you know, the situation wasn't as dire with what voters seem to be telling pollsters. And how much do you think this economy sort of factored in to the election, at least compared with maybe corruption like we were talking about?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  And do you think this is a fair comparison, at least with the US?

• 28:19Speaker 03

  Oh, I do. I mean, look, I think there are two main issues at work here. The first one is that people struggle.

• 28:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  And the jobs are not as high quality as they used to be. Traditionally, certainly when Lula was coming up in politics, the pathway to the middle class in Brazil lied with a formal sector job, usually in a factory, usually in industry. In fact, Lula's party, the Workers' Party, is built around that idea.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  The trade unions that were so strong in the 1970s and 80s. But as elsewhere, including the United States, industry in Brazil has eroded, values have changed somewhat, and it's happened in a relatively short period of time. When I was a reporter living in Sao Paulo during the first half of the 2010s, that was still an era where people were so proud to have a carteira assinada.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:28Speaker 03

  Which means, in English, that's like a signed notebook. And it's the little notebook where, if you have a formal sector job, your employer provides a written record that you have that job, and then signs it. And for a generation of Brazilians, this was their maximum aspiration. Not only did it mean a certain economic prosperity, or at least safety, but it was also a source of prestige and pride in a lot of segments of the working class to have that kind of job. Well, today...

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Not only have a lot of those jobs disappeared because of competition, mainly from China, but also Brazilians in polls say that they would rather work for themselves. And that is a big change in the span of about 10 years. So while it's true that, yes, some people are making ends meet through Uber and through other gig work, some of that is by necessity, but a lot of it is by choice. And the Bolsonaro family appeared to have benefited from that switch until, you know, in the end, it was not enough for them to get elected.

• 30:53Speaker 03

  The other point I would make just regarding the parallels is, you know, the economic forces at work in Brazil are very similar to what we saw in the 2024 election here in the United States, where at first President Biden and later Vice President Harris seemed kind of disoriented by the amount of dissatisfaction out there in the world because the headline numbers of the economy were good. As you noted, Brazilian unemployment is at an all-time low.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Inflation is also under control.

• 31:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  At about 4%, but there are a variety of other things happening within the economy, including very, very high interest rates, that mean that affordability is really a concern. And it's been funny to see Brazilian newspapers, over the course of this year, use the English word affordability when they're talking about this subject. And yet more proof of how some of these ideas and agendas get passed back and forth between our countries.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Definitely. For a lot of Brazilians, this felt like another, like I said before, an election between the lesser of two evils, right? People didn't seem excited, like you said, about either candidate. In a way, it's felt like that for several cycles now, especially as Lula has been candidate for many elections in the past decades. But there is a sense of disillusionment, at least with Brazilian politics, and kind of especially with both the right and the left's failure to produce sort of like more moderate candidates. And Brazil still struggles as kind of a stagnated country and with low growth, et cetera. But would you say you are bullish on Brazil?

• 32:32Speaker 03

  Look, I am a mix on this question. I think on the one hand, Brazil has all kinds of, not just potential. I actually, I've developed in 25 years of following Brazil, I've developed an allergy to the word potential.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:52Speaker 03

  Because I feel like it's used to describe like a kind of ideal, like a fantasy land that everybody kind of knows is just a way to sound optimistic, but not really be optimistic. I prefer the word opportunity. And Brazil has concrete opportunities in front of it. It is an exceptional producer of food for the world, number one in so many areas, whether it's beef, soy, iron ore. It's the biggest producer of oil in Latin America now as well. It's not Venezuela or Mexico, or even Guyana. It's Brazil.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  And it has the advantage in today's convulsed world of being distant from the world's conflict zones, both geographically and geopolitically. Brazil tries to have good relations with everybody, in part because it can, because of its geographic location, but also in part because they think it helps sales, like you can sell to everybody. So why not have that good relationship? And it's funny, because I say that sometimes to Brazilian audiences, and I see people kind of look at me skeptically, like, oh, this is, you know, here's a gringo who's trying

• 34:15Speaker 03

  to, you know, to sound nice and sound complimentary. But I'll tell you, I speak to audiences all over the world about Brazil and about Latin America, and the further a field you travel, the more you're likely to see people nodding. Because people in places like Dubai, or Tokyo, or Europe, or even the United States, understand how important these advantages are. So why do I have a mixed outlook? Because I think that the next period of time could be difficult for Brazil, the next year or so especially. These challenges that Lula faces with getting not only the government's debts, but household debts under control. There's polling suggesting that Brazilian households on average are spending 30% of

• 34:59Speaker 03

  their income servicing their debts, in part because they've run up credit cards, but also in part because they've engaged in these betting apps, which have been so prominent over the last couple of years. He's going to have, Lula is also going to have to deal with a Congress that is much, much, much, much more conservative than he is. And so 2027 could be a difficult year for Brazil.

• 35:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Even though I think the longer-term outlook, I genuinely believe the longer-term outlook is brighter.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. I love that answer, and it's how I'd answer it too. So you spent a decade reporting from Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, and you've written about what you call Latin America's revolution of the right. Since Trump returned to office, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Honduras have all shifted right, or either shifted right or doubled down on a conservative turn. And over the past decade, governing parties across the region have lost election after election. But Lula managed to cut through both trends, both as a leftist leader and as incumbent. So why do you think Brazil went against this sort of Latin American current?

• 36:01Speaker 03

  Some of it because of the unique dynamics of this campaign that we've described, the problematic nature of the Bolsonaro family.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Whose leadership of the Brazilian conservative movement is now very much in doubt.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Especially after Flavio Bolsonaro fled the country. I think he, in doing so, he has escaped prison, but possibly ceded leadership for the entire Bolsonaro family.

• 36:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:27Speaker 03

  Of the right-wing movement in Brazil. I think others will now compete for that crown.

• 36:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:32Speaker 03

  I would also note that the Lula of today is more conservative than the Lula of 20 years ago, especially when it becomes, when it comes to some of these social issues.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:43Speaker 03

  That have so animated conservatives who've won elsewhere in Latin America. Any kind of progressive social agenda, Lula, somewhat to the frustration of people on the left, Lula has backed away from most of those issues over the last couple of years. He was under pressure to, from some quarters, to try to support abortion rights, for example. He didn't want to touch that issue, in part because polling shows 70%, maybe more, of Brazilians are against it. Lula, also one other example from the campaign, he late in the campaign decided that he would

• 37:26Speaker 03

  support efforts to lower the age of criminal responsibility in Brazil, meaning the age for which you can be sent to prison, tried as an adult, as we'd say here in the United States, from 18 to 16. This was something that his party had resisted for years and years. And he finally acquiesced because he saw a need to tack right, especially on security issues during this campaign. So while it's true that the right did not win, per se, in this Brazilian election, their influence was still very much felt. And part of Lula's success will be determined by whether he continues to recognize that today's Brazil really is in many ways a right-of-center country, even though they've just re-elected

• 38:11Speaker 03

  a leftist president.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't know if you heard of that book, O Brasil no Espelho, Brazil in the Mirror, where there's big research done that found that actually the average Brazilian citizen is kind of conservative and right-wing, right? I think that was the takeaway from the book, which I was very surprised about because it's, Lula's been in power for so long, you kind of forget that it's unnecessarily reflective. And Brazil is also a huge country, which most people forget about too. It's just so diverse demographically also and geographically. It's very hard to pin down. Just one simple description. Brian Winter is the editor-in-chief of America's Quarterly and Vice President of Policy at the America Society and Council of the Americas. Brian, thank you so much for joining us.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  It was a real pleasure. I enjoyed it too. Thank you.