Reality is Milei’s only rival, for now

Javier Milei built his own political reality, and now he must defend it. The transformation he produced has given him room to continue on his own terms, but its unwanted effects are already generating possible campaigns against him.

Fourteen months before the elections, the outlines of a challenge to the libertarian president are taking shape. One decisive ingredient is still missing: a candidate, or perhaps two, with the name and political weight to confront him. For now, Milei is arguing with the shadows of his own political project while waiting to see whom he will face.

The article says Milei first succeeded by turning widespread anger into a message and by choosing his opponents carefully. He blamed Kirchnerism for the country’s problems and defeated Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, who had tried to present moderation and dialogue as an alternative. In that contest, Milei drew decisive votes from the former Juntos por el Cambio coalition, linking Cristina Kirchner and her supporters with those who had promised to defeat them through more conventional politics.

The president is now further removed from the outsider who disrupted Argentina’s political system. Like other politicians, he faces the task of creating expectations. As a re-election candidate, he must defend the way he has transformed the reality he once promised to change from outside government. The article says his record is enough to make him competitive, but not enough to secure victory.

Campaign mode has begun at Casa Rosada, and the government is seeking to use every opportunity that appears. The article points to the emotions surrounding the Malvinas Islands, highlighted during the World Cup, as one issue that has been intensely exploited. Milei also benefits from the powers held by every Argentine president: the ability to change conditions that anger voters and to use state resources in pursuit of those changes. Yet politicians from Patricia Bullrich to Kirchnerism see the destruction of registered jobs and the closure of companies as both a social risk and a political opportunity. Milei has responded by choosing an uncompromising message and defending the fiscal discipline that controlled, but did not defeat, the country’s macroeconomic disorder.