Touch move

By Alex P. Vidal 

“Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.” —Nipsey Hussle

IN less than two months, candidates for local positions in the May 2025 Philippine midterm elections will start filing their certificates of candidacy (COCs).

From October 1-8, 2024, it will become crystal clear who are running for certain local and national legislative positions and who will turn tale.

And unlike in the previous elections, there will be no more substitutions. In chess, they call it “touch move.”

No more telenovelas and grand entrances and exits in the Boggie Wonderland.

Dramatic changes in the line-ups and in the major executive and legislative positions will be known and occur only in the eleventh hour, but not anymore after candidates have started walking out of the Commission on Elections (Comelec) offices.

That’s why we can’t still predict with absolute certainty if those who are claiming to be running for mayors and representative today will really end up filing their COCs for the same positions.

We can’t figure out who are the decoys and the Real McCoys.

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Many politicians will continue to keep their cards close to their chests to confuse their rivals.

In some cases, even their spouses aren’t told about the subterfuge and bluff. Especially now that they can no longer file for a last-minute substitution after they have submitted their COCs.

For instance, rumored aspirant for Iloilo City lone congressional district, Raisa Treñas-Chu, could end up filing her COC for Iloilo City mayor while her father, Mayor Geronimo “Jerry” Treñas, could end up filing his COC for congressman versus incumbent Rep. Julienne “Jamjam” Baronda.

Or Baronda could end up filing her COC for city mayor. And so on and so forth.

What if one of them won’t file a COC? Or both father and daughter won’t file any COC at all? Impossible but nobody can tell until someone will live in cloud cuckoo land.

No one can be sure until all the COCs have been inked in the Comelec. The crucial dates are October 1-8, 2024.

All the people can do for the time being is speculate and watch as the crystal ball scries. The leopard doesn’t change its spots, but nothing is permanent except change, according to Heraclitus; and only fools don’t change their minds.

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The New York Times and Siena College released their latest round of swing-state polling on the Presidential race on August 7.

According to New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner, it showed Kamala Harris leading Donald Trump by five points in Arizona and by two points in North Carolina, while trailing Trump by a point in Nevada and by four points in Georgia. (In 2020, Joe Biden edged out Trump in all of these states except North Carolina.)

Chotiner wrote that the cumulative results show a very slight Harris edge. Coupled with the previous set of Times/Siena polls—which had Harris leading Trump by four points across three battleground states in the Rust Belt (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan)—the over-all picture of the race has transformed since President Joe Biden stepped aside from contesting the Democratic nomination in July. Harris is narrowly ahead.

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“To talk about what it all means, I recently spoke by phone with Nate Cohn, the Times’ chief political analyst who also oversees the paper’s polling. (Full disclosure: Cohn and I worked together at The New Republic, and are friends.),” Chotiner explained.

“During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the surprising ways in which Harris’s coalition appears to differ from Biden’s in 2020, how to think about the Sun Belt versus the Rust Belt, and the prospect of a third straight Presidential election with serious polling error.”

Chotiner to Cohn: “You decided to do these polls in two rounds, one in the Rust Belt and then one in the Sun Belt. Why did you make that decision, and do you think it’s helpful for people who are following the election to separate those two areas in their minds?”

Cohn answered: “Well, there’s one practical reason, which is that it is difficult for us to simultaneously and quickly field surveys in seven states. This is a really dynamic race, and so, if we had polled all seven of these simultaneously, we might’ve had to field over ten days, and I think there would’ve been some valid questions about whether the results that we had at the end were still reflective of the race as it is today.”

“There’s also a substantive reason, which is that the Sun Belt and Rust Belt states, if we can call them that, have been very different this cycle. The Northern battleground states are relatively white, and the polls this cycle have shown Democrats faring relatively well among white voters,” Cohn continued.

“As a consequence, even Joe Biden was fairly competitive there. The Sun Belt states, on the other hand, are relatively diverse, and the polls have shown Democrats faring relatively poorly among nonwhite voters this cycle. As a consequence, Donald Trump had a significant lead in the Sun Belt battleground states even as the Rust Belt states remained competitive. So I think there was a pretty good reason to be treating them separately, even beyond the practical reasons.”

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)