, Columnist
Venezuela's Opposition Hurt Its Own Cause
This week's failure at the polls will make it harder to muster voters in 2018.
Fool me once.
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Almost every day, it seems, Venezuela's crypto-dictatorship manages to outdo itself. Consider the strong showing in last Sunday's regional elections by the government, which has presided over the world's worst inflation rate, national food lines, and hospitals without medicine. "Unbelievable. Absurd. Incredible. Improbable," wrote Raul Stolk, in a caustic column for Caracas Chronicles, "yet not impossible."
Converting the outrageous into business as usual has been routine for the keepers of the Bolivarian Republic, who have clung to power even as they drove what once was considered Latin America’s richest economy off the rails.