Ebrard on Why He Is Better than López Obrador

At a speech before students and faculty at ITAM:

"It seems to me that we will have to convince, we will have to be inclusive with regard to the middle classes, to a good part of the business class in the country and that we must think less about who has moral superiority and more about who need to lead the country", he said.

In that same sense he said that his proposal is to carry out a consultation open to the entire population to see who will be the PRD candidate in the 2012 contest.

"Hopefully we can keep the agreement to have just one procedure and ultimately take into account a good part of the country that isn't a member of any party in order to have a decision."

As far as that last part, I like Ebrard about a billion times better than I do AMLO, and I agree that he'd be a far better candidate than AMLO, but this last part is a transparent attempt to get by the latter's seemingly insurmountable level of support among the left. And also an illogical one; why should everyone --panistas, priístas, fascists, narcos, et cetera-- be entitled to a say in whom the party nominates? Party members are completely capable of taking electability into account.

This also shows that the ties binding the AMLO-Ebrard agreement together are quite thin. They both have a reasonable claim to the language of the agreement --being the candidate in a better position when the time comes to make the choice-- and unless one of them steps aside to defuse the conflict, it's hard to see it not bursting.