Lopez Acts Like A Thug

Yesterday I wrote about the logic of how the Venezuelan opposition, which is the minority, needs to show the majority of Venezuelans why they deserve their vote. This is clearly not how to do it. Leopoldo López allegedly has an arrest warrant out against him, and here is his response:

Late Thursday Lopez dared the government to arrest him.

“You don’t have the b---- to put me in jail?” He wrote Maduro on Twitter. “Or are you waiting for your orders from Havana? The truth is on our side.”

Put simply, this is the behavior of a thug. Henrique Capriles has been taking the conciliatory route, a strategy that splits the opposition. See David Smilde's very good take on both the protest violence and the split. López is the one pushing the "la salida" slogan and accompanying hashtag.

It may well be that López would like to become a martyr, but acting like a teenaged bully is not a good way to achieve that. Certainly it is not a good way to demontrate your leadership skills to the majority of Venezuelans that you need to convince. The fact that I keep coming back to is that you will never, ever win an election without that majority. And if by some combination of events you overthrow the government, then you will find a majority of the country against you, as you did in 2002.