The presentation of the Sumar candidates yesterday left an image that glimpses the sign of the new times that run in the alternative left to the PSOE. Yolanda Díaz stood in front of the family photo and, behind her, like someone who escorts her, the common people and Más Madrid emerged. The new coalition has overturned the old balances of power in the universe of Unidas Podemos and this is already taking shape in the attitudes that are defining what Sumar is and how it wants to reposition itself to get out of the political “corner of the board” and to recover the «centrality of the social».
Díaz is very clear about that course and has ordered that the GPS that guides Sumar's destiny in these elections on 23-J be solely that of “improving people's lives”. What would colloquially be called “things to eat”. For this reason, now that she has taken the car that Podemos was driving with her hands, she has swerved to change lanes.
The first thing he has done to pick up speed has been to drop ballast. Díaz has undone Podemos' culture wars and has imposed a drastic change in strategy, discourse, priorities and tones. The obsessive battle against “the media powers” to discredit the press or insults to journalists and businessmen and other blows typical of tramabús is over. That rhetoric is banished by Díaz and is relegated to the consumption of marginal spaces.. That agenda had its zenith in the regional and municipal election campaign with the leaders of Podemos placing it as one of its star themes and it also had its precipitous end there, with the crash at the polls.
The speeches in favor of “noise” and anger and about the belligerence of a “brave” left that faces another “cuqui”, cowardly and submissive to the powers, also die.. Or that of the “sewers”, NATO and “fascism” as ghosts that appear in every corner.
three axes
It's not that Díaz is going to simply tone down. It is that Sumar circulates and accelerates in a different lane, on a trip to centrality and real concerns. Coalition sources explain in this sense that the campaign will be carried out around “three axes”, which are environmentalism, feminism and people's lives.
This third priority is the one that Díaz is insisting on the most now, because he recognizes that “people are having a hard time” and that they need solutions to pay the rent, face the rise in variable mortgages or to be able to fill the basket of the buy with dignity. It is around these issues that he wants to build his electoral alternative by promising a “plan”. Yesterday, in fact, Sumar quantified the social emergency bonus that Díaz announced last Sunday for those who cannot afford the rise in variable mortgages due to the increase in rates at a thousand euros.
Within the chapter of “improving people's lives”, Díaz is also emphasizing working conditions, his area in the coalition government. It has already given some brushstrokes, which are along the lines of forcing companies to revalue wages when they have benefits or reducing the working day to 40 hours a week.. In the same way, among its promises is also promoting the conciliation of personal life, so that workers can leave earlier and have free time to enjoy their family and friends or life.
As the days go by, all these concepts will be landing, but they are already the discursive foundations of Sumar and with which it seeks to open a gap.. This new strategy is being reinforced with the emergence of new profiles and candidates. In most cases experts in those areas. New faces for a new strategy.