One would think that losing by 200,000 votes in a presidential election would be considered enough of a margin to protect the democratic process from being hijacked by a bunch of thuggish street brawlers. Alas, Mexican moonbats, taking a page from their brethren to the north who believe any election they lose must be rigged, are urging people to take to the streets and force a result more to their liking:

Downtown Mexico City swelled Saturday with the accumulated frustration and rage of the poor, who were stoked into a sign-waving, fist-pumping frenzy by new fraud allegations that failed populist candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador hopes will overturn the results of Mexico’s presidential election.

López Obrador ignited the smoldering emotions of his followers Saturday morning, alleging for the first time that Mexico’s electoral commission had rigged its computers before the July 2 election to ensure the half-percentage-point victory of Felipe Calderón, a champion of free trade. In a news conference before the rally, López Obrador called Calderón “an employee” of Mexico’s powerful upper classes and said a victory by his conservative opponent would be “morally impossible.”

Obrador has even less proof of computer rigging than our own moonbats had of Diebold tomfoolery during the 2004 election. In fact, the charge is completely made up out of whole cloth, a cynical attempt to manipulate the poor, the uneducated, and the resentful into pouring into the streets of Mexico City in order to intimidate and threaten the authorities into giving them what they couldn’t get at the ballot box.

These are the same tactics leftist bully boys have used for more than half a century. What you can’t win fair and square, try and steal. It worked in Eastern Europe with Soviet tanks to back them up. It remains to be seen whether the Mexican authorities can resist calls to throw the election laws to the four winds and, in the name of internal peace, simply hand the election to Obrador.

What Obrador has already done is delegitimize the election results in the eyes of about half the country. This despite election monitors from Europe giving the contest a clean bill of health:

Lopez Obrador called for protests across Mexico, saying last Sunday’s elections were more fraudulent than those held during 71 years of one-party rule. European Union election observers have said they had found no major irregularities.

While Obrador calls for a manual recount of every ballot, the Mexican law specifically forbids it except under extraordinary circumstances:

López Obrador wants a vote-by-vote count, which would require opening sealed vote packets from more than 130,000 polling stations. Electoral commission officials have sided with Calderón’s strategists, who argue that the law does not allow for the packets to be opened unless tally sheets attached to the packets appear to have been altered. López Obrador said that only 2,600 vote packets were opened Tuesday and Wednesday during a marathon official count, which shrank Calderón’s lead from 400,000 votes after a preliminary vote to 230,000.

Thousands of López Obrador’s supporters, many of whom had marched across the city for hours, chanted “Voto por voto, casilla por casilla”—vote by vote, polling place by polling place—as they streamed into the Zocalo on Saturday. Many entered the square waving the yellow flags of López Obrador’s Democratic Revolutionary Party, or PRD.

When has the law ever stopped the left from getting what they want anywhere in the world? It’s “justice” that matters in the end. And “justice” is always defined as the lefty coming out on top and to hell with the law.

The Washington Post’s Ronald Klain demonstrates a myopia that’s breathtaking:

For Lopez Obrador, the clock is ticking loudly. If he wants to keep his candidacy alive, he must take decisive—and quite divisive—action. He must bring meaningful and documented claims of fraud in the election. He must call his supporters to the streets and question the legitimacy of the vote casting and counting process. He must demand that, notwithstanding Mexican law, every ballot be recounted, by hand, to ensure an accurate tally. Above all, he must reject any suggestion that Calderòn received more votes—indeed, he must insist that any fair count would show that he is the rightful winner.

“Notwithstanding Mexican law?” Just who does this moonbat think he is, Al Gore? Actually, Klain wishes Gore had followed exactly this strategy in 2000:

This, of course, was not the playbook that Gore followed in 2000. The vice president rejected advice to do these things. Instead of claiming victory, he limited himself to suggesting that the result was in doubt—and unknown—until a “full and fair” count could be completed. He urged calm among his supporters and called off street protests by progressive groups and allies. He never, ever questioned the legitimacy of the institutions—the courts or the canvassers—responsible for the tallies, and he forbade his lawyers and operatives from doing anything of the sort.

Gore may have “forbade” his operatives from questioning the legitimacy of the process but that didn’t seem to have much affect as party activists worked overtime to pull every trick in the book to circumvent Florida election law. We saw in the Washington State governor’s race what happens when Democrats are allowed to “count every vote.” Washington state Dems were actually able to not only count votes cast on election day, but also votes that mysteriously turned up several weeks after the election following two state mandated recounts that were held prior to the discovery of the “lost” votes in heavily Democratic King county.

This is why there are laws and procedures on the books that should be followed during election challenges. There was no law or procedure in Florida that mandated the kind of recounts ordered by the Florida Supreme Court. That body – a Democratic majority seated – created law on the spot in order to supersede the elected legislature who had diligently passed enabling legislation for election recounts. This is what the US Supreme Court overturned – the imaginary law created out of whole cloth by the Florida court. And I suppose it a footnote in history, but a consortium of media outlets did a recount anyway and confirmed Bush’s victory.

Why Obrador wants to trod this path is obvious; he thinks that he can manipulate his supporters into threatening the Mexican government with riots and unrest unless they do as he bids. This without any evidence of the kind of massive vote fraud that would enable him to overtake the self-declared winner Felipe Calderón. Since he’s already convinced his peasant supporters that he was the victor and that the election was stolen from him, Felipe Calderón will have an extraordinarily difficult time governing the country over the next 6 years. This is bad news for America as the instability could lead to greater numbers of illegals trying to cross the border to find work. And if Obrador were to win, what his socialist, redistributive policies would do to the Mexican economy can only be guessed at.

It is thought that Obrador’s policies would engender a massive flight of capital from Mexico. This would mean slower economic growth which in turn would mean fewer jobs. With an unemployment rate already approaching 20%, that would mean even more illegals making their way north to keep their families from starving to death.

Either way you look at it, Mexico is in for a rough ride for the next few years.