A win in Ven, but Vlad's not sad

Democracy faced off against further slides towards socialism on Sunday. The score was split, but perhaps the more important victory was the one where democracy won.

In Venezuela, Hugo Chavez appears to have lost his bid to dramatically alter the constitution that he wrote only a few years ago. The changes would have solidified the socialist state Chavez has methodically developed, allowing him to, "to run for re-election indefinitely, control foreign-currency reserves, appoint loyalists over regional elected officials and censor the media if he declares an emergency," as the Washington Times reports. I leave nothing to chance when Chavez is in charge, so I'll be uneasy until there are some official announcements, but the indications as of now are that the pro-democracy opposition has won in Venezuela.

On the other side of the world, Russia's slide back to oligarchy continued as Vladamir Putin's United Russia picked up a significant majority in the Duma, which should leave Putin as the Russian prime minister. Putin is limited by the constitution from serving another term as president, but is not ready to relinquish power. All expectations are that he will work to elect a puppet president while he continues to run the show from the historically less powerful chambers of the Duma. Although questions of irregularities in the vote, of which United Russia appears to have received more than 60%, my guess is those investigations won't go very far.

Politicians in America will probably have to tread lightly around both decisions, given the fickleness of both regimes and the significant amount of oil we import from both, but we should be very excited about what happened in Venezuela and we should be very worried about what's happening in Russia. Venezuela, though, is more significant in my mind given the impact the defeat will (hopefully) have on Evo Morales and other socialist-trending Southern American leaders.

UPDATE: I just heard as I write this that Chavez is conceding the election. That's an amazing step forward. But as a co-worker just reminded me, he's still in office until 2012, plenty of time to try again - and break a few arms along the way to make sure he doesn't lose again.