A few thousand miles away from the political earthquake in Washington last week, another election took place in the Americas. Just as the Republican era seemed to be ending, a former adversary Daniel Ortega was completing his presidential victory in Nicaragua. There is an irony here (I am sure of it), Tuesday's congressional election will surely lead to the final clear out of Reaganites who Bush brought in at the start of his administration; whilst their nemesis during the 1980s is resurrecting his political career.
As a leading member of the FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional), Ortega assumed de facto control in 1981 of Nicaragua, bringing the central American state into a Marxist alliance with Cuba, in stark opposition to its right wing past under Somoza's Sandinistas. The ensuing guerrilla war against US backed "contras", led to thousands of deaths, but also came to represent probably the low point of the Reagan doctrine: preventing the spread of communism in the Americas by any means and using any proxy available.
So what future lies ahead for Nicaragua and Latin America for that matter in the post Bush world? Either he will follow the Chavez path of confrontation or he will, encouraged by consensus seeking Democrats, follow a more centrist path than 25 years before.
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