“Cambalache” in the 21st Century: Why the Election Campaign Has Become a Tango That Makes You Want to Cry

Enrique Santos Discépolo, unwittingly perhaps Argentina’s first political analyst, could not have predicted that in the 21st century the “cambalache” — his bitter, timeless tango about chaos and moral decay — would stop being merely ideological and become algorithmic. That politics itself would be swallowed by simulation, with politicians reduced to bit players in their own spectacle.

Today’s campaign is, frankly, embarrassing. I say that not from ideology or partisanship — I have none — but from experience. I have lived in exile since 2011, driven out by political persecution under the kirchnerist era, and from that distance I watch Argentina’s public life unfold like a poorly scripted drama.

Campaigns no longer unfurl on television screens. Paid airtime for political parties should be abolished. It is a drain on the state and a throb of pain for broadcasters. Those precious seconds of airtime — squandered by every candidate — deliver a flood of unfamiliar surnames, a gaudy Pantone palette of colors, and a jumble of ballot numbers that leave viewers confused and uneasy by the time the commercials return.

In the digital age, politics has become a laboratory of emotional states. Persuasion no longer means convincing; it means modulating moods. Someone has learned to measure anger, disappointment and fear and trade them like currency. For a while, that formula worked. Javier Milei was one of its natural beneficiaries, an outsider propelled by public rage. His camp included the best architects of digital emotional climates, people who understood a country exhausted by two decades of impunity and corruption.

But that monopoly has shattered. What was once a niche art — micro-targeting, emotional manipulation, ideological echo chambers — has become an industry unto itself. Algorithms are now fortified battlements: symmetrical warfare in which everyone fires weapons of equal calibre. No one enjoys a clear advantage.

The result is a nation emotionally exhausted. Politics has turned into a marketplace of stimuli, with citizens saturated by outrage, dashed hopes, and moral fatigue. As a communications professional, I had hoped Milei would adopt a coherent campaign strategy — something more substantive than a grasp at micro-mood engineering. Even on the eve of the media blackout before the elections, his party seems rattled, nervously watching polls that have shown little utility.

Many of these polls are fabricated — produced by the same pollsters who have misled media and citizens for decades. Not every firm, of course, but an overwhelming majority — hucksters selling numbers at ever higher prices to paint false portraits of public sentiment.

In the past, political campaigns were anchored in strategy; today that strategy has faded, receding to nothing. The fault lies not with the pig, but with the hand that fed it. The Argentine electorate has been offered spectacle instead of structure, emotion instead of argument. It is not just that political discourse has deteriorated; it is that the opposition has failed to present a meaningful alternative.

Mauricio Macri once required twelve years of careful, measured rhetoric to be elected president, only to squander his own position later through persistent error. His ascent and descent underscore a truth: without strategy, without vision, even a campaign that looks successful on screens and timelines is strategically hollow.

Today’s election season is defined by tactics that border on the absurd — a carnival of outrage that neither stirs hope nor articulates a path forward. This campaign doesn’t engage citizens; it depresses them. And as Argentina faces decisions that will shape its future, that is a political tragedy.

In the end, it no longer matters who wins on Sunday. For many Argentines, what matters more is whether politics finally speaks to their hopes rather than their anxieties. As someone who left behind friends, history and family, I wish Argentina well. But the truth is this campaign makes you want to cry.