As predicted, the ultra-left candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known popularly by his initials AMLO) was elected president of Mexico on Sunday.

It was a pretty wide margin of victory that saw the other challengers conceding quickly.

Delivering early and clear acceptances of their defeats, the two main challengers have recognised Andrés Manuel López Obrador as the winner of the presidential race.

On a tough night for the ruling PRI party, their candidate, the former economy minister Jose Antonio Meade, conceded first after polls closed. Next, and even more significantly, the other main rival, Ricardo Anaya of the PAN party, also recognised Mr López Obrador’s victory.

The official results must still be published for the margin of the win to be confirmed but this is a night that Mr López Obrador and his supporters have been waiting for since 2006 – the first time he stood for the presidency in Mexico. Now, on the third attempt, he has finally taken it and, in so doing, redrawn the political map of the country.

And once again, let us all be thankful that we don’t have the same election problems as Mexico.

Sunday’s election followed one of Mexico’s deadliest campaigns in decades with more than 130 political candidates and party workers killed.

And you thought the 2016 election was bad.

So, who is this guy, anyway?

Even the New York Times has dubbed López Obrador a “leftist.”

Mr. López Obrador’s win puts a leftist leader at the helm of Latin America’s second-largest economy for the first time in decades, a prospect that has filled millions of Mexicans with hope — and the nation’s elites with trepidation.

The outcome represents a clear rejection of the status quo in the nation, which for the last quarter century has been defined by a centrist vision and an embrace of globalization that many Mexicans feel has not served them.

The core promises of Mr. López Obrador’s campaign — to end corruption, reduce violence and address Mexico’s endemic poverty — were immensely popular with voters, but they come with questions he and his new government may struggle to answer.

Seeing as López Obrador called moving to the United States “a human right“…

According to a report from Eluniversal, candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) said the people should flee Mexico to find a life in the United States, which is a pretty dismal message coming from a presidential candidate. The equivalent would be President Trump telling Americans to flee for Canada.

“And soon, very soon — after the victory of our movement — we will defend all the migrants in the American continent and all the migrants in the world,” Obrador said on Tuesday while calling on people to “leave their towns and find a life in the United States.”

This fleeing to the United States would be “a human right we will defend.”

Sounds like López Obrador has decided that the best solution for Mexico is to just have everyone move north, right? Why was he elected, again?

The NYT, which can’t resist comparing him to Donald Trump, puts it this way:

How he will pay for his ambitious slate of social programs without overspending and harming the economy? How will he rid the government of bad actors when some of those same people were a part of his campaign? Can he make a dent in the unyielding violence of the drug war, which left Mexico with more homicides last year than any time in the last two decades?

And how will Mr. López Obrador, a firebrand with a tendency to dismiss his critics in the media and elsewhere, govern?

Here are the answers:
1) The Mexican economy has picked up some steam in the first quarter of 2018, but if López Obrador’s solution is just to undo reforms (the education reforms being a prime example), then it’s going to continue to be a disaster.
2) He won’t.
3) Even the NYT acknowledges that he has no solutions to the ongoing gang violence problems.

On the issue of violence, Mr. López Obrador has largely failed to articulate a policy that goes much beyond platitudes. At one point, he said that amnesty for low-level offenders could be an option, as a way to end the cycle of incarceration.

When the suggestion summoned widespread criticism, he claimed the idea was merely an effort to think outside the box. But analysts say there is little that distinguishes his platform from those of other candidates, or even his predecessor, Mr. Peña Nieto.

4) Rather than compare him to Trump, López Obrador sounds an awful lot like someone else in American politics…

On the issue of fighting graft, perhaps the signature element of his campaign, few believe that it will be easy to address the complex realities of systemic corruption.

That could set up Mr. López Obrador to be a continuation of the disappointment that so many voters are reacting to.

“The biggest problem I see are the expectations he has built,” said Carlos Illades, a professor of social sciences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University and a historian of Mexico’s left. “The problem is going to be what he is not able to do. There are people who are expecting a lot.”

Welcome to Mexico’s “hope and change” era. But this is the guy that Trump will have to deal with going forward.

Congratulations to Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador on becoming the next President of Mexico. I look very much forward to working with him. There is much to be done that will benefit both the United States and Mexico!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 2, 2018

Buckle up, everyone, because López Obrador is the Mexican president for the next six years.