No lifeline for Chavez

Unlike his close allies in Moscow, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez dispatched a cheerful message to Barack Obama after the election. Chavez, who expelled the U.S. ambassador from Caracas in September, offered a fresh start on relations with what he likes to call 'the empire'; he even tried to take credit for the victory of Obama (whom he calls 'the black man'). Maybe that's because Chavez faces his own crucial electoral test ....

Chavez has already done quite a lot to help himself. The elections Sunday are for 23 state governors and hundreds of legislative and mayoral posts, and earlier this year polls showed that opposition candidates could sweep the most important races, including the governorships of greater Caracas and surrounding Miranda state. Chavez responded by borrowing a tactic from Iran, another close ally. His administration banned more than 300 candidates....

Chavez is one of the hostile foreign leaders that Obama once said he would meet without preconditions. But the president-elect, who ignored a question about Venezuela at his Nov. 7 news conference, has no reason to throw the self-styled 'Bolivarian revolutionary' a lifeline.

With oil prices dropping, domestic inflation and crime rates soaring, and his opposition gaining, Chavez's bid to succeed Fidel Castro as a Latin nemesis of the United States is unraveling. There are Latin American countries where early engagement and attention by the Obama administration could do much good; Venezuela isn't one of them."