Enrico Letta is not only the political secretary of the Democratic Party and a refined man of culture but he is also a football enthusiast. Tifa Milan and the political differences did not prevent him from acknowledging in unsuspecting times that Silvio Berlusconi was by far the best president of the Rossoneri. But precisely because you understand football, Letta is the first to know that three own goals in one go they are equivalent to undergoing what in jargon is called a coat. In other words: a defeat. It is the one that the Democratic Party inflicted on itself during the ruinous battle in the Senate over the Zan bill against homotransphobia.
It was before the summer that they had warned Letta that the numbers were uncertain and that the Zan bill risked going under in the Senate. But the secretary of the Democratic Party has always gone straight and turned a deaf ear. It could also have had a reason: to consolidate the troops and give the impression of maximum compactness on the occasion of the administrative elections in October which ended with the full success of the Pd. But the elections are already in the archives and those who listened to Fabio Fazio's interview with Enrico Letta last Sunday in "Che tempo che fa" perceived that the tide had changed. Letta had no difficulty in admitting that, in order to bring the Zan bill home without distorting it, one could think of a mediation even with the centre-right. Finally. It was time. When you don't have the majority or you're not sure you have it, research a decent compromise it is the abc of politics: illusion, because the mediation evoked by Letta has never seen the light. The political chronicles tell that Five Stars, Leu and the maximalists of the Democratic Party itself (and the list would be long) imprisoned Letta and never allowed him to do what he wanted. Therefore: no mediation, no compromise e certain defeat. As exactly happened. For the centre-right, hitting the Zan bill in the Senate with a secret ballot was like throwing a penalty into an empty net and the result showed.
But instead of doing serious self-criticism as the situation required and requires and as the numbers suggested, Letta and the Democratic Party thought they could get away with attacking and discharging all responsibility on Matteo Renzi and Italia Viva even if the snipers on the Zan bill were much more than the Renzi senators and they hidden in all parties, Pd and Five Stars included.
The attack on Renzi, the result of ancient jealousies and resentments that perhaps have to do - as the philosopher Remo Bodei would have said - with the geometry of passions but certainly nothing with the logic and realism of politics, thus blows in the bud the so-called "wide field" which was supposed to represent the antechamber of the Ulivo 3.0 and, combined with the accusations of treason also addressed to Forza Italia and its wing anti-sovereignist, shatters every majority hypothesis Ursula, that is, composed of Pd, Cinque Stelle, Leu, IV, Action, +Europe and the anti-sovereign center-right, capable of putting Matteo Salvini's League in a corner. And, since in politics as in life, timing is everything, a move as imprudent as the excommunication of Iv and the anti-sovereign wing of Forza Italia made now opens the door to two more own goals: the first on the occasion of the next election of the new President of the Republic and the second in view of the political elections.
The Democratic Party, which in the last 45 years has almost always influenced the election of the Head of State, knows very well that the music has changed and that, even combining with Cinque Stelle and Leu, it does not have the numbers to make a majority and elect one of its candidates at the Quirinal. If he wants to try, he must find an agreement with the center-right or, at least, with the hundreds of parliamentarians from the various center groupings (including 46 from Renzi) with whom to agree on a common solution. But the anathemas against Italia Viva and Forza Italia I'm not a good viaticum. On the contrary, for the Democratic Party they are another beautiful and good own goal that risks preparing the ground for a solution that the Nazarene see as smoke and mirrors, namely that of handing over the function of needle of the balance between the center-right and center-left to the hated Renzi also on the occasion of the election of the new Head of State. Of course, for the Quirinale there is always the Draghi card, but who takes it politically and what effects would it have on the continuation of the legislature?
And here it opens the third ground on which the Democratic Party risks collecting another own goal and is that of the approach to the political elections. Without a "wide field" but a redoubt closed in itself and composed solely of Pd, Five Stars in the process of chalking and Leu, how can a halved center-left realistically hope to beat the Meloni-Salvini axis? And to aggravate the Pd's own goal in the march towards the general elections, there is another short-sightedness that risks being even more fatal: the illusion of winning on a majority or majority-like playing field such as the Rosatellum. Is it possible that the majority of the Democratic Party does not understand that only by reforming the proportional electoral law can we hope to split the center-right and win the political elections? The fact that Salvini and Meloni are fiercely opposed to a proportional law, because they understand its danger, will mean something. Or not?
If even an authoritative senator like Luigi Zanda, certainly not a pro-Renzian and always close to the majority of the Democratic Party, senses the danger and raises alarms against the drift of the party, it means that at the Nazarene the heeling is strong and the risk of getting hurt is close to danger levels. Three own goals are a lot. But the Palazzo Chigi bell syndrome does not help to recover the course.
