Conservative PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon, who’s leading or nearly leading the polls in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, is determined to drive home that his opponent, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a second Hugo Chavez.

I wasn’t sure if he was going to do this – both Chavez and AMLO himself said that he shouldn’t do it, something that I read as signs of panic on both their parts, but I wasn’t sure if PAN saw it the same way I did. After all, PAN had pulled a television ad they ran for a week that had compared the two leftists. I read that as a sign of weakness – why quit when you’re doing something effective just because your rival doesn’t like it?

Now, it looks like Calderon has taken heart from that TV ad comparing AMLO to Chavez, seen how his polls numbers have risen, and then driven the point home even harder. That’s how you win.

Bloomberg has an update here.

I have a longer analytical essay on this Mexican election, comparing impact of the U.S. immigration factor to the apparently more powerful Chavez factor at American Thinker here.