The fat lady isn't singing yet...

...but she's getting warmed up.

It appears that the whole miserable Honduras affair, the response upon which the administration completely gooned-up is one step closer to a peaceful and democratic resolution. Archived posts, here.

A conservative rancher named Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo took the Honduran presidency in elections Sunday, five months after the country's last elected president was forced out of the country at gunpoint. Now Hondurans must wait to see if the international community, which has been divided over the crisis, accepts the winner as legitimate.

The results gave Mr. Lobo 56% of the vote, well ahead of Liberal Party candidate Elvin Santos at 38%, confirming voters' expected punishment of the Liberals -- party of both the deposed president and the interim government that ousted him.

While the small Central American nation is expected to get crucial support from the U.S., it will likely continue to face opposition from regional heavyweights such as Brazil and Argentina. The U.S., in agreeing to accept the winner, is now in a delicate position -- with Brazil, for example, which is housing exiled leader Manuel Zelaya in its Honduran embassy and recognizes him as president.

That our country finds itself “in a delicate position” with matters regarding a relatively peaceful election in a small democracy trying its damdest to get into the 21st century democracies-in-good-standing club speaks volumes to just how wrong we were on this one.

The margin of victory and anecdotal exit interviews suggest that not only was this a stinging rebuke of Manuel Zelaya, the deposed former President who attempted a constitutional end-around in order to get himself set up as President-for-life, and his Liberal Party but possibly of those foreign countries like Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and the U.S. who felt compelled to inject its influence into affairs of which it had no business.

Absent any evidence of voter fraud or intimidation, any of which appears to be cast at Zelaya supporters (Zelaya was not on the ballot), the U.S. should immediately recognize the legitimacy of Lobo’s victory in order to better assure a peaceful transfer of power in January.