By Andrew L. Jaffee

Castro will be in power until he’s dead. Hugo Chavez probably will try to do the same. Now — guess who — Daniel Ortega is back in power in Nicaragua. One can only wonder why he was elected — some kind of populist nonsense, no doubt:

Nicaragua’s former Marxist guerrilla leader Daniel Ortega bounced back to power on Tuesday in a presidential election victory that bolsters an increasingly assertive anti-U.S. bloc in Latin America.

Ortega won with 38 percent of the vote, 9 points ahead of his Washington-backed conservative rival Eduardo Montealegre.

Ortega, who seized power in a popular 1979 revolution and fought U.S.-backed Contra rebels as president in the 1980s, was conciliatory in victory but the White House warned its support for Nicaragua would hinge on his commitment to democracy. …