{"id":38110,"date":"2010-05-03T11:32:17","date_gmt":"2010-05-03T17:32:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=18509"},"modified":"2010-05-03T11:32:17","modified_gmt":"2010-05-03T17:32:17","slug":"the-left-loses-its-way-by-abandoning-third-way-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/proteinwisdom.com\/?p=38110","title":{"rendered":"“The Left loses its way by abandoning ‘third way'”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Barone<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Left parties are in trouble in the Anglosphere. Here in America Democrats are doing worse in the polls than at any time in the last 50 years. In Britain the Labor party is on the brink of finishing third, behind both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, in the election next Thursday.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

[…] Barack Obama and Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, head governments that are running budget deficits of 10 percent of gross domestic product. Both are promoting higher taxes and expansion of government programs.<\/p>\n

The financial crisis is one reason for the large deficits. But it is undeniable that to varying extents both Obama and Brown have pursued more statist policies than their predecessors did a dozen years ago.<\/p>\n

And it is undeniable too that both are in trouble with the voters.<\/p>\n

In these circumstances it is surprising that the pundit class is not chiding Obama and Brown for abandoning the politically successful policies of Clinton and Blair. The same pundit class is always ready to chide American Republicans and British Conservatives for not pursuing the courses that Rockefeller Republicans and pre-Thatcher “wet” Conservatives pursued with some political success a much longer time ago.<\/p>\n

Rocky and the wets supported a continuing expansion of government and maintaining the power of labor unions. But a British party last won an election on that platform in 1974, 36 years ago, and no American president has been elected on such a platform between 1964 and 2008. And with Democrats plunging in the polls, Obama’s election is beginning to look like an exception that proves the rule.<\/p>\n

Americans may have voted for “hope and change,” but not in the form of the 2009 stimulus package and the 2010 health care bill.<\/p>\n

Looking back in history, the Rockefeller Republicans chose their course because they believed their party could not beat New Deal Democrats except by moving some distance toward their philosophy. And in particular they believed they could not beat Democrats in New York, which in the first half of the 20th century was both the nation’s largest state and one of the politically most marginal.<\/p>\n

But by the early 1960s New York was no longer the nation’s largest state and was safely Democratic. And by the early 1970s Americans were no longer voting for big government. The Rockefeller strategy was rendered obsolete. <\/p>\n

It’s not clear that the Clinton New Democratic strategy is similarly obsolete. Clinton calculated that Democrats could not win except by making inroads in the South and by making big gains in the suburbs. That’s how he won twice, and Obama improved on his leads in the suburbs and carried three Southern states with Northern-accented suburbs (Virginia, North Carolina and Florida).<\/p>\n

But Obama ran well behind in eight Southern-accented and Mountain states that Clinton carried in 1992. And polling now shows Democrats weaker than Obama was in 2008 virtually everywhere except in university towns and the affluent precincts of metro New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[my emphasis]<\/p>\n

If this is the case, the great demographic shift that some progressives keep touting seems to be concentrating itself in very specific regions, and so will be less of a force in electoral college voting than these same progressives surmise.<\/p>\n

Which, I guess, is what you get when you stand for elitist gentrification disguised in the garb of championing “social justice.”<\/p>\n

But I digress.<\/p>\n

Similarly, in Britain polling has shown Brown’s Labor party holding its traditional redoubts in declining industrial towns but getting shellacked in the affluent suburbs where Blair’s New Labor thrived.<\/p>\n

The left parties have reacted to their unpopularity by playing the race card. Democrats have tried to portray Tea Partiers as racist and Brown called a lifelong Labor voter who questioned his policies a “bigoted woman.”<\/p>\n

Blaming the voters is the last resort of a party in trouble. Old Labor and the Obama Democrats may not yet be finished. But they’re not doing as well as their “third way” predecessors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Unfortunately, the GOP takeaway from all this seems to be that they themselves can capture that “third way vote” — which has the practical effect of moving Republicans ideological toward 90s Democrats, in an ever increasing lurch leftward in search of votes.<\/p>\n

This is is dubious move, both electorally and certainly from the standpoint of party principles, which as they become increasingly statist (McCain, after all, was nothing if not a “conservative” statist) close certain gaps between what it means to be “liberal” and what it means to be “conservative” in the US — with the current usage of “liberal” better describing the New Left than anything resembling classical liberalism.<\/p>\n

The GOP, in other words, seems to believe it can gain power by remaining socially conservative in many areas, while promising to govern in other areas in a way that is consonant with the big government ambitions of progressives. That is, they continue to run as “Democrat light” when it comes to government scope — while often highlighting only the “social conservative” part of conservatism as a sop to what they believe is their base.<\/p>\n

In doing so, they will continue to give us Romneys and McCains on one hand and Huckabees on the other — without ever really giving us the kind of candidate that best sells conservative \/ classical liberal principles.<\/p>\n

The Tea partiers, for all that they’ve been demonized on both the left and, counterintuitively, in certain circles on the right given to sneering, are nevertheless creating the conditions where a challenge to prevailing GOP wisdom is forthcoming: fiscal and legal conservatism are being highlighted, and as a result now stand in sharp relief to both the progressivism the Obama administration and a leftist Congress has foisted on us and the GOP-flavored attempt to recapture electoral lightning in a bottle by recreating Clinton’s third way, with Republicans now the party of “we feel your pain.”<\/p>\n

Some in the GOP seem to sense the shift. But the party leadership itself seems determined to continue its pander to what it seems certain are the big government desires of the vast middle of the electorate.<\/p>\n

Me, I’d like to see the GOP seize this opportunity of nearly unprecedented Democrat declines in approval and popularity to push actual conservatism<\/i> as an antidote. Doing so will tell the American electorate that the GOP is serious about more than just getting elected — that they will offer a real alternative to the excesses of big government that both parties have embraced, and that has led to the very economic and social breakdowns we are now undergoing.<\/p>\n

But, politics being what it is, I won’t hold my breath.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Barone: Left parties are in trouble in the Anglosphere. Here in America Democrats are doing worse in the polls than at any time in the last 50 years. In Britain the Labor party is on the brink of finishing third, behind both Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, in the election next Thursday. […] […] Barack Obama and Blair’s successor, Gordon Brown, head governments that are running budget deficits of 10<\/p>\n

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