What Democrats and Republicans could learn from Labour’s decisive turn to the middle—and difficulties translating electoral victory into popular governance.
Im a passionate centrist. But this set of essays has been weak, and misleading. The labor victory had almost nothing to do with a move to the center. It is true that Labor moved away from the Corbin insanity - you have to blame Brexit on him,as much as on anyone - but the real reason Labor won was the clown show and ineptness of the Conservative Party.
I'm afraid that what he has done is exactly what the Harris campaign plans to do. He signaled and placated the middle-class until he won. He immediately betrayed them.
If you say so. Here are the following big problems with this thinking.
1. Until Partygate in late 2021, the Conservatives were on track to lose 20-30 seats but still maintain a parliamentary majority and near unprecedented fifth term in British government.
2. Despite Labour's supermajority (which owed itself to Reform UK and political geography, neither of which had anything to do whatsoever with Labour's moderation), they got maybe the lowest percentage of the popular vote of any winning party in British history. I know it doesn't fit into your narrative, but a big part of this was votes lost to the Greens, whose vote climbed about four percentage points up from 2019. Like the Conservatives, Labour will have to deal with its loss of supporters drained by the more extreme Reform and Greens. Not good news for moderates.
3. After two landslides for exact opposite parties, Britain is obviously not as polarized as this country... yet. Kamala Harris' positions immigration and fracking are quite a bit more moderate than last time. It hasn't enabled her to open up a lead. That leads me to believe to believe that in spite of moderate Dems' fetishization of Bill Clinton, he wouldn't win more than a few southern states now, if that many. After all, the conservative Democrats were put on the verge of extinction by general elections, not primaries.
4. Or look at this from the other party's perspective. Donald Trump has decided to triangulate on a number of issues like domestic spending, Israel, and especially abortion. And his path to victory still seems to be to accept a popular vote loss and hope for a win the tight swing states. It took Joe Biden practically farting for hours on end in that debate for Trump to get a 3-point national lead in the RealClearPolitics average against him.
True, as documented in the past on this Substack, democratic socialists have a bad-to-below average electoral track record, and those who still claim that such a strategy remains untested are indeed coping. But the same is true of centrists who doubt that polarization is both real and unconditional.
Im a passionate centrist. But this set of essays has been weak, and misleading. The labor victory had almost nothing to do with a move to the center. It is true that Labor moved away from the Corbin insanity - you have to blame Brexit on him,as much as on anyone - but the real reason Labor won was the clown show and ineptness of the Conservative Party.
It says that several times in the piece.
I'm afraid that what he has done is exactly what the Harris campaign plans to do. He signaled and placated the middle-class until he won. He immediately betrayed them.
If you say so. Here are the following big problems with this thinking.
1. Until Partygate in late 2021, the Conservatives were on track to lose 20-30 seats but still maintain a parliamentary majority and near unprecedented fifth term in British government.
2. Despite Labour's supermajority (which owed itself to Reform UK and political geography, neither of which had anything to do whatsoever with Labour's moderation), they got maybe the lowest percentage of the popular vote of any winning party in British history. I know it doesn't fit into your narrative, but a big part of this was votes lost to the Greens, whose vote climbed about four percentage points up from 2019. Like the Conservatives, Labour will have to deal with its loss of supporters drained by the more extreme Reform and Greens. Not good news for moderates.
3. After two landslides for exact opposite parties, Britain is obviously not as polarized as this country... yet. Kamala Harris' positions immigration and fracking are quite a bit more moderate than last time. It hasn't enabled her to open up a lead. That leads me to believe to believe that in spite of moderate Dems' fetishization of Bill Clinton, he wouldn't win more than a few southern states now, if that many. After all, the conservative Democrats were put on the verge of extinction by general elections, not primaries.
4. Or look at this from the other party's perspective. Donald Trump has decided to triangulate on a number of issues like domestic spending, Israel, and especially abortion. And his path to victory still seems to be to accept a popular vote loss and hope for a win the tight swing states. It took Joe Biden practically farting for hours on end in that debate for Trump to get a 3-point national lead in the RealClearPolitics average against him.
True, as documented in the past on this Substack, democratic socialists have a bad-to-below average electoral track record, and those who still claim that such a strategy remains untested are indeed coping. But the same is true of centrists who doubt that polarization is both real and unconditional.