Democrats in Labour
British elections are entertaining. For Democrats this year, they’re also instructive.
First the entertainment. On election night, all candidates for a Parliamentary seat stand on stage whilst the results are announced, like American Idol contestants waiting to see if they won or lost. They all wear big badges with their party colors. Then they all speak.
In one “constituency” last week, a bewildered Labour loser made his tearful remarks in front of a minor-party candidate wearing a huge hat and grinning madly, looking for all the world like Wavy Gravy at Woodstock.
Then there are the wonderfully British names of the 650 constituencies: Altrincham and Sale West, Barking, Chingford and Woodford Green, Maidenhead, Mole Valley, Old Bexley and Sidcup, South Basildon and East Thurrock, Wantage….very Monty Python.
But enough fun. Is there a lesson for us? Righto.
The Labour Party, the UK’s Democrats, got whacked. Conservatives (Republicans) defied the polls and won an outright majority. They are now free to plunder and pillage just like Republicans here in North Carolina.
In the campaign, Labour took a tack just like many Democrats would take in 2016: hard left, away from the much-despised business-friendly centrism of the Tony Blair years, which after all only won three consecutive national elections for Labour.
Blair neatly summed it up. He said Labour must stand for aspiration and achievement, not just compassion and care.
You see the same battle among Democrats today. As always, there is the urge to be real, full-throated liberals. And, Lord save us, a suicidal impulse to embrace Bernie Sanders’ socialism.
It played out this week in the unusually personal battle over trade between President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren. He called her a politician; she called him, in so many words, a corporate appeaser. Hillary Clinton, the husband of well-known corporate appeaser Bill Clinton, tried to be inconspicuous.
The urge to go to extremes infects Democrats and Republicans periodically: Barry Goldwater in 1964, George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984. The results are predictable.
No, we’re not exactly like the UK. (Unless Texas, like Scotland, keeps talking secession.)
But Democrats should take heed.
Democrats in Labour
British elections are entertaining. For Democrats this year, they’re also instructive.
First the entertainment. On election night, all candidates for a Parliamentary seat stand on stage whilst the results are announced, like American Idol contestants waiting to see if they won or lost. They all wear big badges with their party colors. Then they all speak.
In one “constituency” last week, a bewildered Labour loser made his tearful remarks in front of a minor-party candidate wearing a huge hat and grinning madly, looking for all the world like Wavy Gravy at Woodstock.
Then there are the wonderfully British names of the 650 constituencies: Altrincham and Sale West, Barking, Chingford and Woodford Green, Maidenhead, Mole Valley, Old Bexley and Sidcup, South Basildon and East Thurrock, Wantage….very Monty Python.
But enough fun. Is there a lesson for us? Righto.
The Labour Party, the UK’s Democrats, got whacked. Conservatives (Republicans) defied the polls and won an outright majority. They are now free to plunder and pillage just like Republicans here in North Carolina.
In the campaign, Labour took a tack just like many Democrats would take in 2016: hard left, away from the much-despised business-friendly centrism of the Tony Blair years, which after all only won three consecutive national elections for Labour.
Blair neatly summed it up. He said Labour must stand for aspiration and achievement, not just compassion and care.
You see the same battle among Democrats today. As always, there is the urge to be real, full-throated liberals. And, Lord save us, a suicidal impulse to embrace Bernie Sanders’ socialism.
It played out this week in the unusually personal battle over trade between President Obama and Senator Elizabeth Warren. He called her a politician; she called him, in so many words, a corporate appeaser. Hillary Clinton, the husband of well-known corporate appeaser Bill Clinton, tried to be inconspicuous.
The urge to go to extremes infects Democrats and Republicans periodically: Barry Goldwater in 1964, George McGovern in 1972 and Walter Mondale in 1984. The results are predictable.
No, we’re not exactly like the UK. (Unless Texas, like Scotland, keeps talking secession.)
But Democrats should take heed.