>Again, not socialism, but significant results in areas where the mass
>movement has been most mobilized.
>
>-- Nathan Newman
-But that begs the question. Absent growing credibility for programs -definable as socialistic, I don't think the positives you cite will have -much wider significance and serve to eliminate the entrenched plutocracy -that is the source of the worst, most abiding ills in this society.
This is such an idealistic view of political processes. The largest change in the last decades was a shift of corporate power to both national and global levels that made many localistic socialist policies not less popular in an idealistic sense but less effective and therefore less supported in a pragmatic sense.
Conservatives may sell their tax policies, for example, to some folks based on rightwing ideology, but far more dominant is the argument that high taxes are not "effective"- ie. the wealthy will avoid higher taxation through evasion or shifting income-producing activities to other venues. Many people who would in theory support higher taxes on the wealthy are thereby convinced to support lower taxes based on the increased mobility of capital to pressure taxes downwards.
This distinction between pragmatic support for conservative policies versus ideological support is a crucial distinction, especially in understanding shifts in politics in the last few decades. The solution is two-tiered- first, conveying where government still has the ability to effectively restrain multinational power despite its mobility and thereby convince people of socialist effectiveness; secondly, expanding global structures of cooperation that restrain the present ability of corporations to effectively pressure social policies towards the "race to the bottom."
-- Nathan newman