>Pushing through a 35-hour work week is neolib? Jospin has been promoting
>strong social clauses in the EU-- that's neolib?
>
>The reality is that the left parties actually did better than in the last
>election, but the vote was so splintered that they allowed a conservative
>and a fascist to go to the run-off. The far Right is taking power across
>Europe and the US over the splintered factions to their left.
Moral: Gore in '04! Right?
Nathan, the splintering is in no small part the result of the weakness of the soft left's message. It inspires no one - at best it's just a lesser evil. It's passionless and empty. At worst, it's a diluted, devious shadow of the right. Aside from people looking for patronage, it gathers no electoral base and has no influence on political discourse. Against that, someone with the passionate intensity of LePen looks energetic and principled. Our fucking Dems couldn't even get terribly excited about the theft of the 2000 election; Gore sent the organizers home from Florida, filed a few lawsuits, and then withdrew to grow a beard. It's a doomed strategy.
Doug