I think that Doug has hit the nail on the head. In fact the outcome of yesterday's French election should be taken by all social democrats everywhere as a warning of the consequences for pursuing neo-liberal policies, whether under the guise of a Third Way or what not. What we see is that in the end this simply alienates their traditional constituents, who either sit out the election or defect to political parties further to the left. At the same, the social democrats fail to attract sufficient voters from the center and right, to offset defections from the left, because typically the mainstream parties on the right are running on similar platforms. If I were Tony Blair right now I would be quaking in my boots because New Labour is experiencing the same kind of hollowing out that the French Socialists had experienced under Jospin.
And yes, the resemblance (in terms of the French far left siphoning votes away from the Socialists and Communists)
to the Y2K presidential election in the US is striking where Nader similarly siphoned off votes from Gores that he needed to win, is most striking.
Jim F.
On Mon, 22 Apr 2002 11:30:20 -0400 Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
writes:
> Nathan Newman wrote:
>
> >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
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