European election results - a cautionary tale for Democrats who embrace free-market Koolaid?

[marmar]

Interesting HuffPost piece from Robert Kuttner.:






Robert Kuttner
Co-Founder and Co-Editor of The American Prospect

Posted: June 14, 2009

Left Out in Europe


The European left, such as it is, got clobbered in the recent elections for the European parliament. In the next parliament, center-right parties will have almost twice as many seats as social democrats. Of left parties, only the Greens gained slightly. Far-right nationalistic parties picked up strength.

This should hardly come as a surprise. Over the past generation, especially in places like Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands, Europe's center-left has worked hard to neuter itself as an opposition force, rivaling free market parties in an embrace of high finance and heedless globalization.

In the late 1990s and early in the present century, Gerhardt Schroeder of the Social Democrats, then the German Chancellor, was a leading sponsor of financial market liberalization. He also went to great lengths to weaken labor protections. His British counterpart, Britain's Tony Blair, went Schroeder one better in putting all of his economic eggs in the basket of Britain's financial elite. Blair intensified the financial policies of Tory Margaret Thatcher. As in the US, the seeds of the current financial collapse were sown under nominally left-of-center governments.

The Italian left has vanished almost entirely. In France, factional and personal disputes have prevented the Socialist Party from offering a coherent alternative to President Nicolas Sarkozy, who offers a characteristically French, paradoxical combination of nationalism and social protection. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-kuttner/left-out-in-europe_b_215437.html

[anonymous171]

1. I was told that it was the left's stance on immigration that did them in.

[Gman]

2. With all the problems going on with Middle Eastern immigrants

people are enraged.

[marmar]

3. "With all the problems going on with Middle Eastern immigrants"

Huh?

[baldguy]

4. What's German for "Lou Dobbs"?

[marmar]

5. Teehee....

:)

[SoCalDem]

6. Not surprising. In times of turmoil & especially financial difficulties,

people look inward, circle the wagons, and want to kick all "the others" out, and look after their own.. we see it in families, so why not in nationa?

Dad loses his job, the family is likely to cut out its own charitable giving, and may curtail gift-giving to all but their inner-circle.

There is always , only just so much to go around.. when we "feel" well-to-do, we more readily share. when we are broke, human nature is to look for a reason, for someone to blame, and for us to withdraw.

[Mudoria]

7. Not really that complex.. the left parties weren't getting the job done

Same thing as here since 2006. Repubs were doing a bad job of things and they've been swept out of office. The voters usually dislike stagnation or corruption.

[BolivarianHero]

8. The left parties aren't even left parties...

The "Socialist" International, of which most are members, has been headed by sundry right-wing nuts who have advocated everything from the assassination of Hugo Chavez to restricting a woman's reproductive rights.