Keep smiling. You earned it.
The year 1992 gave America its redemption from the Reagan years but, across the Pond, progressive politics was in a much, much worse state. Despite significant electoral gains, Neil Kinnock’s Labour Party failed to retake a majority in the House of Commons, and 10 Downing passed to John Major, a pale shadow of Lady Thatcher possessed of most of her ideas, but little of her intellect and charm. The message was clear: even Lady Thatcher’s coattails could beat the Labour Party - a narrow, far-left, quasi-socialist party - any day of the week.
And yet, in the space of four years, Labour transitioned from the perennial, sidelined minority party to the undisputed master of Parliament. Labour has held power for more than a decade now, endured an unpopular war and, now, and still retains some home for the future in the form of the one man seemingly capable of navigating the global financial crisis (ahem: Gordon Brown). An unlikely hero, yes, but a hero nonetheless. How did they do it?
Easy. Compromise and a charismatic leader. In a process begun by Kinnock but brought to its fantastic conclusion by Tony Blair, Labour sought the middle on the issues that made it an unpopular fringe group, abandoning nationalization of industry as a central party plank (yes: they were that far left), and tacking right on a whole host of economic issues.1 By usurping the best of Thatcher’s ideas without compromising most of his leftist bent, Blair succeeded at winning over the elusive middle, and built for himself a party that, despite serious troubles, seems poised to retain power even in the upcoming general election.
The lesson to draw from Tony Blair - go slightly right, young liberal, and grow up with the country - should sound familiar. It’s how we just won an election or, more appropriately, how the Republicans lost an election. John McCain’s campaign style, and especially (you knew it was coming) his selection of Sarah Palin, clearly demonstrated that the Republican Party, for one reason or another, is incapable of seeking the center. The Religious Right ties their hands on social issues (Sarah Palin), and the business lobby ties their hands on economic issues (McCain sudden love affair with the Bush tax cuts). Culture war elections are the exception, not the rule, and this year, when the trend reasserted itself with a vengeance, McCain was unable to compensate appropriately. Fortunately for us, and fortunately for America, the Democrats seized on the opportunity and outflanked the GOP.
While the Republican Party spent the past eight years (and the previous pivotal eight months) catering to and contracting a narrow base, the Democratic Party under Dean spent its time expanding its base, winning Senate and House seats with moderate, inoffensive Democrats, taking a middle-left approach to culture war issues, and shedding the unfortunate stigma that John Kerry’s party exemplified. Labour’s vulnerability was its economic policies, which actually resembled socialism; the Democrats vulnerabilities were cultural. In large part, Howard Dean patched over those defects. After inheriting a moderate Democratic Party repackaged to dodge culture war bullets, all Barack Obama had to do was deliver on an even-tempered message, and appear relatable. Mission accomplished.
Unfortunately, the process of “ideological triage” was not without significant casualties. In a very real way, gay rights may be to Barack Obama what nationalization was to Tony Blair: the farther-left issue that the middle-left party simply cannot touch. But even this is no big loss. Not because gay rights are unimportant, though: frequent readers will know that my feelings are quite the opposite. Rather, gay rights can best be resolved by the non-political branch (the judiciary), and the Democratic Party will be in line to pull the right levers there with minimal attention. Making gay rights an election issue actually hurts the cause at this point, at least in the long run. So if the Democrats have left behind important issues, we haven’t left them far behind.
Especially as the American consensus continues to shift left on important issues like abortion, stem cells, privacy, and even gay rights, the Democratic Party can continue to live the Blair dream of bridging the center and the left so long as it conducts itself in a bipartisan manner (keeping Lieberman was a good start). Plausibly occupying the center is the key. That the Republicans seem so willing to shoot themselves in the foot by going farther right (go Palin go!) will just make it that much easier for centrist Democrats to outflank Republicans towards the high middle ground.
Of course, it’s easy to over-state the Blair comparison. Blair eventually faced his political reckoning in the form of the Iraq War, in which he nearly destroyed both his party and his country. Blair’s mistake should stand as a constant reminder that the center isn’t good for its own sake, and some party planks just aren’t worth abandoning. When you’re wrong, you’re wrong, and the electorate will eventually figure it out.
A special plea to British readers, and CompPol junkies:
Please, tell me if I’m wrong. It’s the only way I’ll learn.
- For an internet source - i.e., a good book on Google Books - check out The Rise of New Labour. I offer this only as further reading; most of what I’m drawing on is personal knowledge, the sources of which I’ve long since forgotten. [↩]
Stumble It!
14 responses so far ↓
1 Mike (PC) // Nov 19, 2008 at 9:50 am
Especially as the American consensus continues to shift left on important issues like abortion…
Every poll out there says that Americans would be accepting of more regulations on abortion than we currently have. The liberal position is universal access to abortion with vague exceptions to get around the few current regulations we DO have. Simply put, there is no potential for movement on abortion from the Left. Their position remains static.
In contrast, many pro-life forces are beginning to consider moderating our goals towards the middle. Moving away from a complete ban on abortions towards broad but nuanced restrictions is a move that is supported by all available polling data.
Most Americans are right of Obama on abortion. There’s actually play on that issue but not on the Left.
2 Ames // Nov 19, 2008 at 11:55 am
There we disagree - I think the anti-choice lobby veered sharply right in this election (personhood initiatives, the South Dakota total ban, opposing the health exception), and uniformly got trounced. Meanwhile Bush’s manner of being “pro-life” has proved hypocritical and ineffective (abstinence only FAIL). Meanwhile, Obama talks about being anti-abortion but pro-choice, compromises on late-term abortions (save the health exception), and looks more moderate. You and I can debate whether the health exception swallows the rule, but it’s a pretty hard argument to make to the public.
3 Mike (PC) // Nov 19, 2008 at 1:42 pm
The word adoption wasn’t even mentioned in Obama ‘Blueprint for Change’. He made it clear during the primaries that he sees an unwanted pregnancy as a punishment. I don’t think his lame lip service on reducing the number of abortions fooled anyone. His position is ideologically identical to those who are openly far left on abortion.
As I said, all the polling I have read indicates Americans are right of Obama on abortion. Feel free to prove to me otherwise.
4 Ames // Nov 19, 2008 at 3:56 pm
I’m not convinced that fetishizing any one word is a sufficiently deep way of analyzing a candidate’s views on an issue as admittedly nuanced as abortion.
Besides, especially for the anti-choice movement, the “adoption” issue is not quite a straw man, but maybe it’s a hollow man - as in, the GOP talks about it, and then does nothing. What Bush initiatives, if any, actually worked to expand or aid in the adoption process? As far as I’ve been able to tell, Bush declared national adoption month, formed a committee, and started a website. Compared with years of man-hours and millions of dollars promoting irresponsible sex education and whittling away at abortion rights. Strikes me that adoption is honored in its neglect only.
I’ll admit it’s possible that America’s right of Obama on abortion; but they’re clearly left of McCain, and far, far left of Palin. Obama moved to the center; the GOP moved to the right.
5 D-Notice // Nov 19, 2008 at 4:28 pm
British reader here.
A lot of people over here have noticed the parallels between Labour’s/Blair’s landslide win in ‘97 and the Democrat’s/Obama’s win: both came to power led by a young, intelligent, liberal-minded leader, on a mandate of change as the public had had more than enough of the corruption of the previous right-wing government.
Labour’s problems started long before Iraq: early on they noticed that the way to get support in the media is to pass laws which appease the tabloid newspapers, which turned some people against them.
There was then, a few months after them coming to power, a scandal over a ban on tobacco advertising, from which they exempted motor-racing - allegedly because they had been given £1 million which was given back. (Blair later went on TV and said “I’m a pretty straight kinda guy”).
They also turned other people against them by reducing benefits for single mothers amongst others.
In their manifesto for the ‘01 election - which they won due to a lack of any serious opposition - they stated that they would not introduce extra charges for university tuition, only to do so later on. Then Iraq happened and with it the general curtail of civil liberties, including ID cards, anti-terrorism laws (including an attempt to allow the police 90 days before being forced to charge someone with a crime; they got 28 days instead, which is up from, I believe, 7 days before 9/11), bans on protests around Parliament and the scrapping of double jeopardy.
Labour won the election in May ‘05 as although their support had collapsed, it fragmented between the various opposition parties and so they got back into power, albeit with a significantly reduced majority in Parliament (I believe there was a statistic which said that which they won 30 seats by about a total of 20,000 votes, which is nothing at all, and another which said more people didn’t vote at all than voted for them).
It is very unlikely that Labour will win next time round, irrespective of the state of the economy - in fact the opinion polls have had them less behind in the past few months - mainly because they turned off people who had previously supported them and so a lot of left-wing people say that a defeat would be their own fault.
I can only hope that the same doesn’t happen to Obama.
6 Ames // Nov 19, 2008 at 6:19 pm
D-Notice, thanks so much; yes, back in the summer of 2005 I was working in Parliament, and the air was pretty doom and gloom about Labour’s chances. Even the LibDems were looking like they were a more winnable party. So you’d chalk Labour’s fault up to more general political idiocy, albeit exemplified in Iraq?
7 Martin // Nov 19, 2008 at 6:42 pm
When I saw the title of your article in my feed, I thought you were going to taake the post-election angle of Blair turning into an absolute disaster.
Where did Blair go wrong? He lied constantly, his government was as corrupt as anything that came before it, foot and mouth, obsession with celebrities, he and Brown turned out to be effectively neo-Thatcherites economically, and all of this was before he decide to adopt America’s neo-conservative foreign policy…
8 D-Notice // Nov 19, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Ames, I think the answer to your question would be “Yes, but” as it seems to have been more due to them actively trying to out-do the opposition, i.e. triangulation, than idiocy
9 Mike (PC) // Nov 19, 2008 at 7:51 pm
Ames, Democrats blocked more adoptions over the last 8 years than Bush. They put so many roadblocks up to stop adoptions, including resistance to cross-racial adoptions, that McCain actually discussed it in his platform and vowed to fix it.
Most Americans support 2nd and 3rd trimester restrictions with the ‘big three’ exceptions. That is an enormous leap from Obama’s pro-abortion position.
10 didionsmommy // Nov 19, 2008 at 9:26 pm
ames,
i am curious, too, about the impact of blair’s near-evangelical religious beliefs, which, apparently, were a source of simpatico with bush … it seems to me that labour’s platform (and, indeed, european politics in general) would be fairly agnostic … i’m wondering if we have a similar situation of righteousness standing in the way of adherence to platform ideals. that, maybe, this righteousness is an explanation for the backtracking/backstabbing during blair’s tenure. it explains a lot of the nuttiness martin brings up and explains why it was so easy to bring blair into the neocon fold.
of course, it could be, too, that, like d-notice says, labour’s implosion was due to one-upsmanship … an affliction that has hit senate democrats on more than one occasion during the bush years.
great post, though!
11 Ames // Nov 20, 2008 at 1:00 am
Thanks! I’m sleepy or I’d respond more…. I think religion + trying to one-up the opposition, and be everything to everyone, was the fatal mistake. There’s a poitn at which bipartisanship becomes being the other guy…
12 Richard T // Nov 20, 2008 at 9:31 am
The main achievement that is down to Blair is keeping the Tories out for 3 successive elections. As previous replies say, he did this by occupying the middle to slightly right ground linked with a lot of authoritarian rhetoric about being hard on crime, asylum seekers etc so the Tories were forced to the right. It didn’t cross their fuddled heads that a libertarian approach would have outflanked labour. The Tories walked into the trap with policy based on what they called clear blue (in UK terms right) water. They also of course had 4 different leaders in this time and they are still maggieolators hence the mess they have found themselves in just now. She it had to be said was a pragmatist like Reagan and would rarely be boxed in.
13 Richard T // Nov 20, 2008 at 9:36 am
PS the other similarity is that both a re lawyers and married to very bright lawyers and part of Blair’s downfall has been his limited anchorage in objectivity and his willingness to argue a lawyer’s case to anything. Now with the different legal system in the USA, this may not be an area where President Obama is at much at risk.
14 Martin // Nov 20, 2008 at 10:12 am
Just published a semi-response to this article:
http://layscience.net/node/297
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