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[sravakavarn]

I made an observation earlier today: It appears that Social Democracy in France, the UK, and Germany is in the decline because greens, Euro-liberals, and the Center Right are in dominance.

Comments

[charlycrash]

I dunno. I'm not sure it's so much that people are sick of social democracy here as much as they're just sick of Labour and want a change. And the Tories are so watered down and substanceless at this point that there's a sort of political Forer effect going on and people are reading into their statements what they want.

I don't see any more people than normal crowing about the NHS or welfare or taxation or anything, for instance.

[charlycrash]

I should add that I don't think people are sick of Labour for reasons related to their social-democratic policies: hell, Labour are barely social democrats any more. I think it's more that when any party's been in power long enough everyone forgets that the other option were equally as shitty when they were in power and start blaming the party in power for every damn thing.

[sravakavarn]

I think that is part of the point, but maybe true social democracy is near impossible to maintain. The German Social Democrats are almost dead and the center-right in France seems to be shining these days. Its positively odd. I do think, however, its because the center-left sells itself out so damned much. It does so here as well.

[charlycrash]

I don't think there is such a thing as "true social democracy" per se, as it's a midpoint between two things and hence spans quite a few shades of grey. So you can't really have a perfect social democracy, if you like. I'd call the US a soft social democracy and the UK a moderately harder one (i.e., more towards the "socialism" end of the axis than the "capitalist" end).

Which, by the by, is why I find the American dumb-Right quacking about the horrors of bringing "socialism" to America in the form of Obamacare or whatever so absurd - welfare, Medicare and Medicaid are socialist at their heart, the public school system is socialism in a certain light, and so on.

I see no reason why social democracy shouldn't work - in fact, I see it as the political system with the most staying power and maintainability currently on the table. I think it's also about the best option going generally: no, it's not perfect, but paraphrasing the old coffee-mug saying, "social democracy is the worst political system in existence.. apart from all the

Ideological shifting

[quercuslobata]

It's difficult to make comparisons between the US Democratic Party and the Social Democratic (and Socialist) Parties in Europe. Nonetheless, the American "left" has taken power while the European left (a much truer left) has been suffering defeat. Strange, considering that it is the institutions and ideologies of the right that have created the world economic mess we're in. Also, I know that taking power here in the US is very relative or a very weak term. Obama suffers from the same inertia that most elected leaders have to grapple with: materializing the big promises made before being elected because of the institutionalized resistance in the political and social realms. In Europe, the "manifesto" or the party program is official and public long before the election. In the US, campaign promises are more often wet paper.