The collapse of the political left

washingtonexaminer.com ^ | Michael Barone

[RoosterRedux]

Things look different now, and not just because Donald Trump was elected president. It has been clear that most voters have been rejecting big government policies, and not just in the United States but in most democratic nations around the world.

Leftist politicians supposed that ordinary voters with modest incomes facing hard times would believe that regulation and redistribution would help them. Evidently most don't.

The rejection was apparent in the 2010 and subsequent House elections; Republicans have now won House majorities in ten of the last 12 elections, leaving 2006 and 2008 as temporary aberrations. You didn't hear Hillary Clinton campaign on the glories of Obamacare or the Iran nuclear deal, and her attack on "Trumped-up, trickle-down economics" didn't strike any chords in the modest-income Midwest.

Republican success has been even greater in governor and state legislature elections, to the point that Democrats hold governorships and legislative control only in California, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island. After eight years of the Obama presidency, Democrats hold fewer elective offices than at any time since the 1920s.

Things look similar abroad. Britain's Conservatives, returned to government in 2010, are in a commanding position over a left-lurching Labour party. France's Socialist president, with single-digit approval, declined to run for a second term. European social democratic parties have been hemorrhaging votes, and got walloped in Sunday's Italian referendum. In Latin America and Asia, the left is declining or on the defensive.

[kearnyirish2]

Good points; one advantage that they have is the constant infusion of taxpayer funds (through teachers’ unions, for example) in their coffers (so they can field more full-time operators than us). Too many of us are working real jobs to focus so much time/energy on perpetually campaigning...

[kearnyirish2]

Thanks; sadly, at one time they represented American workers. Like unions, when what they sought became law, they were left looking for other issues (now using race, environment, sexual disorders, etc. to cobble together coalitions).

[The Sons of Liberty]

The collapse of the political left

It will never happen. We'll always have evil and stupidity.

[Liz]

BARONE'S MOST SALIENT POINT THAT GIVES THE REST OF HIS CLAIMS INTENSE CREDIBILITY: "After eight years of the Obama presidency"...........

Best of all, thanks to Obama, Democrats hold fewer elective offices than at any time since the 1920s.

The rest of the globe seem to be following suit...after all, they met this jerk at all the global conferences....and left stunned that he could be elected to anything.

[SmokingJoe]

Yeah....the left is regrouping alright.... in California. Outside the huge urban centers in the east and west coasts, the left has been wiped out to a large extent.

[Ted Grant]

Hillary would have likely beaten any other of the GOP primary candidates. And modern liberalism plays on two basic instincts: envy, and the appeal of telling other people what to do.

The battle never ends.

[kearnyirish2]

I take much more comfort in the Congressional victories than Trump’s; he was elected because things were so bad under Obama, and has to be wary of the same reaction in four years. Ironically, Obama got into office because of the same dynamic.

Hillary almost won, and still did too well outside urban areas for such a horrible, corrupt candidate.

Always remember that wherever there is a government worker, there is a Democrat operative using your tax dollars to vote himself/herself MORE of your tax dollars - and the Democratic Party is their machine.

[kearnyirish2]

I agree, primarily because Trump isn’t a “social conservative”; despite all of the feigned media outrage, many minorities/homosexuals/women were quite comfortable voting for Trump (or at least not voting against him).

Those forces would have been easier to align against any real conservative Republican.

For the same reason, I don’t expect to regain any ground lost in the culture wars under a Trump presidency; Trump successfully kept many of those issues off the table.

[Sgt_Schultze]

And this will only intensify their push to legalize illegals and to expand the numbers allowed to come. Without an expanding number of people dependent on government, the left would be a fraction of its size.

[Cboldt]

The globalists will use the right just as quick as the left to advance the program. One of the essential aspects of advancing the program is to have the appearance of dissent, and "right v. left" provides that function.

Get the left to buy in to America first. Change the location of the battlefield, keep the appearance of a fight going.

[Unam Sanctam]

Politics is downstream from culture. It will take a concerted multiyear effort to reconquer the culture and education from the Left.

[1Old Pro]

It will take a concerted multiyear effort to reconquer the culture and education from the Left.

Start with K-12 Public school reform, allow vouchers and choice. This will bring the failed government school system to it's knees in just a few years.

[stocksthatgoup]

No collapse. Now they own the Democrat Party, all of it.

[Pollster1]

For all of their losses, Hillary still had a strong showing; the left is regrouping, not collapsing.

Agreed. We cannot (yet) tell whether this was their Pearl Harbor and they took terrible losses but will recover, or this was the Battle of the Bulge and we stopped freedom's enemies cold in the current round of the perennial war between individuals and totalitarians. We have to crush socialism, crush the left, and crush the idea that the Constitution is a "living" document that means whatever totalitarians want it to mean.

We need to leave so little of their big government infrastructure that when the Trump Administration leaves our White House, the rhetoric of socialists, communists, #BlackLivesMatter, and thugs in general will have disappeared from America and from our allies. We need to roll back the lost freedoms so far that it will take them generations to rebuild their oppressive regime of regulations and restrictions. Perhaps, if we can wipe out enough of the damage, they will become demoralized and not bother starting again from scratch (probably not, but I can dream).

[Redleg Duke]

I will consider the left “collapsed” whwn we throw the last leftist’S dead body in to the same grave with the last Muslim’s dead body and I can piss on both of them before they fill it with pork and concrete!

[BRL]

The left has the big advantage of having their pay come from government money that is difficult to turn off. We can only defeat them by making them poor and they will remain well fed until there is,political will to defund them.

[bert]

However...... the popular vote was lost. That means that a whisper of dissent can be amplified into a shout that reverberates into the solid red zone. The nation is so evenly divided that the wonderful change has no depth come a future election.

So long as the left exists, the left will persist

[1Old Pro]

However...... the popular vote was lost. That means that a whisper of dissent can be amplified into a shout that reverberates into the solid red zone

A football team with the most yards doesn't win the game, the team with the most points does. Same for golf, most greens in regulation, or fairways hit - it's low score. In baseball, the team with the most on base doesn't win, it's the most times a player touches home base.

[Political Junkie Too]

For all of their losses, Hillary still had a strong showing; the left is regrouping, not collapsing.

I think the point of the column was that the Left is losing the national base as represented by state offices. The Left has fewer governorships and state legislatures since the 1920s, and so is top-heavy as depicted by Hillary Clinton's popular vote.

Clinton's popular vote is not translating to state control, which proves that her support is concentrated on the coastal megalopolises. That's a tough foundation on which to base a new rise of the Left.

-PJ

[kearnyirish2]

I agree; that is why I mention I take more comfort in the Congressional results.