At a time of political polarization and upheaval in the West, the Atlantic Sentinel believes the center can hold. It are not the fanatics on either side who get things done; it are reasonable people in the middle. Better to muddle through than to veer to extremes.
The Dutch are happier than ever. Austerity is over. The immigration crisis has receded from the headlines. The government this week announced €3 billion in tax cuts and is planning a long-term investment fund worth up to €50 billion. Support for anti-establishment parties is down. Just 16 percent want to leave the EU anymore. (more…)
In a recent column, I argued Democrats in the United States have moved to the left but Republicans have moved farther to the right. The former, at least in their policies, are still more centrist than most center-left parties in Europe while the latter now have more in common with far-right populists than they do with Britain’s Conservative Party and Germany’s Christian Democrats.
Centrists (myself included) still worry that Democrats might become too left-wing for voters in the middle — who, the turnout fantasies of partisans on either side notwithstanding, tend to decide the outcome of national elections.
Emphasis on national. In last year’s midterm elections, Democrats ran progressives, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in safe Democratic districts and states, and moderates, like Doug Jones and Ralph Northam, in Republican-leaning places. All three won.
In the 2016 presidential election, white working-class defections arguably put Donald Trump over the top in Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but you can also argue (indeed, I have) that Hillary Clinton lost because she didn’t convince enough middle-income voters in the suburbs of Florida, North Carolina and Virginia to switch parties. (more…)
Spain’s center-right parties are having second thoughts about cozying up to the far right.
Before the general election in April, the liberal Citizens and the conservative People’s Party ruled out a deal with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’ Socialists. That meant the only alternative to his pact with the far-left Podemos was a right-wing coalition with the support of the nativist Vox. Voters preferred the former.
They once again gave the Socialists a plurality in European and local elections last month.
The Citizens now say they are willing to consider coalitions with the Socialists at the regional level under “exceptional” circumstances. They also reject more deals with Vox such as the one they struck in Andalusia last year.
The People’s Party, which as recently as eight years ago won 45 percent of the votes, has also repudiated its Vox-friendly strategy after falling to 17-20 percent support in the last two elections. (more…)
Two years ago, the Netherlands’ center-right prime minister, Mark Rutte, defeated the far right by adopting some of its policies on immigration while rejecting its divisive rhetoric.
In the run-up to this year’s provincial and Senate elections, he is claiming the center ground instead. (more…)
The worst argument against French president Emmanuel Macron’s latest EU reform push — made, among others, by the Russian-born Leonid Bershidsky, who writes for Bloomberg View from Germany, and the Dutch political commentator Peter van Nuijsenburg — is that it only provides ammunition for rival parties opposed to more European integration.
There are fair criticism to be made. Bershidsky also argues that Macron’s call for a European “renaissance” largely consists of adding more EU agencies and that what the bloc really needs is a shared Franco-German vision.
But the idea that less ambitious proposals, or no proposals at all, would appease the Euroskeptics is wrong. (more…)
Commentators outside France have been predicting Emmanuel Macron’s downfall from the beginning of his presidency.
My own view throughout has been that unpopularity is unlikely to keep Macron up at night. He has been reforming France so thoroughly and at such a fast pace that he was bound to make enemies everywhere. He has a long-enough mandate (five years) to see his reforms bear fruit. And because both the center-left and center-right are in disarray, there is no strong opposition against him.
That threatened to change this winter, when opponents of a fuel-tax increase donned fluorescent yellow vests and took to the streets. Suddenly reactionary France had a movement. Polls showed massive support. Macron hastily canceled the tax hike, the first time he had bowed to public pressure. His political obituaries were being rewritten again. (more…)
Add France to populism’s list of victims.
A year ago, Emmanuel Macron’s election victory was hailed as a setback for the transatlantic reactionary movement that began with Brexit and has since led to Donald Trump in America, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and an anti-EU government in Italy.
The outbreak of nationwide anti-tax protests, which quickly morphed into an anti-government movement, makes clear the same forces that gave us Brexit and Trump live in France.
The consequences could be calamitous.
In the United Kingdom, Brexiteers are willing to shrink their economy and deny a younger generation the opportunity to study, live and work in Europe for the sake of regaining “control”.
In the United States, democracy itself is at stake. Republicans only won an election in Georgia by making it impossible for hundreds of thousands of African Americans to vote. In three of the states where they did lose the midterm election, they are trying to nullify the outcome. Their leader broke campaign finance laws and was willing to accept help from Russia to get elected (and has since tried to cover up his crimes in broad daylight); lies on an almost daily basis and disparages every institution that does not bend over backwards for him.
How did we get here? And, more importantly, how do we get out? (more…)
I’m used to American and British commentators dismissing the EU, but when even a Harvard professor misses the point it warrants a rebuttal.
Imagining a post-American world, Stephen M. Walt doesn’t see Europe playing much of a role. He argues in Foreign Policy that the EU project is deeply troubled.
His bottom line:
The EU has become too large and heterogeneous to make rapid and bold decisions, and it faces opposition from illiberal and xenophobic elements within.
Axios warns that Democrats in the United States risk throwing away their advantage in November’s congressional elections if they nominate more left-wing candidates.
It’s a little early to panic, but there is clearly a trend — and the fear is it will doom Democrats in the midterms, when, due to built-in disadvantages for their demographics and geographies, they need to defeat Republicans nationwide by around 7 percent to take back Congress. (more…)
“The worst crisis in Angela Merkel’s twelve-year chancellorship” has ended with a whimper. (more…)
In primary elections on Tuesday, Democrats in the United States mostly went with the more sensible candidates.
Coming on the heels of Ralph Northam’s victory in Virginia and Doug Jones’ in Alabama, it suggests the party is not losing its mind in the age of Donald Trump and wisely staying the course.
Or, as Jonathan Bernstein puts it:
We’re now six states in and if there’s any sign that Democrats are either plagued by a dysfunctional overreaction to Trump or are having real difficulties handling the surge in new candidates, I’m not really seeing it.
Spain’s ruling People’s Party continues to fall in the polls. Its support is down from 33 percent in the last election to under 25 percent in most recent surveys. The reasons are corruption scandals and the ongoing Catalan independence crisis.
The liberal Citizens, who support — but are not a part of — Mariano Rajoy’s government, are up. Some polls even have them as the largest party of Spain. Their promise to clean up politics, and the hard line they have taken against the Catalan separatists, is resonating with center-right voters.
The left, El País points out, seems unable to exploit Rajoy’s unpopularity. Support for the mainstream Socialist Party is virtually unchanged at 20-22 percent. The far-left Podemos is down several points. (more…)
The far-right Freedom Party and the far-left Socialists underperformed in municipal elections in the Netherlands on Wednesday.
The ruling liberals and Christian Democrats shared first place. Both got 13 percent support.
Local parties took 33 percent of the vote, up from 28 percent four years ago.
The Greens gained at the expense of Labor and the liberal Democrats, especially in the major cities. Although they are still counting the votes in Amsterdam, the Greens are expected to overtake the liberal Democrats as the largest party there.
Cosmopolitan, left-leaning voters probably switched because they are disappointed the liberal Democrats went into government with three right-wing parties.
The outcome is nevertheless unlikely to destabilize Mark Rutte’s coalition, which includes the small Christian Union. (more…)
Sebastián Piñera unsurprisingly won back Chile’s presidency last week, defeating the governing party’s Alejandro Guillier in a runoff.
Piñera last ruled the country from 2010 to 2014 but was constitutionally barred from serving a consecutive second term.
What was surprising was the scale of his victory following a weak performance in the first voting round, where left-wing candidates got a combined 55 percent of the votes. (more…)
Miranda Green writes in the Financial Times that the polarization of British politics has caused some to wonder if there might be room for a new party or political movement in the center.
