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It's probably not too surprising, but it's still striking how much US & UK politics have mirrored each other the last 40 years: laissez-faire with Reagan & Thatcher, Third Way-ism with Clinton & Blair, right-wing nationalism with Trump & Brexit...
... and left-wing populism as a possible antidote to that right-wing nationalism with Bernie & Corbyn, both of whom were old-school socialists who resisted their parties' moves to the center in the 90s & found their parties coming back to them in 2016
The similarities broke down with the 2020 Democratic primaries, though. Instead of Bernie taking over the Dems like Corbyn did with Labour, Biden and the more moderate wing of the party did—and we were lucky they did
The Bernie/Corbyn theory was that the left could win back the white working class voters who had abandoned the party the preceding decades—and in particular from right-wing nationalists—with economic populism.
It was a theory that had little to support it then, and even less now
It was a theory that had little to support it then, and even less now
Ever since WWI, when working class parties got behind their countries' war efforts instead of what was supposed to be their class interest against it, left-wing intellectuals have lamented that identity tends to trump economics. This hasn't changed.
More broadly, pretty much all of Europe & North America is seeing its white working-class migrate from the left to the right. That's true even in countries that have stronger safety nets than the US or UK. If it hasn't worked in those places, why would it here?
That doesn't mean Democrats should give up on trying to help working families! It just means that we should be realistic about what the electoral payoff for it will be. We should support policies because they're good ideas, period, and not lie to ourselves about the politics.
The politics can be pretty brutal. Corbyn led Labour to its worst defeat since the 1930s, and there's every reason to think Bernie would have lost too if he'd been the nominee in 2020. Progressive groups went *0 for 44* at flipping red districts in 2018, a great year for Dems.
Bernie probably would have lost FL by even more than Biden did, likely wouldn't have flipped AZ, GA, or NE-2, where white suburbanites played such a big role for Dems, and so it would have come down to needing both of WI & PA (let's give MI to the Dems regardless)
Better margins with white suburbanites once again played a big role in WI & PA. Maybe Bernie would have made more inroads with WWC than Biden did, but I'm not sure it would have been enough to overcome Trump's pull on a lot of those voters.
The entire campaign would have been about Dems wanting to completely eliminate private health insurance, about people not being able to see their doctors and having to wait a long time to see new ones, and about taxes going up. It might have cost Dems the House too. Corbyn 2.0.
This sucks! It really looked like 2020 had a chance to be a big year for progressive policy, and that we could cut through the Gordian knot of the most unrepresentative parts of our political system (i.e., the Senate & Supreme Court).
