I think this is the most important detail that will probably be mostly ignored by the media. Hat tip to Andrew for mentioning it at his blog.
The raw information is at the Daily Kos: among the general Democrat debacle the Progressive Democrats (liberals, in Europe they'd be socialists I guess) hold in almost all their districts, while the so-called blue dogs (conservative democrats, in Europe they'd be called liberals) and New Dems (Blairites?) lose almost everywhere.
This seems to demonstrate that the best way to challenge a tory is not with another tory but with a socialist. It also seems to demonstrate that wherever the Democratic Party presented left-leaning candidates, its electorate did not desert it, but where they run with candidates that looked almost like their oponents, their voters could not be bothered.
I'd dare say it is a show of intelligence by the progressive majority that supported Obama in 2008, no matter how illusory and short-lived was the phenomenon, and leaves room for hope in the US political scenario. The message I'm getting at least is that the left feels clearly lefty and wants left wing policies, not compromises with the right such as keeping Bushites in the government, ratifying the state of emergency decreed by Bush, not closing the Guantanamo concentration camp or, worst of all, covering up BP in its chemical genocide of the citizens and environment of the Gulf of Mexico area.
Anyhow, I'd like to read opinions from the USA: I'm just a watcher from the distance after all. But I think that these results speak well of a sector, the most conscious sector of US society. I really agree: whether the Democratic Party wins or loses is not the matter, what matters is what policies are being implemented, and mostly Obama has been almost impossible to take apart from his infamous predecessor, so it's not like he deserved to win at all.
Part of the reason that progressives were safer is that they come from generally left leaning districts, while Blue Dogs often come from generally right leaning districts. Right leaning districts support Republican replacements more than left leaning districts do.
ReplyDeleteIt is also worth noting for European-American comparison purposes, that the Republican party, and particularly its Tea Party faction this election cycle, is well to the right of European Tories and Christian Democrats.
Tea Party Republicans are roughly in line with European Neofascists on the left-right political scale. Non-Tea Party Republicans are probably about half way between Neofascists in Europe and the Tory/Christian Democratic parties of Europe.
The vanishing species of "moderate Republicans" like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine (most of the others are in the Northeast) and most Blue Dog Democrats are roughly on a par with European Tory/Christian Democratic parties of Europe.
The Democrats in the middle of their party, who are neither Blue Dogs nor Progressive Caucus members are between these positions, perhaps comparable to the U.K.'s Liberal Party.
Progressive Caucuses Democrats are probably roughly in line on the political spectrum with Democratic Socialists in Europe and the Labor Party in England.
Spanish and Italian tories are definitively to the right of most Republicans, who are not openly supporting outright fascism in their own country (at least not openly). As for the Tea Party, they are reminding, as I said elsewhere, of Spanish tories, who are nothing but fascists under a varnish. Former Franco minister Manuel Fraga remains to date the honorary president of their party (as he founded it as a right-wing reaction to a more liberal coalition of right-wing forces). They are tightly tied to the worst of the Catholic Church and have a lot of ignorant but authoritarian politicians as the former minister of education and current president of Madrid region, Esperanza Aguirre. They belong to the Christian-Democrat Euro-bloc but are to the right or English tories in fact. Only Berlusconi and possibly someone like Dutch "demo-fascist" Wilders compares well with them.
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