this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
35 points (83.0% liked)

politics

19103 readers
3264 users here now

Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!

Rules:

  1. Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.

Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.

Example:

  1. Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
  2. Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
  3. No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
  4. Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
  5. No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.

That's all the rules!

Civic Links

Register To Vote

Citizenship Resource Center

Congressional Awards Program

Federal Government Agencies

Library of Congress Legislative Resources

The White House

U.S. House of Representatives

U.S. Senate

Partnered Communities:

News

World News

Business News

Political Discussion

Ask Politics

Military News

Global Politics

Moderate Politics

Progressive Politics

UK Politics

Canadian Politics

Australian Politics

New Zealand Politics

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

A center-left group in the U.S. sees a valuable lesson in the landslide victory of Britain’s Labour Party after nearly 15 years in the political wilderness.

The centrist Democrat think tank Third Way argues in a memo obtained Friday by POLITICO that Labour’s sweeping win shows that “centrism wins elections” and can undercut right-wing populism by appealing to the broadest segment of the population with a credible platform.

top 22 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

Our political tribalism seems way worse than the UK though, and the UK has it pretty bad in that regard.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

The sun came up this morning and centrists took it as an omen that they should move to the right.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This is ridiculous. Nothing changed on Labor's end; the right just split the vote. The lesson is to have incompetent competition.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

The article is just wrong. Terrible writing.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Oh no. That doesn’t bode well for me being treated as a human being in the long term

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Biden is basically a centrist and he's hugely unpopular

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

He’s right of center

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

As a non American, my impression of Biden is he's smack dab in the center of the board table, quite far removed from Main St. The Democrats seem the party of corporate America.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

How is this a broader lesson and not just UK specific? "Center" here I take to mean right, they are saying left parties should move right to become centrist. Where elese has this worked? Swedens socdem has moved right for a long time, and they are barely scraping by. In France, Macron is a center right guy and he is absolutely failing to the far-right.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

It's politico, they have a centre-right slant, so of course they think the left should move in their direction

[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago

I honestly don't think it'll work in the UK either. This election was a win against an undefended goal.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago

Splitting the right = left landslide. Splitting the left = right landslide.

Third way: "Hey, if we split the left, the left will win!"

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago (2 children)

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago

The main lesson is "don't be an incumbent".

Don't be an incumbent when people don't like the way things are going.

When people do like the way things are going, yes be an incumbent.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Tories have been winning for 14 years despite holding the power prior to elections

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

And royally fucking the country up unabashedly

We have a mostly right wing press over here and the leftmost publication is the guardian which generally has a liberal-centrist bias. It's taken the Tories getting to insanely ridiculous levels of incompetence for the general public to finally cotton on

[–] [email protected] 14 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Now I understand this article is largely ragebait for this community, but I just wanted to point out that the incredible strength of this centrist approach resulted in one of the lowest turnout elections in 20 years with labour receiving about 34% of the popular vote.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement for a consistently winning strategy.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Turnout was low because people don’t vote when they already know the outcome. The last landslide in the UK also had low turnout.

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago

Shy tories voted for the Lib Dem’s. The Lib Dem’s aren’t some compromise between left and right. That’s doesn’t really work, it just means everyone dislikes you. The Lib Dem’s get votes when the tories are too socially unacceptable to vote for.

A Tory walks down the street, he encounters a homeless person. He chooses to kick the them, laughing as he walks away. The Lib Dem disgusted by this kicks the homeless person, then walks away quietly.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

And while 34% is a few percentage points lower than other recent winners, the more centrist party, lib dems, got more votes than the previous election.

Sure, but Corbyn's labour got 32.2 and 40.0 compared to this 33.7 "landslide." And Corbyn won his seat even though he's an independent. I don't particularly find the centrist strategy to be a very compelling result compared to that.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The tories lost, Stamer won because tory voters split between Lib Dem’s, Reform and other.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago

You listen to the liberals backing labor's change they'll say it's because labor picked up Tory voters in key races while losing voters in "safe" races while cherry picking results to demonstrate.

I've yet to be convinced of that line of thinking though and I'm much of the same opinion as you. Nobody elects a status quo party when shit is going south like it is right now. The Tories lost because they couldn't help but put up shit policies. The neo-blairites will lose because they kept those shit policies.