I think it’s very bad punditry to draw broad lessons for one country’s elections from another country’s elections. But if you’re going to do it, be specific. I would like Sullivan to say which parts of the Democratic coalition should be sacrificed to “anti-PC nationalism.” https://t.co/hQq5vUK1GS
— b-boy bouiebaisse (@jbouie) December 13, 2019
… is that Conservatives have a proud tradition of never learning anything new.
Combining Nationalism and Socialism….what could go wrong?
— ace-o-aces (@aceoaces) December 13, 2019
These ideas go together like a bundle of sticks.
— ? (@j_furm) December 13, 2019
I Knew Nothing Of British Politics Until This Morning But I Can Say Definitively That There Is One Clear Takeaway for the US Voter https://t.co/ycZRVLQfh7
— Alexandra Petri (@petridishes) December 13, 2019
… Some of the candidates who received votes were joke candidates, and I think that speaks volumes. Have we considered whether or not more of our candidates in America ought to be jokes? It is clear that the people are hungry for bad ideas that will solve nothing; I think we ought to consider whether worse ideas, more clearly labeled, might not be better…
Think we got that last part covered, for sure. They call themselves ‘dirtbag leftists‘ and they are at best a wen on the Democratic party they seek to parasitize.
leftists are gonna look themselves in the mirror, take a deep breath and tell themselves 'we gotta get more racist' pic.twitter.com/EHZ1zna7Io
— Social-Democratic Party of Galar (@weedlewobble) December 14, 2019
No I'm not gonna give a shit about the UK election results. Y'all long ago established the principle that any petty grievance you have with a politician justifies not supporting them in an election where their opponent is a literal fascist. Play stupid games win stupid prizes.
— Social-Democratic Party of Galar (@weedlewobble) December 12, 2019
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes” is a strong contender for motto of the year. Hopefully *this* year, and not 2020!
Kent
I think the lesson is that BREXIT was the biggest wedge issue in the history of politics. Like Gay Marriage and Guns and Abortion all wrapped together X 10.
I don’t think the Brexiteers necessarily had that in mind when they trotted it out in 2015 or whenever that was. But it turned out that way. Brexit drove a huge gash right through the Labor party and they were unable to figure out how to address it. They couldn’t out-Brexit Johnson and they had to many old rural racist types to come out as the Remain party.
There is frankly nothing at all like Brexit here in the US in 2020. So there is really nothing we can take from the UK elections as relevant to 2020. The Canadian elections could just as easily be cited as precedent. But for some reason no one does that.
At least that’s my take.
mrmoshpotato
Wow, does that perfectly sum up the selfish assholes who couldn’t possibly vote for Clinton because “Eww Hillary!” when the theft of Supreme Court seat, etc was staring us all in the face.
Bruuuuce
Why is it that the “lesson” needs to be that the UK is a harbinger of US politics, rather than vice versa? This looks an awful lot like the disaster of 2016, which we followed with the blue wave in 2018 and are working to improve on in 2020. If the UK lasts that long (about which I have my doubts), they may recover from this whenever they next have a general election, the way we did. Or we may see Scotland (at least) secede, and I’ll have to make massive changes to the maps I make for work.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Boris Johnson and the Tories are leftist on economics?
Duane
“Worse ideas more clearly labeled” should be the Republican party motto.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
Chris Hayes is shocked to learn Corbyn was unelectable.
Pauline Kael reincarnated.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Extra points for the word wen!
Sloane Ranger
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Johnson is allegedly about to dump some £30 billion extra into the NHS. We will have to wait to see if this is confirmed and whether the money is actually new or simply old money repackaged.
My suspicion is this is the high profile sop to former Labour voters while they work away in the background to gut a host of employee protection/health and safety regulations.
Ruckus
… is that Conservatives have a proud tradition of never learning anything new.
Well they are trying to conserve the past…..
Also they never actually learn anything about the past or present either. They are such cave dwellers that what they do learn, they get wrong.
And because they completely hate science, learning, actual thought, education outside the bible, they don’t understand that time never, ever moves backwards. Because they are stupid, they keep trying to make it though and we have to keep paying for their ignorance and backasswardness.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
@Sloane Ranger: 30 billion per year or 30 billion over 10 years?
If it’s the former, it’s not credible, as that would amount to a 25% increase. If it’s the latter, then a 2% increase is just an adjustment for yearly inflation.
Sloane Ranger
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch: Good question. We await clarification.
Spanky
@Ruckus: The only things conservatives learn, right or wrong, are those “facts” which serve their existing world view.
(This morning’s insomnia sponsored by reflux. Blech.)
Bnad
The nationalism+socialism thing reads more to me like a warning: this is a route to power that works, and can and has been exploited by very unscrupulous people.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
“anti-pc nationalism wedded to leftist economics”
Sully needs to have his head checked. Cenk Uygar is running on this platform and will likely only receive 2.5% of the vote in an open jungle primary for Simi Valley.
Patricia Kayden
Anne Laurie
Haven’t wanted to go to the effort of front-paging Jerk Cenk, but I’m personally convinced he’s another Federalist-Society-to-‘dirtbag left’ grifter who’s being paid by the GOP to ratfvck the CA primary.
With any luck, having Big Brother Bernie scamper away from endorsing Jerk will discourage the Ooh, shiny new thing! media from wasting any more effort encouraging low-info voters to support him.
On the other hand, shame on the ever-Bernie-credulous Dave Weigel for this:
Spanky
Today’s Headline I Never Expected To Read (via WaPo):
rikyrah
Who does Sullivan want sacrificed?
All the Non-White folks.
Thought that was obvious??
Emma
Why people pay so much attention to that Tory Aristocrat Wannabe is beyond me.
opiejeanne
@Spanky: Did you see the clip of him dealing with his teeth in a way that makes me believe he has false teeth. All of his “s” sounds became “sh”. It appeared that his lower plate came out of position and there are a couple of points where he’s trying to mouth it back into place.
I don’t know if this is a clever manipulation of a video, but it looked real to me. My dad and my grandparents had dentures but it seems odd to me that Trump didn’t have implants several years ago.
opiejeanne
@rikyrah: More than once I’ve wondered where I could hide a few POC in this house, because of what we have in power right now.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Anne Laurie: Semi Valley; I sense an embarrassed to admit it Republican who is still on the crazy train and doesn’t know it.
prostratedragon
Strings of the Philadelphia Sinfonia youth orchestra:
Sister Golden Bear
@rikyrah: He’s jonesing to sacrifice us trans folks as well. He’s made that abundantly clear over the years.
And he’d be fine with sacrificing all non-pen!s Americans too.
Brachiator
@Kent:
From what I can gather by looking at various news stories, the British people are still stunned and trying to figure out what the Conservative Party victory might mean. But the right wing media is going overboard to paint the election as a rejection of socialism, communism, Marxism and especially Jeremy Corbyn.
However, a common theme that has popped up in interviews with voters is the degree to which many long time Labour supporters said that they were voting against Corbyn, but not necessarily voting for Johnson. Some explicitly said that they agreed with the Labour manifesto, but did not see how Labour could actually implement them. The sad thing here is that these people will soon find that the Conservatives have no interest in anything that Labour offers.
And yes, BREXIT was the wedge, something that Labour did not really understand. They expected people to vote for Labour because of traditional loyalties. This was a fatal mistake.
The voters also just seemed to be tired of the BREXIT issue being dragged out. And so the Liberal Democrats were punished, as were all the MPs who broke from their parties and ran as independents.
And yet Scotland rejected Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. And Scotland was strongly remain. This will make things very interesting down the road, and has absolutely no simple comparison to anything happening in the US.
Well … Again, a number of working class people in the so-called Labour wall who switched to the Conservative Party, are in favor of leaving the EU and against immigration (or more explicitly, the EU commitment to the free movement of people and tolerance for immigrants and refugees). This is somewhat similar to Trump’s hammering the idea of America first and his demonizing of Muslims and other people. These British voters think that somehow the past glory of the UK will be restored if they unyoke themselves from the EU and keep out … somebody.
Ironically, back in the early 1960s, the UK prime minister Harold Macmillan saw that the only hope for an economically exhausted Britain was not fantasies of a close connection to the UK commonwealth and former colonies, but a close alignment to the new European Economic Community.
And he was right. But perhaps it’s like this: just as anti-vaxxers take the protection afforded by immunization for granted and now reject it, pro-BREXIT voters believe that all the benefits they get from being connected to the EU will continue after they fre themselves from it. They are wrong.
Unfortunately, this decision also plays into Trump’s hand. He is against the EU, the WTO and all the systems and organizations that protect and regulate global trade. And of course, he is dangling the prospect of a trade deal in front of the UK. The problem is that the voters, and Boris Johnson and his MPs, have been pumping the nostalgic fantasy of Mighty Albion, a United Kingdom that ceased to exist a long time ago. The current UK is puny compared to the EU, the US or China. They are staking the future on the fumes of a reputation that no one even clearly remembers, or cares about.
ETA: Sky News Australia, which is Fox News on steroids, has been slobbering all over the BREXIT story, and they have been really trying to build a case that Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are the same, that Labour and the Democrats are the same, and that Trump will save America just as Boris Johnson will save the UK. It is a pile of manure, but expect more of this kind of shrill nonsense to bubble up officially on Fox and be taken up by conservative pundits.
Sister Golden Bear
@rikyrah: And also especially us trans folks. Sully’s made that abundantly clear over the years.
David ??Booooooo?? Koch
This is a big get.
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger:
I will bet it is largely a repackaging of already committed funds. Johnson never says where this money will come from. And even after his victory was assured, he kept pushing the lie that the Conservatives would add 50,000 nurses and build 40 hospitals.
It also astounds me that he is getting away with the claim that his government will do better when the Conservatives have been in power for, what, the last nine years? So they will somehow manifest a competence which previously eluded them?
joel hanes
@David ??Booooooo?? Koch:
Cenk Uygar is running on this platform and will likely only receive 2.5% of the vote in an open jungle primary for Simi Valley.
It will be nice to see that asshole marked to market.
Jay C
@Brachiator:
I’d quite agree with your first sentence, but I think the rest of your analysis misses a couple of points. The UK is not quite a “puny” economy – it’s the (fifth? sixth?)-largest in the world by GDP: the big problem (IMHO) is that, once “independent”, they will not be able to promote or sustain economic growth, save by chopping away at any and all social spending programs they (the Tories, that is) feel they can get away with axing. Not what the average voter was looking for, perhaps, since Chucking The Bloody Foreigners Out was always the main goal of Brexit: but of course, by the time they realize they’ve been had, it will be too late.
And I’d also take issue with your last point: while Nostalgia For The Empire was generally downplayed/dismissed during the Brexit campaign, it has always seemed (to me) to have kept bubbling up as a background issue: the vague notion that once free of the European “shackles” Britain will be able to re-emerge into the Golden Age of 1910 again, and rebuild itself as the globe-girdling superpower it once was, and so many Britons assume it still ought to be.
Complete bollocks, of course: but, but I don’t think its correct to assume that the British don’t remember the Glory Days “clearly”: it seems like they do. Those memories are, of course, for the most a bogus romanticized/idealized/whitewashed national myth: but they’re clear….
laura
@opiejeanne: it’s veneers. https://www.atlantacenterforcosmeticdentistry.com/blog/trump-white-teeth-real-porcelain-veneers/
Shalimar
@Anne Laurie: Weigel is a libertarian who goes where the Washington Post tells him to go. Apparently this week’s shiny new thing is Uygur.
Also, Weigel is a smart guy and insightful observer, but he isn’t a liberal ally. You expect too much from him if you’re disappointed.
Chris Johnson
The EU is about free and unrestricted movement of CAPITAL, and workers. Which is great if you’re Germany and make BMWs, not so great if you’re a worker. Racism is a separate thing but all too easily bolted on.
Immigrants coming taking all our JERRRBS is a literal thing, if people can come from deeply challenged countries where the lowest job in the US or UK is a big upgrade (plus, social services maybe? Quite a bonus). That’s what globalization IS: standard of living normalizes for normal people, plus a tiny elite get unthinkably rich, and those are the ones really pushing for all this so they can get more rich.
Some of the Leave or anti-globalist energy is coming from people who are used to living in ‘the first world’, will never be that tiny elite, and don’t want to be reduced to serfs. It’s really really easy to make them totally racist, here or in the UK, but other serfs are not their natural enemies. However, it’s so convenient to both GET them to be super racist, and then to blame opposition for globalization on them simply hating other races rather than the economic system that’s reducing them to a sort of valueless gray paste of humanity.
People don’t want to be corporate slaves with suicide nets surrounding their highrise factory buildings. For good or ill (hint: ill) the natural outcome of things like the EU and globalization and free movement of capital and workers is to reduce the workers to a valueless, liquid rabble half a step beyond literal slave labor, and keep ’em that way.
Understanding this is key to understanding Leave (for Leavers, the key is to understand that just bailing out of the operating system won’t help: you’ve got to influence stakeholders, not just throw rocks at the facade of the castle)
ciotogist
Isn’t “anti pc nationalism” and “leftist economics” what Trump ran on? He’s not governing that way but he sure ran that way. Don’t touch Social Security and Medicare, a better health care plan than Obama’s, tax increases on the rich, et cetera. Never Trumpers were largely worried his economic policies would be liberal. When it became clear that wouldn’t be the case, they found religion.