The Return Of Liberal Populism In America And Britain - NationalJournal

[WillyT]

The Return of Liberal Populism in America and Britain
Obama and Miliband signal a shift to class-conscious politics for the left.
By Ronald Brownstein - NationalJournal
December 19, 2013

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LONDON – During the 1990s, Democrats in the United States and the Labor Party in the United Kingdom pursued parallel transformations. Behind the leadership of President Clinton and Prime Minister Tony Blair, each party recast its traditional liberalism into a "Third Way" centrism that balanced government activism with reform and tilted its emphasis from economic "fairness" toward growth. Now the two parties are moving along matching tracks again, but toward a more confrontational approach that reflects each country's shifting economic and political landscape.

President Obama and Ed Miliband, the leader of the British Labor Party, signaled the change this fall with milestone speeches in which each pledged to focus on the interlocked issues of widening income inequality, declining upward mobility, and stagnant living standards for average families. Addressing the Labor Party conference last September, Miliband made clear he wants to force those issues to the center of the May 2015 election when the party hopes to unseat Prime Minister David Cameron's ruling coalition of Conservatives and Liberal Democrats (a centrist third party). The link between overall economic growth and gains for average families, Miliband insisted, has "broken." Economic recovery, he charged, now "just seems to lift the yachts" while leaving most families confronting a "cost-of-living crisis" in which prices are rising faster than wages.

Obama, in his speech to the liberal Center for American Progress this month, struck the same notes. "[A] dangerous and growing inequality and lack of upward mobility … has jeopardized middle-class America's basic bargain that if you work hard, you have a chance to get ahead," he insisted. "I believe this is the defining challenge of our time." These sharp words mark an unmistakable shift in tone and emphasis for Democrats and Labor since the Clinton and Blair era. Neither man ignored inequality or completely muted economic populism. Clinton raised taxes on the rich, at great political cost, in his 1993 budget and significantly expanded tax credits for low-wage workers; Blair passed Britain's first national minimum wage.

But the "New Democrats" around Clinton and Blair's "New Labor" mostly stressed ideas (such as free trade, targeted deregulation, and public investment moderated by fiscal restraint) meant to accelerate overall economic growth. Each was less interested in lashing the rich as a political foil than in winning more upper-middle-class and even affluent voters (which each, for a time, did with considerable success). Blair even pledged not to raise income-tax rates during his first term. Obama and Miliband haven't abandoned those themes (or upper-income voters, who often identify with their parties on social issues). But...

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More: http://www.nationaljournal.com/white-house/the-return-of-liberal-populism-in-america-and-britain-20131219

[DonCoquixote]

1. Bottom line

WE have tried the Third way, and we have found that, at the very least, it does NOT doscurage the right wing from tryign to take what they want, nor does it get the masses enthused.