UK DUers: Miliband=Dukakis a reasonable parallel?

[Nye Bevan]

Fundamentally decent men, intelligent, hard-working politicians with good ideas, but untelegenic, gaffe-prone, and horrible, awkward, stilted campaigners?

Fair, or has too much of the media anti-Labour propaganda osmoted its way into my brain?

[T_i_B]

1. I'm too young to remember much of Bush v Dukakis

The American election that this resembles to me is more Bush v Kerry. Terrible right winger versus ineffective waffler.

That and the 1992 general election in the UK.

The thing that makes this election different is the rise of the SNP. Labour alienated it's Scottish supporters and then fear of a Labour/SNP alliance was then used by the Tories to persuade anti-SNP English voters to support them.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. From what I know of Dukakis, that seems reasonable

Some parallels with Mondale too; associated with an earlier administration which the RW party successfully paints as 'can't be trusted with the economy' although a look at statistics paints a different picture. The RW spins its term as "success" when it's been far more mixed.

Ed Miliband isn't as fluent as you'd like at times; whether that has influenced the electorate a lot, I don't know. It may have played into the "he'll be controlled by the SNP" meme the Tories deployed, apparently successfully. I can't point to another Labour politician and say "they would have won"; Ed Balls, for instance, has lost his own seat.

[LeftishBrit]

3. I would say yes; but I was MUCH more pro-Dukakis than most

Had been to Massachusetts when he was governor, and thought it SO much better than our own situation with Maggie.

I think Miliband was probably cleverer politically than Dukakis; but not enough.

But in both cases, the vicious media propaganda won, and I realize that my own despair now isn't that far off from what I felt in 1988 when I was young and naïve and expected more from humanity. I still do, probably.

[LittleBlue]

4. Poor Ed

The Dukakis of Britain