{"id":952,"date":"2017-05-18T12:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-05-18T16:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/inside.gcschool.org\/gracegazette\/?p=952"},"modified":"2017-05-18T12:00:15","modified_gmt":"2017-05-18T16:00:15","slug":"future-democratic-party-not-bernie-sanders-emmanuel-macron","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/future-democratic-party-not-bernie-sanders-emmanuel-macron\/","title":{"rendered":"The Future of the Democratic Party is Not Bernie Sanders, It is Emmanuel Macron"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Democratic party is currently experiencing a battle over its identity. As I\u2019ve touched on in the past, the American political system is in a state of flux<\/a>, realigning from old issues that have divided the United States for the past 40 years, to new ones. While chaos within the Republican party has been the most visible realization of this realignment, the Democrats have had their own share of civil conflict. The level of success that Bernie Sanders achieved in last year\u2019s primary is indicative of how deep the divisions go. However unlike the Republicans, the Democrats were able to use the clout and fame of Hillary Clinton to suppress their internal divide, and things seemed to calm down, until the fateful night of November the 8th.<\/span><\/p>\n

The upset victory of Donald Trump beheaded the Democratic party, throwing it into chaos. Progressive claimed that had Sen. Sanders been nominated Trump would have been defeated, while Liberals blamed Sanders for dragging out the primary and giving Trump ammunition (Trump added fuel to the fire by thanking Sanders for his \u201ccontribution\u201d to his victory). Since the election the Democratic party has been battling for its own identity. A sizable coalition of progressives and socialists are claiming that the only way to beat Donald is to stoop down to his terms: populism and radicalism. They had initiated a push to ensure that the Democratic party moves further to the left for the 2018 midterm and 2020 presidential election.<\/span><\/p>\n

To be blunt, these efforts are misguided, and will result in a Democratic party less able to take on Donald Trump in 2020. The future of the Democratic party, if they want to actually win elections, is not the populist socialism of Bernie Sanders, but the internationalist centrim of Emmanuel Macron.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Across the Seas<\/h2>\n

A similar story has played out across the Atlantic, in our ally and fellow democracy the United Kingdom. In the aftermath of Labour\u2019s surprise defeat in the 2015 election, Britain’s center left party faced similar choice to 2017\u2019s Democratic Party. They chose wrong and selected Jeremy Corbyn as party leader. Corbyn has bought Labour to historic lows, traveling from foible to foible, and is reviled by most of the voting population (the Conservatives have a 20% lead in polling), as well as by most of his party\u2019s PMs, 80% of whom voted for him to step down. He is maintained in his position by a core of highly dedicated and loyal young followers, and his refusal to give up command led to the mass resignation of party leadership. The June snap election is shaping up to be a historic defeat for Labour, with some predicting that the party will lose 35% of its seats (reducing it to 25% of the total seats in the House of Commons), relegating it to the fewest it\u2019s held since 1935. This is despite the luke warmness surrounding Prime Minister Theresa May, leader of the Conservative Party. <\/span><\/p>\n

Beyond the shores of Britain, leftists have taken a drubbing across the world. In France, the hard left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon came in fourth in the presidential election, behind both the conservative Francois Fillon and the nationalist Marie Le Pen. The leftist Chavist regime of Venezuela, praised on multiple occasions by Sen. Sanders, is in a state of economic and social collapse, having turned the once richest nation of South America (with the world\u2019s largest oil reserves) into a nation incapable of feeding its own people. The millions who have entered to protest have been met with increasingly violent responses. Left-ish populist governments of Argentina and Brazil, also praised by Sanders, are suffering from similar (if not as extreme) woes. In 2015 the Krishner government of Argentina collapsed after mass protests due to economic stagnation and in 2016, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (of the Workers\u2019 Party) was impeached and removed from office on corruption charges, after even larger protests (and her party looks liable to lose its slim majority in the 2018 elections). All across the western world leftists are failing, so why should we expect one to have more electoral or governmental success here in the United States?<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Winning and Wisconsin<\/h2>\n

The past paragraphs referencing the failures of foreign leftists are not even necessary, as American electoral and demographics history is all one needs to know in order to predict the failure of the Democratic party if they shift further to the left. Every progressive or socialist candidate in American political history has relied on the votes of the White Working Class and especially the Mid Western White Working Class. In 1912 when Theodore Roosevelt ran as progressive independent candidate, the majority of the states he carried were in the Mid West. Eugene Debs, the famous socialist and five time failed presidential candidate (also praised by Sen. Sanders), took no states but came the closest in the Midwest. Finally, Progressive Party presidential candidate Robert M. La Follette Sr,. took a single state in the 1924 election: Wisconsin. Without the Midwestern White Working Class American progressives have no chance of victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it just so happens that Donald Trump, the man Democrats hope to defeat in 2020 (if he lasts that long), has a lock on the White Working Class. In fact Trump\u2019s victory was facilitated by them. Their defection to him from the Democratic party swung the states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to his side, winning him the election in a massive upset. For those thinking that a progressive may be able to swing them back, think again. Despite Trump\u2019s low approval ratings, 93% of Trump voters hold a positive view of his administration. Any attempt to win them back and would require compromises on trade and immigration unpalatable to the majority of democratic party voters and is likely to fail anyways.<\/span><\/p>\n

The final and best reason why the Democratic party should not run on a progressive platform in 2018 and should not nominate a progressive candidate in 2020, is because it runs against the political currents of our time. America is in a political realignment, shifting from liberal\/progressive vs. conservative to nationalist vs. globalist. The Republican party is quickly becoming an anti-globalist party, abandoning their old views on trade and international commerce. Progressives similarly disprove of trade and international capitalism (with Sen. Sanders et al. speaking out against the Trans Pacific Partnership alongside Donald Trump). An attempted shift to an anti-trade progressive policy agenda would simply be an attempt to shove into a political space already occupied by Trump and his nationalists, a recipe for failure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Democratic party should instead embrace the currents of our political system and move not towards progressivism but instead to globalism. Instead of fighting viciously and unsuccessfully for the White Working Class, the Democrats should instead aim to pick up those factions of the Republican party, alienated by Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Globalists En Marche<\/h2>\n

For an example of this strategy’s successes, we must look again across the Atlantic, to France. Early this month, Emmanuel Macron (of the new centrist party En Marche), a globalist who unites social liberalism with a pro-market economic policy, and a unabashed internationalist, ascended to the French Presidency. He defeated Marie Le Pen, the French analogue to Donald Trump (uniting social conservatism with economic illiberalism). Just as Melanchthon’s defeat exemplified how progressivism (and conservatism) were and will be unable to defeat nationalism, Macron\u2019s victory demonstrates how unabashed globalism will be able to succeed against Trump. When looking for a manifesto for 2018, or a candidate for 2020, Macron is who the Democratic Party should look towards. Anything else is liable to fail in unseating the nationalists. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Democratic party is currently experiencing a battle over its identity. As I\u2019ve touched on in the past, the American political system is in a state of flux, realigning from… Continue reading “The Future of the Democratic Party is Not Bernie Sanders, It is Emmanuel Macron”<\/span> <\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":953,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"appful":[],"class_list":["post-952","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9uEnr-fm","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952"},{"taxonomy":"appful","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gracegazette.org\/wordpress1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/appful?post=952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}