...more on the "libertarian democrat"

So, here's "Kos" in an essay on the CATO institute website bolstering his "case for the libertarian democrat". He makes four major points:

1. That he is personally motivated by a belief in individual liberty.
2. That unregulated corporations are threats to individual liberty.
3. That people who consider themselves libertarians can be won over to the argument that government is necessary to patrol and underpin a free market.
4. That silicon valley is his utopia because it combines a truly free market with government provided education and infrustructure.

I'll leave aside the bizarre notion that the high tech economy is a utopia (his description of silicon valley is hilariously naive), and focus on the first three assertions.

There used to be a name for the politics built on the notion that freedom and opportunity are inherently linked, and that government must play a role in insuring fair play and a level playing field for entry into the market. It was called liberalism. In tension with this assertion was a politics that argued that there are fundamental imbalances of power within capitalism that the state must either mitigate or abolish. This was called, among other things, democratic socialism. On the opposing side were various stripes of anti-government conservatives.

In today's politics, as we know, any kind of socialism is well off the table. But more importantly, the case for liberalism itself has been vilified. These are bad, bad times. Moulitsas makes a strong case for reviving liberalism, and for why the goal of human freedom is not served by corporate deregulation. What he argues for under the banner of "libertarian Democrat" politics is just liberalism. Nothing more, nothing less.

However, when Moulitsas implies that what he is promoting is new, that it is somehow more "libertarian" than traditional liberalism, he is handing the right a key victory. This rhetorical move reinforces the idea that traditional liberalism was about something other than individual freedom: in essense, conceeding the argument of libertarians and conservatives. Kos, along with many other bloggers, hold themselves up as something different from all those "old fashioned" liberals who somehow were out to destroy the free market or support a big government that is a threat to personal freedom. That's not true. We should say so.

In short, Kos is right that the market needs government. He is right that Silicon Valley is a "success" because of government intervention. The fact is, however, that the only people who disagree with this are libertarians. I can understand that we need to hone our arguments against them, making the case to voters that freedom doesn't come from deregulating the oil industry. What I don't understand is why we would seek to bring these folks into our party. The central problem in American politics today, from any social justice oriented perspective, is how constrained we are in our abilities to use the government as a tool. This needs to be pushed back against, not reinforced.

Joining the chorus for liberarian-friendliness is Campus Progress, the student activist project launched by the centrist Center For American Progress. In a think piece on their website, Julian Sanchez argues for campus coalition work with libertarian students. Included in his piece are the observations that the typical motly campus left culture is alienating to most students (true) and that a majority of young people are vaguely libertarian in mindset (also true). He then says that libertarians might piss leftists off, but we should remember that they are all decent, good people who are not bigoted even if their policies are.

Not so fast. Sanchez misses the point that campus libertarianism is, in fact, rife with both subtle and unsubtle racism and classism, and that on most issues of real import, progressives and libertarians are going to be opposed to one another. So we agree about wiretapping and marijuana. If there's a campaign to mount on those issues, we should be in the same room. But the day to day work of progressives on campus and off should be to push back against the libertarian mindset. All students today grew up after the Reagan revolution, which has had a profound affect on their world view. We need to work hard at undoing that damage, not give in to it.

Basing our arguments in a defense of freedom is important, especially in the United States. As I often femind my friends and colleagues in Europe, all politics in the United States is liberal politics, even social democratic politics. By all means, let's out freedom the libertarians. Let's not let them act as if they have a monopoly on freedom as a value, just as we work on taking religion back from the bigots and the flag back from the militarist right. However, we don't need to become bigots, militarists or libertarians to do that.

why kos creeps me out

Kos has a quick and interesting post up today about the role of Libertarian Party "spoilers" in the Midterm elections. He points out that Libertarians garnered enough votes to equal the margin of victory for Democrats in both the Missouri and Montana Senate elections. That's significant given the 51-49 split in the Senate.

It's all well and good until he gets to his analysis:

"The theocon and neocon takeover of the Republican Party has left many of its more Libertarian members adrift with few alternatives. I clearly hope the Democratic Party becomes more Libertarian friendly over the coming years, but that's a long-term project. In the meantime, the Libertarian ballot line (when available) can be an apt protest vote."

Woah. The Democratic Party should not become more "Libertarian friendly". If there is a long term project for the Party, it is to move it back to it's roots as a defender of both economic and social security. In many senses, making the party more "Libertarian" is the DLC's agenda: an anti-welfare, free trade, anti-regulation, party that uses anti-statist rhetoric to defend free speech and abortion rights. That's what made us a minority party.

If anyone needs a reminder of where Libertarians are at, check out "Republican and Democrat Lovefest over Socialized Healthcare", a post on their official Party blog.

Moulitsas has raised this bizarre assertion many times. His most detailed discussions of the issue usually revolve around issues like gun control. Here he's generally right: the Democratic Party should be reaching out to the folks who get worked up about their guns. However, the ones who are now abandoning the Republican Party to the -right- shouldn't be the target. What it will take to appeal to them will mean an abandonment, both in electoral and moral terms, of the rest of the Democratic base. That's not the way to get to a strong majority.

The way to reach out to them while keeping the other crucial parts of our base together is to offer an alternative to the corporate-dominated trade policies and public sector destruction that has been dominant in Washington for the past twenty years. The lives of rural and small town America have been damaged, far more than the urban bloggerati recognize, by libertarianism in practice. A strong message on the economy is what's needed.

Let's remember who the Libertarians are. In terms of their activist base, there is a reason that the Libertarian party is attractive, almost exclusively, to middle class white guys and some college students. Their worldview rejects the experiences of the poor, people of color and women. It rejects a recognition of systems of inequality and power. A Democratic Party which is more interesting to them cannot simultaneously be more engaged with those struggles against inequality. Perhaps Moulitsas feels some kindship with this view of the world. I sure as hell don't.

the "L" word. (no, the other one)

Everyone knows that the moment in which George H.W. Bush made the word “liberal” a political epithet was an important one. It was the crowning moment of the political project laid out by Bush’s former rival Ronald Reagan. The broad left, even in the guise of mild-mannered and intelligent Michael Dukakis, was effectively marginalized. Being a liberal meant being out of touch with the cultural habits of the average American, and, moreover, it meant being weak, if not subversive, in regards to national security.
Ever since, on the national level, running as a “liberal” is a non-starter. Out on main street, hardly anybody calls themselves “liberal” anymore, even when they agree with liberal policy proposals and share many attitudes with those who wear the “L” proudly. This has allowed the right to scuttle important public policy initiatives with the use of a single word. The “liberal bias” in the news media, popular culture and higher education are regular whipping posts for the right-wing opinion makers, and is used to justify the real attacks on journalistic, artistic and academic freedoms coming from the Bush Administration. Even here in California, intimations that someone is “too liberal” are hugely damaging. It’s as if we have two wings in American politics now: conservative and mushy.
In response, the center left has made two rhetorical moves. The first, which you will see on the pages of magazines like The American Prospect and Harper’s or among more academic circles, is to return to using the L-word unabashedly. “Liberal and proud” has become a bit of a slogan of late- which is a good thing. America has a nasty and parochial habit of drawing red lines around political ideologies which are portrayed as insufficiently “American” or “patriotic”. Elites and the right did an effective job of so proscribing ideologies of the left, an effort made all the easier by some political forces who seemed happy to contribute to their own revolutionary marginalization.
However, the other approach is to leave the word “liberal” on the side of the road. Folks have taken to use the word “progressive”, a term so empty of content that everyone from John Podesta to Howard Zinn use the word to describe themselves. I’ve written before about the strange career of the word “progressive.” As recently as my college days, the word was meant to delineate a politics which was to the left of mainstream liberalism. Progressive politics was characterized by a more rigorous attention to systems of inequality, and a preference for reforms which took these structural fissures seriously. Unlike liberals, progressives took seriously the structuring forces of race, class, gender and sexuality. That distinction has been blurred now that we are all “progressives”, as liberals have taken refuge in a term that hasn’t been destroyed yet.
I understand that all political vocabulary is fuzzy. The way we use the word “liberal” in the United States is not exactly the agreed-to definition in political theory, but American Liberals are liberals nonetheless. Those of us who are not, or, more accurately are not just liberals are caught in a rhetorical and ideological trap. You will hear people say that it doesn't matter what we call ourselves, "liberal", "progressive", even "moderate", we are all on the same side. That may be true in the electoral arena, but it doesn't mean that we all are coming from the same place, which is also important.
In that regard, I wish that the “L” word would make a comeback, not only because I’m tired of the dominance of mean conservatism and blithe centrism, but also because I miss being able to understand and explain why our side doesn’t always agree with one another. I have arguments, both theoretical and practical, with fellow “progressive” Democrats, and it is clear that our disagreement stems from the fact that, regardless of what they call themselves, they are liberals. That’s fine, but it would be a hell of a lot easier if we could just be honest about it.
This is most disturbing when it comes to trying to figure out if an action, policy, organization or individual is “progressive.” Locally, I have seen folks who are very defensive of their “progressive” credentials back candidates who were clearly to the right of so-called “centrist” candidates. The only differences were that they took a louder stand on a single, often symbolic, issue and they attended meetings of “progressive” groups. In the absence of a more sophisticated discourse about ideas, labels and single issues emerge as the most important litmus test for organizations, candidates and public figures. In the white left, the issue of the moment is the War. As long as you are sufficiently and loudly anti-War, you are a “progressive”, regardless of your overall world-view. We have to be willing to understand that issues provoke coalitions, not unanimity. Lots of people coming from lots of perspectives are against the War. It doesn’t make you a progressive.
So, I want liberals to start coming clean. I’ll have your back. I may not be a liberal myself, but many of my close friends are. Me and the rest of my pro-liberal friends will be here for you when the barking dogs come after you. After all, when they went after us, you were there…

Well, we’ll be there anyway.

the democratic party is possible

Don’t believe the hype. The Democrats did not win by moving to the center. Some socially conservative candidates won, particularly in states where strong majorities are anti-choice and against civil rights for gay and lesbian families. However, there were at least as many progressives elected, including eight new members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, now the House’s largest non-party group. Nancy Pelosi is a member. Many of them will inherit powerful committee chairships.
That’s not to say that the victory demonstrated any kind of fundamental realignment. In fact, “all” that happened was that Republican gains within the Democratic base were eroded. Key constituencies within the old Democratic majority coalition came back to the fold. This can be seen geographically, as the electoral map begins to look more and more like a map of Civil War America, only with the parties switched. We made almost no gains in the South, while Ohio, Missouri, Maryland and New Hampshire snapped back into the Union. The Republicans, for their part, held the South and are in danger of becoming a regional party. Blacks stuck with the Democrats to the tune of 90%, despite high-profile campaigns by black Republicans in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. Latinos shifted to the Democrats by a margin of nearly 30%. Support rose among women, working people, the poor and people at both ends of the educational spectrum. In short, this election showed that a majoritarian Democratic party is possible. The key will be keeping this coalition together, and expanding it, even when the Republicans aren’t falling on their own bibles/swords.
One important factor in this election was the slight but noticeable move toward economic populism by our Party. Gains in Ohio demonstrate the importance of this move. Witness Sherrod Brown, the state’s new Senator. On November 6th, Ohio was Republican, from the State Assembly to the Governor’s mansion to the contested Senate seat. The pro-choice, pro-gay and fervently pro-worker Brown led a clean sweep of the state, as all levels of government went to Democrats. The hook was Brown’s strong stands on economic issues: a re-evaluation of “free trade”, a rise in the minimum wage, a crackdown on corporate malfeasance. He did so without trading away the Party’s commitment to so-called “social issues”.
If social conservatism is the glue that holds the Republican majority together, economic justice can serve the same role for Democrats. Even the much ballyhooed “moderates” who won senate seats in Montana and Virginia ran ads against free trade and attacked their opponents for scuttling a minimum wage increase. Jim Webb, the Reagan Republican turned Democrat who won in Virginia campaigned hard on jobs and income inequality. Ballot initiatives raising state minimums passed everywhere they appeared on the ballot- a move widely seen as beneficial to Democratic turnout. In a nice symbolic turn of events, the Kansas state house turned totally Democratic. We even picked up a Congressional seat there. The idea that what is the matter with Kansas is that Democrats haven’t given working class folks a reason to vote for them seems like a pretty unassailable hypothesis.
Not to the right wing of the Democratic Party. They have joined the mainstream media and Republican sour-grapes pundits in arguing that super Tuesday was the result of the party’s move to the vaunted “center.” Rahm Emmanuel, the clarion voice of the New Democrats, has been buoyed by his successful gambit to recruit Gulf War veterans to run as Democrats. That was clever politics, but it only worked because both Republicans and Democrats gave people a reason to vote our way.
Organizationally, Emmanuel has called for DNC chair Howard Dean’s head. As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Emmanuel has been highly critical of Dean’s strategy of (re)-building party organizations in every State. The DCCC is beholden primarily to members of Congress and the party’s fundraising base, and is locked into the logic of the short-game. Their preference for one election at a time, slash and burn strategies has led to twelve years of Party defeats and a general erosion of progressive values and discourse. The deep victories by Democrats in state government (we now control more state legislatures and governorships than the bad guys for the first time since 94) demonstrates that long-term base building reaps benefits. The Dean path will help solidify the base, the way that Republicans have done for 30 years. We shouldn’t go back to the days of Clintonian shallow victories. The Democratic Left should continue to rally around Dean.

No doubt, Congressional Democratic leaders could very well overplay their hand. I’m glad that symbolic, oppositional red-meat like impeachment has been jettisoned from the table. We have to achieve a modest program of actual reform to lay the groundwork for winning back more of the Democratic coalition. We will have to tread carefully, even on issues surrounding Iraq, regardless of the clear mandate for withdrawal.
If it is hard to call it a decisive victory, we can safely conclude that it was a decisive defeat. The Karl Rove strategy of combining jingoistic paranoia with cultural reaction went down in flames. What, precisely, it will be replaced with remains to be seen. Nevertheless, whether by accident or by design, the Democratic Party has won a major election, one that will have huge positive effects for working families and for the cause of international peace and security.
The minimum wage will be raised. Anti-labor fine print will be removed from bills. Real health care reform will get a hearing, and even “single-payer” will see the light of day. Judicial nominations will be blocked. Investigations will be mounted, and from the dais rather than the basement. For this we should be happy.

Next week: Progressives and the Party

is the democratic party possible? Part 2: Party Unity

I am a big fan of partisanship. I know that this is an unpopular position, both among the growing plurality of “independent” voters, as well as those on the left who wish to remain outside the “confines” of the Democratic Party. However, a disciplined political party, with a loyal voter base, active civil society organizations in and around it, and a clear national or statewide agenda can accomplish considerable social change. Unfortunately, it seems that only the Republican party got this memo.

And so I was surprised today to read a great defense of partisan strategy written by none other than Paul Krugman, a guy who normally leads the squishy brigade. I am used to him offering above-the-fray niceties, and was quite shocked to read him lay down some bomb tracks:

“The point is, those who cling to the belief that politics can be conducted in terms of people rather than parties –a group that also includes would-be centrist Democrats like Joe Lieberman and many members of the punditocracy- are kidding themselves.”

Krugman hammers NARAL and the Sierra Club for endorsing liberal Republican Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island. Chaffee has a decent voting record on both choice and environmental issues. However, as Krugman points out, if the Democrats do not take back the Senate, people who dismiss climate change as “a hoax” will continue to oversee the nation’s environmental policy. Conservative NGO’s, on the other hand, are down the line partisan, even rolling with policies they don’t deem perfect in order to make sure that their larger interest, a Republican government, remains fulfilled. This is a profound point. Partisanship matters.

However, this relationship is a two way street. If we are going to expect labor folks, environmentalists and civil rights activists (and their organizations) to stick with the Party, the Party needs to stick with them. And themselves.

Democratic politicians have a tendency to show their “independence” to voters by stepping on the faces of their base supporters. Consider Clinton’s welfare “reform” initiatives and his support for NAFTA. A whirlwind of discussion in the liberal magazines (The Prospect and Nation, specifically) has centered on the need for the Party to generate a set of “big ideas”, organizing principles within which a majority of Americans can find themselves. This is certainly a necessity. However, in arguing for this, writers like Todd Gitlin, Michael Tomasky, and Markos Moulitsas Zúniga have suggested that politicians need to distance themselves from the groups which make up their base. That’s nonsense, and it’s precisely why so many organizations at the grassroots level want to assert their own independence. When you add in the American cult of individuality, the weakness of our party system, and an electoral arrangement built around individual candidates (especially in California), there are a lot of incentives for issue and constituency-based social movement organizations to be quite guarded and even schizophrenic when it comes to dealing with Democrats. Any “big idea” that comes out of the Democratic Party has to be a sum of its parts, appealing across the varied communities and interests under its tent. You aren’t going to get that by following Tomasky’s advice.

A third problem is that so often elected Democrats put short term gains ahead of long-term strategy. Compromise is the life’s blood of politics, but Democrats seem to suffer from hemophilia.

Take a look at the California Gubernatorial race.Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez and Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa both could use a dose of party loyalty. Nunez, while serving the largely ceremonial role as campaign Chairman for Phil Angelides, has in recent months become a regular podium-buddy to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Together, they have crafted a “bi-partisan” package of infrastructure bonds and sent them to voters, thus reinforcing Arnold’s strategy of delivering public goods while passing the cost on to kids who can’t vote against him. That’s not good for Phil. In an even more craven mode, Assembly and Senate leaders are discussing a swap: Arnold gets to take redistricting away from them (one of his failed proposals in the Special Election last year) and in return they get relief from term limits. Now is not the time to be playing footsy with a rich, telegenic populist Republican. Now is the time to be sending a single message about why the Democrats should take back the governor’s office.

Villaraigosa, of whom I’m generally a fan, has done his friend Fabian one better, publicly feuding with Angelides over the Mayor’s attempt to take direct control of the LA school system. He has even enlisted the support of the Governor in pressing his case. So far, Villaraigosa has failed to endorse Angelides.

At best, this is about the short-term goals of shoring up their own voter base. At worse, however, this could be about intentionally working to sink Angelides in order to clear the way for a Villaraigosa run for Governor in 2010. I'm not so sure, but San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has floated that theory in his recent call to Democrats to muster for Phil.

In the end. Party unity must be earned. It emerges from a healthy balance between compromise, strategy, principles and trust. If you don’t believe me, ask Joe Lieberman.

to the euston station.... the left and universal human rights

The left has often found it difficult to resist the notion that our enemy’s enemies are our friends. From the defense in some parts of the left of every move the Soviet Union made, to the 60’s fetishization of the National Liberation Front in Vietnam, to the softer mistake of lifting Hugo Chavez to sainthood, we often seem to believe that any force which opposes the United States must be a good thing. Thankfully, most of us have not made this mistake in the current “war on terror”. This isn't true for everyone, of course. For example, the always overrated Naomi Klein let her enthousiasm for brown people with guns get the better of her when she wrote a much-attacked celebration of the Mahdi Army in Iraq. She found a way to triangulate around the simple fact that a victory for the Iraqi "resistance" would lead to the repeal of most of the Iraqi people's hard-won gains for women, workers and intellectual freedom.
Similarly, just as some Zionists employ a double standard about Israeli vs. Palestinian violence, there are those in the American left who simply reverse this double standard. Suicide bombings are regrettable, but the “real” problem is Israeli military action. Zionism is racism, but the rampant and disgusting anti-Semitism among Muslims and Arabs is understandable. In my view, they are both “the real problem”.
It is understandable that we would want to support resistance movements opposing occupations and atrocities committed with our tax dollars, but not all resistance movements are born equal. I am no pacifist, and believe that all people have the right to self-defense, even military. However, just as we would be critical of Israel’s choices in defense of its nationhood, so, too should we keep our wits about us when analyzing the motivations, behavior, ideology and strategies of movements opposing U.S. or Israeli policy in the Middle East.
That’s why I lost all respect for George Galloway after his recent speech at a march in London opposing Israeli terror-bombings of Gaza and Lebanon. You may remember Galloway, the articulate British MP who spoke to Congress last year, defending himself from allegations of aiding terrorism, and told them to stick it. He became a brief celebrity among liberals and progressives here, as we had not heard an elected Democrat speak forcefully about anything in so long. Galloway’s always been a bit nutty, but he jumped the goddamn shark when he exclaimed at the March that ''I am here to glorify the resistance, Hezbollah. I am here to glorify their leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah''. That was simply indefensible, especially given that the city of London is still recovering from a series of home-grown terror attacks which killed scores of working-class people.
As this sort of nonsense has gained ground in parts of the UK left, a group of intellectuals, activists and bloggers have issued a statement of principles known as the Euston Manifesto. Essentially an appeal for a renewed commitment to fundamental human rights, the document criticizes both anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism, as well as the strange sympathy some on the left have toward Islamist movements. The Manifesto has been criticized for being waffly on the Iraq war, (in truth it is mostly silent on the issue, as authors are split on the question), and has been characterized as a right-wing document. Read it, and decide for yourself. Personally, I see the statement, which has been signed by a number of prominent American social democratic thinkers, as an important corrective to some of the more dangerously simplistic and authoritarian tendencies on the left. It may sound strange, but we do need to lay out a clear statement of principles regarding universal human rights. The real world is complex, and, contrary to George Bush’s bedtime stories, it is not divided clearly into good guys and bad guys. People living under repressive regimes must make difficult choices: however, it is important not to degenerate into an absolute moral relativism of the left- supporting anything that is against U.S. power, for example, or which wraps itself in the rhetoric of socialism or anti-globalization, whatever those words actually mean.
We know that the right plays this game all the time. Any regime that is “anti-terrorist” or “anti-communist” can be apologized for: which is how both Pinochet and Saudi Arabia became our best friends. Let’s not make the same mistake.

See a clip of Galloway's speech here.

More of Naomi Klein's Judgements, "Bring Najaf to New York". I don't know about you, but I don't want to bring Najaf to New York.

after blair

If the prevarications of the Clinton era have left center-to-progressive politics in noticeable disarray, the same can be said for the legacy of Clinton's cousin across the pond, Tony Blair. Blair's attempts to dismantle the Labour Party's ties to it's traditional bases in the trade unions and the new left may have created a considerable, but unstable electoral majority- just as Clinton's triangulation afforded the Democrats our only two-term president in my lifetime. As any hoverbike reader knows, I have serious doubts that the centrist strategy is good for our side in the long run. Life after Clinton has been hard for the Democrats, and the broad left, as we struggle to figure out what a progressive message, let alone progressive governance, looks like in the twenty-first century.
Blair's inevitable departure as Party Leader (and Prime Minister) is setting the stage for a political battle that, mirroring the 2004 Presidential Primary, will be a referendum on the meaning and consequences of the New Labour project. The heir apparent, Chancellor Gordon Brown, represents the segment of the party which is more traditional (and progressive) than the hard-core of New Labor, but which has gone along with Blair's rightward drift for the sake of victory and party unity. Most analysts believe that a Labor Party under Brown will continue the generally centrist approach of the current government, while strengthening slightly the commitment to the welfare state, trade union rights and a social justice-based trade policy. Even this difference, however, has been in question of late as Brown seems to be signaling his own shift to the right. Other voices (and potential Leader candidates) have emerged, however, positioning themselves as heralds of a more decisive shift to the left.
The darlings of the far-left blogosphere (think of them as somewhat akin to Dennis Kucinich) are John McDonnell and Michael Meacher. McDonnell has attracted attention and some key commitments from some of the grassroots. Meacher has nabbed some headlines for adding his voice to the 911 conspiracy chorus. Neither candidate is likely to win, given the powerful role that the party’s parliamentary group plays in selecting a leader. In the case of Meacher, that’s probably a blessing.
Other floating names include two cabinet members, John Denham of the Home office and Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary. As is the case here, the Iraq war looms heavily over the leadership question. The Party’s grassroots are strongly anti-war, and Blair’s continuing support for the Bush Administration’s policies has angered the base as well as a large percentage of Labour members of parliament. There have been high-profile cabinet resignations, as well as an upsurge in support for anti-war parties both to the left and the right of Labour. There is certainly an argument to be made, as it is here, that to be the leading party of the center-left, Labour must have a coherent, and progressive position on the war, while remaining credible and pragmatic on the overall question of national defense. That’s not an easy line to walk, but Blair’s lap-dog routine only works so long as the Conservatives don’t provide a viable alternative.
In Bush, the Republicans found just such an alternative. The new Conservative leader, David Cameron, is looking more and more like a serious challenger. In the next British election, Brown may well end up joining Al Gore as the failed continuation of the “Third Way” model. Only a strong and compelling reason to vote Labour will stop that from happening, and an internal challenge from the left of the party may be what it takes to force Brown to campaign on the Party’s strengths, instead of the Conservatives’ weaknesses. Let us just pray that he doesn’t put in a call to Kerry’s advisors.

To follow the Labout Party’s leadership saga, check out the daily, a fantastic new blog from which I blatantly stole much of the above analysis and information.