Is John Kerry a "Blair Democrat"?

[T_i_B]

Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute thinks so. Old article but it may still be relevent. Make of this what you will.

http://www.ppionline.org/ppi_ci.cfm?knlgAreaID=127&subsecID=171&contentID=251557

Four of the leading Democratic presidential contenders -- Rep. Dick Gephardt and Sens. Joseph Lieberman, John Kerry and John Edwards -- not only voted to support the war but also joined British Prime Minister Tony Blair in demanding that Bush challenge the United Nations to live up to its responsibilities to disarm Iraq. This position put these "Blair Democrats" in sync with the vast majority of Americans who said they would much rather attack Saddam Hussein's regime with United Nations backing than without it. And it puts them at odds with what Kerry called the "blustery unilateralism" of the president, which combined with French obstructionism to rupture not only the United Nations but the Atlantic alliance as well.

Like Bush, these Democrats did not shrink from the use of force to end Hussein's reign of terror. Like Blair, they saw the Iraq crisis as a test of Western resolve and the United Nations' credibility as an effective instrument of collective security. Their "yes-but" position on Iraq irked the antiwar left and some political commentators, who prefer the parties to take starkly opposing stands on every issue, no matter how complicated. But the Blair Democrats faithfully reflected Americans' instinctive internationalism. While neoconservatives may yearn for a new Augustan age based on unfettered U.S. power, most Americans still see strategic advantages in international cooperation.

Just as the swift liberation of Iraq has strengthened the Blair Democrats, it has weakened the party's antiwar contingent, whose worst fears failed to materialize. The outcome deals a near-fatal blow to the presidential prospects of Howard Dean, whose staunch opposition to the war thrilled Iowa's left-leaning activists but is out of step with rank-and-file Democrats, about two-thirds of whom approve of the war.

[Bombtrack]

1. Edwards and Kerry only would have gone in with a second UN resolution

and they voted for the congressional resoultion to get that and to get inspectors into the country. They supported the UN disarming Iraq.

[cindyw]

13. You are wrong about one thing. You seem to be saying that at the point

when Bush called off the inspectors and invaded, Kerry would have gone on with the second resolution. This is not true and it furthers the republican idea that Kerry vs Bush on the issue is that Kerry was looking for permission to defend America. This is wrong. Kerry felt that the inspections were not given the time or the intelligence to be effective. He felt that Bush was only conducting the inspections while he planned for the right time to invade.

The difference is that Kerry would have used international pressure to get more inspectors in. He would not have lied about our "intelligence" that we somehow knew where the weapons where. He would have passed on what intelligence we had and has said that he would have continued the inspections as long as we had to in order to make sure that Saddam was in compliance. He would not have made up some circumstance that the US was in danger and had to invade.

Sorry to jump on you, but I am getting a little tired of Democrats buying in to the crap that Republicans say about Kerry's policies.

[Kanary]

2. It's very interesting, that war thing

Before the primary/caucus season, DU was anti-war. I can't remember any posts, except ones later tombstoned, defending the invasion of Iraq.

Now that Kerry is the presumptive nominee, it's not so cool to be against the war.

Interesting.

Kanary

[DaveSZ]

3. Maybe it's because

we're in Iraq now, so we need to figure out how to get out.

I'd say just listen to whatever General Clark says, since he seems to know what the hell he's talking about.

:)

[Old and In the Way]

4. I think most of us were absolutely anti-war. Still are.

But some of us understood what the Democrats signed up for. And we also know that Bush did not live up to his end of the agreement. He got the war he wanted.....and the rope with which to hang himself.

[AP]

9. I think it's political realism.

The only reason democrats have the credibility to criticize Bush on the war today is because they weren't discredited as anti-war, unpatriotic cowards who would give over to the UN oversight of America's defense (an issue which cost Wilson his credibility, and which FDR had the good sense to learn from Wilson's mistake).

I see a lot of what Kerry and the rest did as simply NOT stepping into traps the Republicans set to destroy them in the eyes of the American public.

(However, since I do like Edwards, I really think there was room for Kerry to vote against the 87 Bil Iraq bill, because that's the issue which clearly separated Iraq out into two components which were ALWAYS worth crtiticizing -- is it about national security, or is it about finding ways to transfer a ton of taxpayer wealth to private companies?)

[T_i_B]

5. Well in my experience

DU is still OVERWHELMINGLY against the war in Iraq, which is one of the reasons why many of Will Marshall's claims in the article about how Dems are supporting the war look slightly dubious to me.

[Dr Fate]

6. I've been at DU for about 3 years...

What upset me was the lies, propaganda and fear-mongering from Bush/media- it was overwhelming...

I thought the UN should have been able to continue its job- I was against going in the way Bush did...

I am against war as a 1st resort-I remember a sizable number of DUers who were/are pro UN...

Kerry was not my #1 choice- but he is now- and I am much closer to his pro-UN views on Iraq than Bush's...

[AntiCoup2K4]

17. Not interesting, sickening and appalling is more like it.

:puke:

[Finch]

7. Tony Blair is much maligned

... he has improved standards in health and education, raised the minimum wage, practically eliminated unemployment and unlike most of the EU the uk's economy is growing... the whole reason for putting aside the old tribal politics of the Labour Party was that they born not relationship to the reality of what ordinary working class and middle class voter wanted... they did not want the nationalization of the top 25 companies, unilateral disarmament, higher taxes... all of this they did not want and you can't just stand still claiming to represent a "mass proletariat" that clearly does not exist... you need to move and adapt with your base ... your ideals don't change (and in the UK and us have not) just the methods through which they can be achived... and in this respect new labour and the new democrats brought their party's back to their electoral bases of "natural" supporters....

[T_i_B]

8. You're the IDS fan aren't you?

No offence mate, but I'm sure I remember you from another thread.

Your claim that Blair has improved standards in healthcare is not the case at all as Blair has introduced a scam called PFI which is bleeding the NHS dry. Allow George Monbiot to explain more. I would also recomend captive state by the same author.

http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?table=old§ion=current&issue=2004-04-03&id=1646&searchText=

The reality is that PFI, or ‘public private partnership’ as the government now prefers to call it, is a scam. It works for neither socialists nor free marketeers, as it offers neither effective public provision nor business efficiencies. Far from introducing market disciplines, it has become an official licence to fleece the taxpayer. Far from reducing the public sector borrowing requirement, PFI is, as the Accounting Standards Board has noted, simply ‘an off-balance sheet fiddle’. Most alarmingly, the ministers I have spoken to simply do not understand how it works.

The initiative was a Conservative experiment. In opposition, Labour fiercely contested it. But, as soon as the party came to power, it resolved that PFI would become the means by which most of our new public infrastructure would be built. By the time it became obvious that the experiment was failing, Labour had waded in too far. Awestruck by its glittering new friends in business, but baffled by the complexities of the scheme it supports, it has been consistently outwitted and outmanoeuvred.

The first of the problems Labour has failed to grasp is the process by which the private investors are chosen. The government announces a new scheme, companies make their bids, and the government selects the bid which appears to offer best value for money. The chosen consortium is named the ‘preferred bidder’, and the government starts to negotiate the contract. The consortium then has the government over a barrel. In theory, the contract is still open to competition. In practice, preferred bidders have been deselected only, as far as I can discover, in two of the hundreds of PFI schemes the government has launched. Once the consortium has its foot in the door, it can raise its price and reduce its services. Costs which weren’t envisaged before will emerge. The likely inflation of labour and materials will be priced as generously as possible. In some cases, I have found, companies have simply slipped extra figures into the spreadsheets.

Most importantly, value for money in PFI contracts is a function of the extent to which the projects’ risks are transferred to the private sector. Because the government is hopelessly outclassed in negotiations, companies routinely transfer most of the key risks back to the taxpayer. As a result, PFI, from the corporate point of view, is a far better deal than privatisation. The consortia get the assets but not the liabilities. In some cases, they carry no greater risk than ordinary contractors for the public sector, but they are rewarded as if they were the most reckless entrepreneurs.

I would also draw your attention to this mess in the NHS as well

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,811017,00.html

Grey suits, pen-pushers, bloated bureaucrats... that was how Alan Milburn described National Health Service managers when he was a young Labour MP making his name in Opposition. Now that he is Health Secretary, the number of administrators and clerks is higher than ever before, their salaries are larger, and so is the mountain of paper hampering patient care.

Across the country, nearly one in four staff is in administration. There are 87 different forms of manager, as illustrated by the number of different titles seen in job adverts. Some are doing the traditional job of helping doctors organise their workload, but 'reforms' have also spawned new tiers of bureaucracy that are clogging up the system, slowing down work and interfering with care.

Professor Jonathan Waxman, cancer specialist at the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, said: 'Much of the money that was meant to come to cancer has been wasted in the proliferation of bureaucracy. We have all seen a rise in the number of administrators who draw good salaries - much higher than a nurse's wage - but, even with goodwill, don't actually help the process.'

'It's hugely frustrating, and it takes me away from the patients we are meant to be helping. I'm worried that the new money is going into process, and not to clinicians who know where it is needed.'

[AP]

10. I don't like PFI, and I do think the NHS was a mess before 1997

and I have to say two things that are purely anecdotal:

- the PFI programs run by Labor are actually done in a way that is dramatically different than the way I'm sure the Tories would do them. Labour does not consider cronyism in selecting contract winners, and really makes an effort to spread the wealth and to ensure that the contracts entered into are fair to the government. In other words, they try to use PFIs to spread the wealth down and out. It's isn't the biggest law firms, architects, and software companies that are getting these deals.

Compare that to, say, the contracts for software/hardward for voting machines in the US. In the US, the contracts are clearly used to reward Republican crony corporations, the contract terms are secret in many cases, and the contracts are extremely unfavorable and hard to terminate for the government.

I think criticisms you don't see about PFIs is more telling than the criticisms you do so. I don't have time to read the link you posted right now, but just the part you quoted doesn't tell you much. If the Tories were running the show, I suspect you would find articles that actually name the companies getting PFIs, they would show how the company directors are long time Tory cronies, there'd be a pattern of waste, some of the contracts would be secret, and you'd find that the contracts put the government on the hook for paymentes even if the private company breaches the contract!

I'm not saying that one shouldn't be critical of PFIs. However, I see them, in many instances (not all) as being tools that actually redistribute wealth down and out in the UK (which is DESPERATELY NEEDED) and they're being used to actually bring value to the public, and the contracts aren't just excuses for giving money to connected people for doing nothing. At least, I think those are the issues for which you need to be on the look-out, and I don't think this article has identified concretely problems in that respect.

As for NHS, the way I see that: the NHS was a mess and was costing society way more than it should have in terms of not providing the best care it could.

I think health care is a tricky thing. It's an area where one desperately needs to remove market influences in almost every aspect of the way it's conducted. Look at the US. So much of the health care industry is privatized that we've reached the point that sicker people mean more profits, so we have sicker people -- which is very bad economics. Furthermore, if you like fascism, it's the perfect thing to privatize. Obviously people are going to pay just about whatever it costs to stay alive. They don't want to die. So, one of the things that makes free markets work -- choice -- isn't present in the market for health care.

However, a (very) few aspects of health care do respond well to market influences. The promise of reasonable profits drives a great deal of research which results in tremendous scientific process. (However, combine the fascist angle with this angle and you get things like this: the last disease scientists CURED was polio, thanks to the government funding research specifically to find a cure (ie, socialism) -- which they had to do because market influences means drug companies never want to find cures -- they just want to invent drugs that you HAVE to take your entire life).

So, the bottom line, is that if you want to have REALLY REALLY good health care, that involves the private sector in coming up with new inventions, and gives everyone a high level of service, and gives some people an EXTRAORDINARY level of care, you have to find a balance between the private and the public.

Anecdotally, I have to say that it seems like you're reading about (and hearing from your friends) fewer of the horror stories about the NHS, and that more people are getting good care. (Maybe those bureaucrats are doing something right that was desperately needed.) And the way I generally feel about Labour and health care is that they reming me of what Clinton used to say about FDR: FDR was not so ideologically rigid that he wouldn't try new things that might work, and that he didn't stop doing things that weren't working, just because they didn't seem to fit within his ideological preconceptions.

Again, if the Tories were runnign the governemtn, health care privatization would be used to transfer a ton of wealth up the ladder to cronies without bringing ANY value to society. I have to say that if blair is "privatizing" health care in a way that's creating a lot of middle class people getting decent salaries for jobs that are actually making a difference in people's lives (where's the evidence that these bureaucrats AREN'T bringing value?) then I have to say "more power to you Tony." I also have to say, it looks like labour is also experimenting in a way that isn't ideoligically rigid.

I totally believe that if Tories come into power, the PFI and NHS framework Labour has set up will be incredibly easy to manipulate in a way that serves the interests of fascism. And that's bad. But I'm still looking for the concrete evidence that, under Labour, isn't really much more than something in the spirit of FDR's alphabet soup of trying to find solutions to real problems Britain has in terms of concentrated wealth among the wealthy, and an infrastructure that is falling apart.

[RogueTrooper]

11. Unfortuantly AP many on the British far left

do not realise that PFI is the only game in town at the moment. None of the global investment institutions would tolerate that much investment from State Capital.

I broke my arm last week and had to get myself to an NHS hospital. After two and a half hours I walked out with my arm and a sling and two weeks worth of anti-inflammatories which they just gave to me ( about $60 worth of medication ). The NHS is starting to become something to be very proud about again.

[AP]

12. I'm only slightly exaggerating when I say that pre-97, if you had walked

into an NHS hospital with a broken arm (especially when al the 22 year old doctors are starting their first rotations) you'd be lucky to walk out alive.

OK, so I'm exaggerating. But I'm not exaggerating when I say that before Blair, it was shocking the level of service that was considered acceptable in the NHS. That is all changing thanks to Blair not being a rigorous idealogue and putting service and health above all else.

As I said before, the biggest problem with what Blair is doing is that, if the Tories come into power, they'll have a framework which will be very easy to turn into a conduit for flowing wealth in the opposite direction. But right now, it really is delivering wealth and value to the people.

[T_i_B]

32. So any criticism of PFI is only for the marxists?

Get stuffed roguetrooper. PFI is inherently flawed and it is vitally important if we want decent public services that we stand against this and get public sector investment funded properly. PFI is not the only game in town, and the government can stand up to big business if it so wishes. It's just that Blair is too cowardly to stand up them, just as he is too coweardly to stand up to......well anyone with a right wing agenda really.

Before you start blaming PFI on global finance I suggest you read this article, and maybe even get hold of a copy of Open World: The truth about globalisation by the same author.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,807075,00.html

companies were taking over the world, you'd expect them to be grabbing a bigger slice of the economic pie. They exist, after all, to make profits. Yet from a recent cyclical peak of 12.6% of GDP in 1997, US corporate profits fell to 11% in 2000 and 9.3% in 2001 - in line with the average over the past 50 years of 10.5%. The figures for Britain show a similar trend.

Of course, companies sometimes have an undue influence on governments. So money and politics should be kept as separate as possible and government conducted more openly. Yet business has a right to lobby governments, just as trade unions, environmental groups and individuals do. This does not imply that governments are companies' lackeys.

Governments can - and do - tame the corporate leviathans. The European Commission stopped giant General Electric from buying Honeywell. The US government nearly broke up Microsoft, which is still being prosecuted by US states and investigated by the European Commission. Business has to abide by a battery of legislation on workers' rights, product liability, health and safety, environmental protection and much else. Where governments fear to tread, lawyers do not: each year people start almost 2 million lawsuits against American companies, which pay out damages of around $150bn a year. Last but not least, taxes on company profits have steadily risen as a share of rich OECD countries' GDP: from 2.2% in 1965 to 3.3% in 1999. If businessmen are running the show, they must be masochists.

Globalisation is a choice, not an imposition. Progressives should embrace it because it makes us richer - in the broadest sense - and allows governments to spend more on schools, hospitals and helping the underprivileged. It does not imply that Britain has to become like America: Sweden's economy is far more open than Britain's, yet its welfare state is second to none. Globalisation comes with several options: we can to a large extent pick and choose what kind of globalisation we want. Don't burn your Nikes: politics is not dead.

[T_i_B]

15. Your usual tripe then AP?

- the PFI programs run by Labor are actually done in a way that is dramatically different than the way I'm sure the Tories would do them. Labour does not consider cronyism in selecting contract winners, and really makes an effort to spread the wealth and to ensure that the contracts entered into are fair to the government. In other words, they try to use PFIs to spread the wealth down and out. It's isn't the biggest law firms, architects, and software companies that are getting these deals.

Quite simply not true in the slightest. From the article

The first of the problems Labour has failed to grasp is the process by which the private investors are chosen. The government announces a new scheme, companies make their bids, and the government selects the bid which appears to offer best value for money. The chosen consortium is named the preferred bidder, and the government starts to negotiate the contract.

The consortium then has the government over a barrel. In theory, the contract is still open to competition. In practice, preferred bidders have been deselected only, as far as I can discover, in two of the hundreds of PFI schemes the government has launched. Once the consortium has its foot in the door, it can raise its price and reduce its services. Costs which weren't envisaged before will emerge. The likely inflation of labour and materials will be priced as generously as possible. In some cases, I have found, companies have simply slipped extra figures into the spreadsheets.

And how's this for a good example of Blair's private sector cronyism. Read Captive State be George Monbiot for more. If you do that then you will find plenty of names of companies involed in PFI for instance.

I have also obtained evidence that, in order to smooth the way for the private money they need, public bodies are deliberately setting the public sector comparato higher than the private sector bids they receive.

And you you carry on with a noticable lack of hard evidence to back up your assertions and by the looks of things you are not even reading the articles I post (why bother replying to an article you cannot be bothered to read properly?)

I have to say that if blair is "privatizing" health care in a way that's creating a lot of middle class people getting decent salaries for jobs that are actually making a difference in people's lives (where's the evidence that these bureaucrats AREN'T bringing value?) then I have to say "more power to you Tony." I also have to say, it looks like labour is also experimenting in a way that isn't ideoligically rigid.

Here is the evidence that Blair's beurocrats are detracting from the NHS in a big way

Professor Jonathan Waxman, cancer specialist at the Hammersmith Hospitals Trust, said: 'Much of the money that was meant to come to cancer has been wasted in the proliferation of bureaucracy. We have all seen a rise in the number of administrators who draw good salaries - much higher than a nurse's wage - but, even with goodwill, don't actually help the process.'

He is tired of sitting in meetings, looking at 'process and systems' rather than clearing his waiting lists. His biggest concern is the role of the primary care trusts (PCTs), which took over from health authorities and are responsible for commissioning care from hospitals. 'We have 12 PCTs in our area, and each one has people who want to know about prostate cancer - what they should be prescribing for their patients. So we have to go through this incredibly time-consuming procedure of telling 12 separate groups about what we do, but this is difficult for them to grasp because they are not specialists.

'It's hugely frustrating, and it takes me away from the patients we are meant to be helping. I'm worried that the new money is going into process, and not to clinicians who know where it is needed.'

The Blair bureaucrats are taking money away from front line services and the article makes that very clear. An NHS manager is never going to contribute as much value to the quality of NHS service unless there are considerably less of them! Whenever I talk to nurses they always compain that it's "too many cheifs and not enough indians" in the NHS. Nye Bevan did not create the NHS so that more forms could be filled in, he created it so more lives can be saved. Blair is taking the NHS away from the way it was supposed to be when bevan brought it into existance (which was the greatest achevement of any Labour government).

[AP]

18. I'm going to hang out with RogueTrooper

RT understands the point I'm making.

[Finch]

24. Bond systems not PFI IMHO...

... I am no fan of IDS... private education and private health care IMHO are just plain evil... money should not be able to give you a better chance at living or learning... no self respecting Tory would say that... yeah I'm fairly DLC/New Labour other than that... and the war opposed it but realize we now need to stick it out... so no I'm no IDS fan (useless piece of cr**)Howard is a vast improvement however again i don't agree with him on any thing really... well perhaps that black is black and white is indeed white... read "the unfinished revolution" by Phillip Gould its the only time I've found a compelling case for Blairism... just read the intro that's all it takes...

[mobuto]

14. I agree that Labour needed reforming

but Blair's gone too far. Look at the London Underground for the perfect example. Blair subscribes to the religion of privatization, which is just as damning as the religion of collectivization. He's been trying to force the Tube into private hands despite the fact that makes no sense for anybody - not for riders, not for taxpayers, and certainly not from a safety standpoint. Free markets are all well and good, but they're not a panacea; Blair thinks they are. The result is bad for Britain.

[AP]

19. I thought you wouldn't like Blair

But I didn't think it would be because of the direction you perceive profits are flowing.

[mobuto]

20. It isn't

Its because privatization for the sake of privatization results in worse services and ripped-off tax payers.

[AP]

21. When is privatization good?

[mobuto]

23. When it involves a sector

which can be privatized without hurting the public.

I think the perfect example is the car industry. There's no reason why any government anywhere should be in the car business in 2004. Yet the French government still owns a substantial percentage of Renault. It shouldn't.

And when privatization is undertaken, it requires a lot of thought and careful planning. Too often taxpayers are ripped off, as assets are sold for significantly less than their fair market value.

[AP]

27. What careful planning do you think wasn't done in the UK?

Do you understand the terms of the contract for the underground?

I read them a while ago, and I rember thinking, 'man, that's a good contract!'

It's NOT like the railtrack/train privatization, which gave everything away forever.

Iirc, it's a contract for maintanance/construction only, it doesn't sell the track, and it's for a term of years. The government still owns everything -- the lines and the cars. Basically they're getting desperately needed improvements in the system in exchange for some of the profit from running the system, and I'd be hugely surprised if the average rider experiences an increase in the cost of using the underground that isn't commensurate with the added value that will come from the repairs. (However, I'd love to see all public transportation to be totally free...but I know that's a dream.)

As for the NHS, I recommend that you, perhaps, have a discussion with RougeT.

As for privatization, I'll tell you when I think it's best: when competition is possible (either in terms of improving the product, or lowering the costs) and takes place. When it's bad is when the product is monopolizable.

You can't privatize rail lines because it's not possible to lay another set of tracks next to the one set and compete (and planes and buses aren't adequate competition). Same for a second set of electrical, gas, and water lines into your house. That's why the Tories privatized railtrack (easy profits for the cronies who bought the lines), and that's why Labour was against it. And that's also why Blair didn't privatize the Underground tracks (iirc) and only privatized maintenance. Is maintenance monopolizable? Maybe, maybe not? It's definitely not as dangerous as what the Tories did to the train lines. But it's definitely going to produce a great deal of value for the residents of London in terms of safe, reliable, and extensive public transportation in the city.

In my view, Blair is engaged in a modern Rooseveltian-Alphabet Soup. He's coming up with modern solutions to real problems with the infrastructure. If it doesn't work, it's OK, because these contracts are for a term of years.

Railtrack, however, is pretty much gone forever, or at least until the gov't is inevitably forced to buy it back -- just cross your fingers and hope Labour is running the show when that happens, 'cause if it's the Tories, you know it's going to be repurchased for a huge profit to the current owners.

Incidentally, that is pretty much the way the US was run 100 years ago. Bush's relatives were part of that system which transferred a ton of taxpayer and social wealth to the private owners of railroads, which happened twice -- the second time was when the gov't bought back a lot of right of ways which it had sold at a huge discount to private rail lines.

[mobuto]

30. Because

it doesn't matter how much planning you do if privatizating a certain sector will hurt the public.

Mass transit should never be privatized because the profit motive runs directly contrary to the interests of the public - which is safe, reliable, cheap transportation. Titular ownership of the track is irrelevent if the companies responsible for maintenance are cutting corners to maximize their bottom line - as they will inevitably do without adequate oversight. Not only has Blair's little experiment in London cost a lot more money than its saved, but its made the track a lot more dangerous.

I don't think competition is necessarily good. It usually results in lower prices, (and even that has exceptions), but those lowered prices come from reduced expenses. Where? When you're talking about local phone service, you may not care where the expenses are being reduced. But passenger rail service? HMOs? Mass transit maintenance? There you really do.

[AP]

31. The underground WASN'T safe and it WASN'T reliable and it

needed improvement.

Again, good contract: limited in time, and plenty of remedies for breach and performance targets. From what I read about the underground it looks like that's all in there. Do you know something different?

Do you have any evidence to support your cost/danger claims?

Cutting costs, increasing danger, by the way, is why you have a legislature and civil and criminal courts and it applies to the sale of widgets as much as it does to operation of a publicly owned rail line. That's just an aside.

[mobuto]

34. The Underground was Safer

Robert Kiley and Ken Livingstone know what needs to be done. Blair doesn't. And yet Blair at every turn has attempted to sabotage their best efforts, not because he has any better ideas, but simply because he subscribes to an almost religious faith that says that all problems are fixed by privatization. You do not, repeat, do not want to outsource public safety to the lowest-bid contractor. That's just madness.

[Finch]

25. Your right...

... Brown seems to be interested in consolidation... Blair just aggravates people he's a good guy and has radically improved the position of the UK both internally and abroad (well up until Iraq) but now he is increasingly bereft of ideas... Brown is what IMHO New Labour is really about not dictating to your natural supporters but adapting your methods to appeal to them while not flinching in your goals...

[AP]

28. Bereft of ideas? I think his tuition program is one of the most liberal

policies I've ever seen.

Tuition is now an interest free loan that you pay off only if you make more than the median income, and you only pay up to certain % of your income.

Tuition no longer a burden you bear when you can least afford it.

In a recent NY'er there's an article about a Latino guy in Mexico who's community is falling apart because of unemployment. This guy was on his way to a middle class lifestyle -- he was a student at the UofT. But had to drop out because he couldn't pay tuition. That happens all the time in the US, and it creats a huge underclass.

That's never going to happen again in the UK.

[AntiCoup2K4]

16. Will Marshall is a traitorous PNAC piece of shit slimeball

And any so called "Democrat" who would willingly align himself with a dictator appeasing poodle needs to be honest with themselves and get the fuck out of this party.

[dolstein]

22. Sorry, but Kerry isn't half the politician Tony Blair is

Tony Blair almost single handedly dragged the moribund Labor Party back from the proverbial dustbin of history. If it weren't for Blair, the Tories would be well into its third decade of uninterrupted control of Her Majesty's government. Sure, Bill Clinton did something similar with the Democratic Party, but the Labor Party was in far FAR worse shape than the Democratic Party ever was.

Now, of course, many of the same wide-eyed socialists who were responsible for driving the Labor Party off the cliff have their knives ready and are just waiting to take their shot at Blair. After all, they figure that since the Tories can't beat him, it's up to them. They're nostagliac for the era of stagnant economic growth, dismal public services and countless strikes.

Kerry isn't nearly as intelligent, articulate and politically savvy as Blair is.

[Finch]

26. Wrong...

Labour had recovered by 1992 and nearly beat the conservatives in that years general election... under the late John Smith they where again on course to win the 1997 general election (Blair as Shadow Home Sec and Brown as shadow chancellor)... John Smith's death allowed Blair and Brown free reign to move the Labour party to the head of a new coalition of voters by reflecting their values and desires and tailoring the polices of the party to this newly expanded base of support... had Smith lived Labour would still have won in 1997 not by as much but they would have won...

Your dead right though about the far left... they don't realize how much better of health and education in the UK are, how much more redistributive the taxation system has become and how successful the polices to tackle social problems have been... Blair and Brown as a team are excellent...IMHO...

[AP]

29. The UK has record low unemployment, increasing wages, and increasing

wealth, especially among the lower quintiles. Debt is up too, but you can't use private sector avarice for the wealth the lower quintiles get as an excuse for not delivering wealth to those quintiles (it's a second front in the battle to build up the middle class).

To me, this downward and outward flow of wealth is the DEFINTION of liberalism.

Labour has been able to do this within a society which I believe is institutionally VERY conservative and very backwards looking.

It has been remarkable. It's a textbook example of progressive success.

It is a great transition to a future when real liberalism can take hold.

[Finch]

36. Very similar to what the DLC was founded to achive...

[Hornito]

33. Bunk Dolstein!

Blair wouldn't make a cankerous pustule on Kerry's butt. He willingly betrayed his country, by aligning himself with one of the most evil groups of people ever to walk this earth (Bush and his neocons)! As far as I am concerned, this completely negates any good he may have done.

I think you defend him because he supported the war, despite the fact 80% of Britain's citizens were against it. No, Labour needs to find a new head, and quickly, before the Tories cut it off.

[EricNYC]

35. No, Kerry is a liberal...

but has tried to appear more of a centrist in recent years in preparation for his presidential run. The dude ain't dumb. But he is much more of a principled liberal than Clinton, who was always more moderate. Kerry is to the left of Clinton on the death penalty and trade but with him on welfare, crime and fiscal policy. These are the policy areas where Clinton really put Dems back in play, and any democratic candidate now follows the Clinton philosophy on those issues.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

37. The difference between Blair and Kerry is that Kerry wants...

to save American and Blair wants to save Bush!!!

Blair is a Bush/PNAC puppet. Blair is the devil! He cannot be trusted!!!