Category Archives: Liberal

A blistering contest to lead the California Democratic Party and near-constant protests during its weekend convention provided proof that schisms between party factions at the national level are also pulling apart the ranks at home, where the group has long prospered.

Typically a sunny weekend for California Democrats celebrating dominance at the ballot box and in the voter rolls, this years convention was punctuated by hecklers, marches and recriminations by liberal activists who say the party has lost its way, become too moderate and grown similar to the GOP. Battle lines were drawn in the race for a new chairperson, as party faithful and those seeking a more progressive path were sharply divided over who should guide them in the years to come.

We're not going to unify around the status quo, RoseAnn DeMoro, leader of the California Nurses Assn., told a couple thousand delegates and guests on Saturday. Consensus for consensus' sake is over.

The tension was fed by lingering resentment from the Democratic presidential primary between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton, and angst over Donald Trumps actions since he was sworn in as president. Both prompted a rush of several hundred new delegates to the annual event.

If Hillary Clinton had won we wouldnt be seeing the second-guessing of strategy and tactics and the future of the Democratic Party were seeing today, said Rose Kapolczynski, a Democratic strategist and longtime advisor to former Sen. Barbara Boxer.

She likened it to the aftermath of the 2004 presidential race, when the party was dismayed by the reelection of President George W. Bush and saw an influx of supporters of former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, known as Dean-iacs. As many Sanders supporters blame the party for nominating Clinton, whom they view as a flawed candidate, Dean supporters similarly faulted the party in 2004 for nominating then-Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

That angst and regret turned into action, Kapolczynski said, such as the creation of Democratic clubs across the state, the formation of the progressive caucus in the state party and the recruitment and election of candidates in California.

Kapolczynski said she hoped something similar would happen now.

We have a big job ahead ... and I hope at the end of this convention everyone is unified and heading toward victory in 2018.

There were few signs at the state convention of the disparate factions coming together that quickly.

The three-day gathering kicked off Friday with a reception headlined by Democratic National Committee leader Tom Perez, who was interrupted by protesters calling for the party to refuse corporate donations and to work to implement universal healthcare in the state.

Outgoing state party chairman John Burton responded in his signature style.

Hey, shut the [expletive] up or go outside, Burton said. Parade all you want, but unless we put it on the ballot or elect new Democrats, you can walk up and down the street and people still arent going to have decent healthcare. So lets get with it.

Protesters marched in downtown Sacramento over the weekend, criticizing Democrats for accepting oil company money and failing to adopt a Medicare-style healthcare-for-all model despite controlling the governors seat and holding super-majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

"Just because you are a Democrat is not good enough for me," new delegate Robert Shearer, 34, said into a bullhorn Saturday during a march to the governors mansion, as others held signs that read "Oil Money Out." Those big Democrats in there that are putting money first, they're fighting against us and we're going to hold them accountable."

About 500 Sanders supporters self-described Bernie-crats had gathered for a Middle Eastern dinner reunion the previous night. Among the political leaders to address them was Rep. Ro Khanna of Fremont. The freshman congressman recently joined the Justice Democrats group that is open to challenging Democratic incumbents who they believe are not sufficiently liberal similar to the tack taken by tea party conservatives challenging Republican politicians who dont hew closely enough to their beliefs.

This country demands a vision. They want to know what were going to be for, Khanna told the crowd.

But the strongest example of the split all weekend was the race to succeed Burton as party chairperson, a bitterly fought contest between Eric Bauman, a long-time party leader and favorite of the Democratic establishment, and Kimberly Ellis, an organizer who drew the backing of many Sanders supporters. Bauman entered the race a heavy favorite, but Ellis launched a competitive bid. At one point Saturday evening, rumors began to circulate that she had won.

But late Saturday, the party announced that Bauman prevailed by just over 60 votes, a razor-thin margin. Bauman declared victory, and Ellis supporters took to the halls of the convention center some screaming, cursing or weeping until she addressed them, defiant and refusing to concede.

On Sunday, as Ellis and her staff met with party officials and Bauman representatives in private, her supporters held handwritten signs that said Validate the Vote. They interrupted speakers during the general session meeting to call for a recount or a new vote, and asked for Ellis to be allowed to address the crowd. Burton eventually told the group that all sides had come to an agreement: Ellis would review the ballots but not contest the result.

Bauman was officially declared the chairman at 1:16 p.m. Sunday, and he gave a three-minute speech that was greeted by boos and chants of Not my chairman!

We have so much work ahead of us that we all have to stand together, he pleaded. The results of the election will be verified and validated, but we have too much work ahead of us to be divided like this.

He noted that many Ellis supporters wore pink shirts to signify their support for her bid on Saturday and Sunday, but that they must all now wear blue to symbolize their unity as Democrats.

Less than a half-hour later, Ellis told hundreds of supporters at nearby Cesar Chavez Plaza that she had not conceded the race and the fight is not over.

Ellis said she and her advisors would stay in Sacramento for the next few days to review each of the nearly 3,000 ballots cast.

One of the things that the party cannot be is a party thats just like Trump and the Republicans, Ellis told the crowd. A party that operates in closed rooms, smoked-filled rooms, behind curtains, in secrecy and shadow. It is time for this party to be a transparent party.

seema.mehta@latimes.com, christine.maiduc@latimes.com, phil.willon@latimes.com

Twitter: @LATSeema, @cmaiduc, @philwillon

ALSO

Eric Bauman named new chairman of the California Democratic Party but his rival refuses to concede

Democrats in the hunt for California governor work the party faithful at state party convention

'Old school versus new school:' The battle over who will run the California Democratic Party

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A battle of liberal versus more liberal exposes a divided California Democratic Party at state convention - Los Angeles Times

NBC News reached out to supporters of newly re-elected President Hassan Rouhani, who beat a challenge by hardline populist Ebrahim Raisi, to gauge their feelings about Friday's race and tell us their fears and dreams about their country's future. They shared their photos of Election Day via Instagram and thoughts via email.

Alireza Goudarzi

Alireza Goudarzi, a 32-year-old freelance documentary photographer, said he wants the president to create economic opportunities for Iranians and improve relations with other countries. His biggest fear: turning back the clock to pre-Rouhani days when sanctions crippled the economy.

"A country's culture is based on its artists," Goudarzi said. He wants organizations to be established in Iran to help support their work both financially and culturally.

He wishes travel restrictions were eased for Iranian tourists so he could visit other countries. But he wants to live in Iran because of "the responsibility I feel for my society."

He wants Americans to visit Iran so they can see firsthand that Iranians live "in peace with each other, and want peace for the whole world."

Negin Ehtesabian

Negin Ehtesabian, a 37-year-old illustrator, said she accepts "the reality that we have limited choices. I don't see any better candidate (than Rouhani) around at the moment, even overseas." But she added: "We need to change in our society first, educate new politicians, then the top will change."

Ehtesabian, whose work adorns large murals in Tehran, said she's considered leaving Iran but wonders: "If we all leave, who is going to make this country a better place to live? I prefer to do something little here instead of running away."

"I want Americans to know we are not that different that they may think," she told us. "We share a lot more than we differ."

Farshad Khoshnoud

Farshad Khoshnoud, a 33 year-old musician whose stage name is Bakteri Xaan told us: "I want a country with a government that brings hope, happiness and comfort for people, not fear and darkness." He wants a country where "everyone can afford basic necessities and a country you enjoy living in and not always think about leaving."

"It's my country, it's my home," he said. "I have a loving attachment to this land from my heart. And I'm proud to be an Iranian."

He wants to be able to write his music without having his work approved for release by the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. "Let us work in our own country and make Iran proud," he said.

Sina Sahmeddini

Sina Sahmeddini, a 26-year-old doctor who works in a hospital, said: "We've been on the right track the past four years. I hope that we keep moving in the right direction after this election."

Within a decade, Sahmeddini said, "I'd like my country to be full of tourists and have built a reputation of hospitality and kindness in the whole world. I want us to be spreading peace in our troubled region, the Middle East," Sahmeddini said.

He said he'd like to see Internet restrictions lifted. Other key issues for him: Women's inequality and interference in the private lives of citizens.

"I'd like Americans to get to know our country and our culture better instead of judging us based on the wrong picture that their media promotes. I want them to know that we are kind and friendly people, not warmongers," Sahmeddini said.

Sepideh Farvardin

Sepideh Farvardin, a 24-year-old photographer and social media specialist in an advertising agency in Tehran, said she wants Rouhani "to save Iran from wars or boycotts, make peace with all countries and improve our international relations."

While she tries not to fight her nation's restrictions ("because the more you fight, the less you enjoy life"), she hopes to see an improvement in inequality between men and women.

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Iran Elections: Young Liberal Voters Voice Fears and Hopes - NBCNews.com

My PJ Media colleague Michael Walsh highlighted this article in Voxyesterday that outlined how liberal fake news originates and how it's spread.

These are all claims you can find made on a new and growing sector of the internet that functions as a fake news bubble for liberals, something Ive dubbed the Russiasphere. The mirror image of Breitbart and InfoWars on the right, it focuses nearly exclusively on real and imagined connections between Trump and Russia. The tone is breathless: full of unnamed intelligence sources, certainty that Trump will soon be imprisoned, and fever dream factual assertions that no reputable media outlet has managed to confirm.

Twitter is the Russiaspheres native habitat. Louise Mensch, a former right-wing British parliamentarian and romance novelist,spreads the newest, punchiest, and often most unfounded Russia gossip to her283,000 followers on Twitter. Mensch is backed up by a handful of allies, including former NSA spook John Schindler (226,000 followers) and DC-area photographer Claude Taylor (159,000 followers).

So what will liberals be talking about tomorrow? Mensch and Taylor have penned a ridiculous blog post on a site called Patribotics that anyone with a 5th-grade education would know is a steaming pile of horse manure.

Sources further say that the Supreme Court notified Mr. Trump that the formal process of a case of impeachment against him was begun, before he departed the country on Air Force One. The notification was given, as part of the formal process of the matter, in order that Mr. Trump knew he was not able to use his powers of pardon against other suspects in Trump-Russia cases. Sources have confirmed that the Marshal of the Supreme Court spoke to Mr. Trump.

It was reported this week that Mr. Trump had texted Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn the message Stay strong. This might be interpreted as an attempt to intimidate a witness, sources say.

Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein met with the House Judiciary Committee this week in closed session.

The authors have previously reported exclusively on Patribotics that a sealed indictment exists against Donald Trump.

It's a good thing I wasn't drinking anything when I read this. It would have been spewed all over the monitor. I mean, I get plenty of emails from right-wing nuts with conspiracy theories and "Exclusive" news flashes that are equally ridiculous. But if this is an example of liberal fake news, they are in deep trouble if millions of their followers believe it.

Read the rest here:

Funny Fake Liberal News on Trump 'Impeachment' - PJ Media - PJ Media

TEHRAN --Iran voted for a new president on Friday, with results yet to come in. The campaign had a familiar theme: The populist facing the incumbent.

This race came down to a clear choice between the current moderate President Hassan Rouhani, whose promises for liberal reforms appeal to young people, and the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi, a populist who has promised his working-class base cash handouts and millions of jobs.

One key thing Iranians are voting on is how their country will relate to the U.S. and the rest of the world, with openess and cooperation led by Rouhani, the reformist, or with suspicion and hostility under the conservative Raisi.

Crowds in Iran supporting presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi.

CBS News

Thirty-eight years ago, revolutionary Iranian students held 52 Americans hostage in the U.S. embassy. Their spokeswoman was Masoumeh Ebtekar.

Today, she's one of Iran's vice presidents. She's done something of a 180 over the years and now hopes for better relations with the U.S.

Are they likely to come under President Trump, who is on the record as saying that Iran is a hostile presence, a problem?

"He's also changing a lot of his positions as well," Ebtekar says. "He's also making a lot of U-turns."

Masoumeh Ebtekar, the spokeswoman for the students who held 52 Americans hostage at the Iranian embassy, is now one of Iran's vice-presidents.

CBS News

Ebtekar says she hopes Mr. Trump will adjust to the realities when it comes to positions on Iran.

Realities like the nuclear deal, which was backed by millions of voters in Iran who hope it was the first step toward even stronger ties with the U.S.

But another reality is that -- at the moment -- there's absolutely no sign the Trump White House is sharing the love.

In fact, the U.S. added some fresh sanctions against Iran this week, so the signs are that things are about to get decidedly frosty.

2017 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.

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Iranian presidential election pits liberal reformer against hardliner - CBS News

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Posted: May 20, 2017 12:01 AM

If self-delusion were magic, average liberals would be David Blaine, David Copperfield and Houdini all rolled up into one. Most of what they say has no relation to what theyre doing, the policies they push rarely work and logic might as well be a strange, alien language to them. Since thats the case, explaining all the things liberals get wrong about themselves could easily be the topic of my second book (Heres a link to my first one), but since we only have so much space to work with in a column, here are the top five.

1) Liberals Are Better Than Everyone Else: If theres one thing that liberals are sure of beyond all others, its that they are better, smarter and more capable than everyone else by virtue of being liberals. As the great Thomas Sowell has noted:

The presumed irrationality of the public is a pattern running through many, if not most or all, of the great crusades of (liberals) in the twentieth centuryregardless of the subject matter of the crusade or the field in which it arises. Whether the issue has been overpopulation, Keynesian economics, criminal justice, or natural resource exhaustion, a key assumption has been that the public is so irrational that the superior wisdom of (liberals) must be imposed, in order to avert disaster. The (liberals) do not simply happen to have a disdain for the public. Such disdain is an integral part of their vision, for the central feature of that vision is preemption of the decisions of others.

No matter who you are or what you do, there are always tens of millions of liberals who believe they have a better idea of what you should be thinking, feeling and spending your money on. Of course, that sense of smug superiority coupled with the disastrous results of liberal policies would almost be comical, except for the destruction in real peoples lives that is left in the wake of liberal policies.

2) Liberals Are Victims: Wrong. Liberals are bullies. In fact, theyre the worst kind of bullies -- bullies who believe that theyre the victims. Those are the worst kind of bullies because they believe theyve already been wronged and therefore almost anything they do in retaliation is justified. Of course, being wronged may mean someone disagreed with them, voted for a candidate they dont like or simply didnt want to give up more of his income for a liberal program. Liberals are the epitome of the Stop Bullying Song from South Park -- aggrieved bullies looking for a victim they can claim wronged someone so they can try to destroy him in the name of tolerance.

Bullying isn't cool. Bullying is lame.

Bullying is ugly and has a stupid name.

For a healthy world, bullying's unfit.

And I think I know what we should do to i-it.

Do do do do do to i-it.

Let's all get together and make bullying kill itself.

Bullying's an ugly thing

Lets shove its face in the dirt and make bullying kill itself.

3) Liberals Are Rebellious: If some nerd standing in the middle of a Star Trek convention shouted, Star Wars is inferior to Star Trek and then wanted everyone to pat him on the back and tell him how courageous he was for doing it, people would laugh. Yet liberals surround themselves almost entirely with other liberals, get liberalism served up to them at school, watch liberalism on TV at home, hear liberal messages from their favorite celebrities and musicians, get their news from MSNBC and the Daily Show and then want all the other libs doing the same thing to laud them for their courage because they say, I dont like Donald Trump or Good for Colin Kaepernick for protesting during the national anthem! Look at how Im fighting the power by saying the same thing as the New York Times, Washington Post and Lady Gaga! As Greg Gutfeld said, Liberalism is the one-way ticket to backslapping approval among the cool kids, which makes it about as rebellious as a divorced dad getting an earring from the local malls Piercing Pagoda.

4) Liberals Are Tolerant: The LEAST TOLERANT people in America outside of maybe the God Hates F*gs wackos are liberals. Dont believe that? Try being a conservative whos invited to speak on a college campus, a black man who likes Donald Trump or a gay American who opposes gay marriage and see how that goes for you when you interact with liberals. Think about the fact that there are college professors, actors and reporters who have to hide their ideologies because it would hurt their careers to have their liberal colleagues know they dont agree with everything Michael Moore has to say. The most abusive people in America when it comes to women? Theyre liberal men talking to conservative women. Incidentally, the second most abusive group are liberal feminists who claim to represent all women. Liberals are habitually nasty, dishonest and vindictive toward people for no other reason than because theyre incapable of tolerating even a politely offered dissenting viewpoint.

5) Liberals Are In Favor Of Progress: Liberals are so sure that theyre in favor of progress that they call themselves progressives. Meanwhile, theyve been pushing variations on the same economic agenda for 80 years even after socialism became so discredited that even the red Chinese started moving toward capitalism. Their ideas on free speech at college campuses? They believe in shutting down the speech of people that disagree with them, with violence if necessary, just like Mussolini. By the way, did you know Mussolini was widely acknowledged as a lefty even by other liberals until WWII kicked off? Liberal Democrats finally reached the same place on race in the 1960s as conservative Republicans were during the Civil War, then pretended they were the good guys all along. Once you get beyond that, what do you have? A reflexive hostility toward morals and Christianity that has been around for decades and a bunch of libs who arent sure what gender they are trying to come up with creative new things to be offended about.

See more here:

The 5 Biggest Things Liberals Get Wrong About Themselves - Townhall

CNSNews.com

Poll: Americans Liberal on Many Moral Issues, But Not Abortion, Porn, Adultery CNSNews.com (CNSNews.com) -- In its latest annual Values and Beliefs poll, Gallup found that strong majorites of Americans are very liberal on certain moral issues, such as birth control, divorce, sex outside of marriage, homosexual relations, and having children ...

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Poll: Americans Liberal on Many Moral Issues, But Not Abortion, Porn, Adultery - CNSNews.com

BBC News

Election 2017: Will the Liberal Democrats win over young voters? BBC News The Liberal Democrats have launched a manifesto aimed at younger voters - but will this entice them back after the party's controversial coalition with the Conservatives and U-turn on tuition fees? "I think the problem the Liberal Democrats have to ... and more »

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Election 2017: Will the Liberal Democrats win over young voters? - BBC News

Cam Fortems Kamloops This Week

No matter how the numbers play out in the coming weeks, re-elected incumbent Todd Stone is confident hell be part of the government.

Were moving forward, he toldKTWshortly after the provincial election. The people of B.C. have re-elected a B.C. Liberal government its a question of majority or minority.

While under the provincial ballot the Liberals are in a minority situation, Stone said theres a strong possibility his party will win in Courtenay-Comox, where incumbent New Democrat Ronna-Rae Leonard defeated Liberal Jim Benninger by nine votes.

Still uncounted are absentee ballots for the riding with a military base.

Our understanding is we have hundreds, if not thousands, in that riding alone The vast majority tend to vote for us, Stone said.

A flip in Courtenay-Comox would give the B.C. Liberals a majority margin of one, but Stone acknowledged it would still require support at times from another party in the legislature.

Its a wait-and-see, he said.

Newly elected in Kamloops-North Thompson, Peter Milobar called it a weird feeling knowing his personal future, but not knowing how B.C.s next government will work.Milobar said he will move into retiring MLA Terry Lakes Tranquille Road office.

Theres not many spaces [on Tranquille] to slot in, he said. It makes an easy transition.

Kamloops-Thompson-Cariboo MP Cathy McLeod watched results late into the evening Ottawa time. She said its become apparent there is a serious urban-rural divide in B.C. that needs to come together.

Neither the NDP nor Greens won a significant number of ridings outside the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island.

My sense is communities in rural areas, to them pipelines are important and natural resource projects are important, she said. Vancouver has perhaps a different perspective.

As for the possibility of a minority government, of which McLeod was a part under the Harper government from 2008 to 2011, she said it will restrict options.

If you have something in your running your son is graduating theres no flexibility, she said. You have to be very watchful.

McLeod added minority governments are not able to deliver on some of their promises if they cannot find support outside.

More:

Liberal MLAs make plans - Clearwater Times

A new Forum Research poll shows the Ontario Liberals have crept up in popularity. They are now just ahead of the NDP. Both are still far behind the Tories. Queen's Park analyst Robert Fisher talks about what might be behind the latest jump in pubic support for Kathleen Wynne's Ontario Liberal party.

Fisher spoke with theCBC'sConradCollacoabout the new poll and the decision by Ontario NDP Deputy Leader Jagmeet Singh to run for the leadership of the federal party to replace Tom Mulcair.Listen to the full interview by clicking the image at the top of the page, or read an edited and abridged transcript below.

Veteran political analyst Robert Fisher delivers his insights into Ontario politics every two weeks. (CBC)

AForum Research poll done May 9thfound the Conservatives in the lead with 41 percent support, followed by the Liberals at 28 and the NDP at 23.It was a change from a March poll that showed the Liberalsin third place.Why do you think the Liberals have rebounded?

It's a snapshot in time. If they were to take a poll today who knows what the numbers might be. Considering the timing of the poll, taken right after the budget, you must say the numbers must in some way reflect the budget. The poll found that there was "major support" for the Liberal pharmacare plan and for the expansion of rent control. These numbers are a long way away from the numbers in the Forum March poll. The question now is can the government continue what appears to be upward movement. Even senior Liberals will acknowledge privately that there is a long, hard road back to the top for Kathleen Wynne.

This week at Queen's Park news came of a leaked report saying rates will skyrocket in 2022.The Liberals say it's an old document.NDP Leader AndreaHorwathcalled for the legislature to sit for an extra week to address the issue. Why are we still waiting for the Liberals to pass the cut in hydro rates they've been promising for months?

If you have a majority government you can do what you want. Earlier in the week the budget was passed. The government used its majority. They could do the same with hydro. There will be more public hearings next week on hydro and maybe the whole plan is not yet put together. The opposition asked and asked and asked all weekfor cost numbers on the hydro plan but they were never delivered while the governmentdenied the numbers in the leaked report.

At some point the hydro plan is going to be in place because the government is absolutely committed to having a 24 percent rate cut in place by thesummer. If you're Kathleen Wynne and have a 15 percent approval rating it's a promise you'd better keep.

If this legislation doesn't get passed before the summer breakwill the Liberals pay for that delay?

Yes and no. At some point the government will pass it. Andrea Horwath tried and failed to get the legislature to sit an extra week. It's not that the opposition is against cutting rates. The opposition has long called for rate cuts. They are concernedthat if we have a cut now what will happen after the next election, say four years from now after the next election.The public hearings will answer some questions and the government will provide more details at some point but ultimately the plan will go ahead.

How are the party leaders doing in the polls?

For the Liberalsthe long road back to the top includes dealing with Kathleen Wynne'spopularity. At 15 percent approval that's a problem when we are about a year from an election. The disapproval of Kathleen Wynneis at 70 percent, sort of historic highs. Patrick Brown and Andrea Horwath have more positives than negatives. They are pretty close together in the category of who would make the best premier.The poll also indicates that both are still, for many people in Ontario, largely unknown. They have some work to do.

In partial defence of the two opposition leaders historically Ontarians don't pay a lot of attention to provincial politics between elections. While Ms. Horwath has been around for a long time it would be a concern to both parties thatthere is a lack of identifiability particularly for Patrick Brown. Lots of work for them to do between now and June 2018.

One other change at Queen's Park this week was the announcement by now former NDP deputy leader Jagmeet Singh that he's running for the federal NDP leadership.How do you see that affecting the provincial NDP?

I don't see this as Mr. Singh abandoning Andrea Horwath in her hour of need. He had flirted with the federal party before. In 2015 there was a lot of talk he would be a candidate. Instead he stayed at Queen's Park and was offered and accepted a role as deputy leader.He's going to keep his seat as an MPP for Bramalea-Gore-Maltonand should he fail I've been told he'll run provincially. If Ms. Horwath fails to bring her party at least to official opposition in the next election she is probably going to be history. Guess who will be there to seek the provincial party leadership. None other than JagmeetSingh. He's collected many IOU's, politically speaking, in Ontario and other provinces as well. He thinks long range and maybe he's got his eyes on the first prize in Ottawa and prize 1A at Queen's Park.

He has already affected the federal race in that he is a candidate who is very different from the others who are there including wearing the turban, the custom-made suits, the appearance in Gentleman's Quarterly Magazine not too many New Democrat candidates appear in Gentleman's Quarterly Magazine.

Mr Singh is very interesting guy. He is fluently bilingual. My Francophone friends tell me his French is more than passable. He campaigned for the NDP in Alberta and in the last B.C. election. He's well known in Ontario in his role as deputy leader. He's going to make a difference in the campaign. He might not win but he'll raise his profile.

Another interesting note on his resume He's a trained mixed-marital arts fighter in Brazilian jiu-jitsuas well...

Yes. He'dbe up against the boxer in Justin Trudeau. Boxing over jiu-jitsu or jiu-jitsu over boxing? Nevertheless, he's all of that and more. That makes him an interesting and unique candidate in any race he's in.

Jagmeet Singh is a lawyer and deputy leader of the Ontario NDP. He speaks French and Punjabi and has represented a Brampton riding in the provincial legislature since 2011. (Mike Crawley/CBC)

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Guess who's back Liberals rise in latest Ontario politics poll: Fisher - CBC.ca

Liberal democracy is not dead, but it's not well. From Hungary to Poland to even the United States, far-right populists have won power, and, in a few cases, are busy consolidating it.

In some sense, it shouldn't be too surprising that the worst economic crisis since the 1930s has led to the worst political crisis within liberal democracies since the 1930s. At the same time, though, it's not as if right-wing nationalists are winning everywhere. Just in the last six months, they've come up short in Austria, the Netherlands and now France. So why is it that these abundant raw materials for a far right stagnant incomes and increased immigration haven't always turnedinto a far right that wins elections?

I talked to Harvard's Daniel Ziblatt, whose new book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy" traces the history of how the center-right often determines whether democracy lives or dies, about what's behind our populist moment and just how close a parallel we're running to some of history's darkest episodes. Hisanswer: It depends. In countries where the center-right is willing to quarantine the far-right, undemocratic forces should be politically neutralized. But when the center-right gives in to the temptation to try to use the far-right because it thinks that's the only way it can win, then their Faustian bargain can end up like they all do: not as they expected. Mainstream conservatives might find out that they, and not the radicals, were the ones being manipulated. That they weren't appeasing the far-right, but empowering it.

The followinghas been edited for length and clarity.

I wanted to start out by talking about why it is that conservative parties seem to matter so much more for either saving or killing democracy. What's going on here?

Historically, at least, the real threat to democracy has come from the groups that conservative parties represent. They were the opponents of democracy, the potential saboteurs who were trying to block it before it was adopted and then undermine it afterwards. So how you get these guys to buy in is critical. Back in the 1800s, we're talking about landed elites and aristocrats and so on. Those who have the most to lose and the most resources at their disposal, these are the ones we have to pay attention to.

Is it any different today?When you look at the populist wave across the world, what do you think is behind it?

Well, there are forces pushing for it, which have to do with slowed economic growth, globalization, and immigration, but, if you look cross-nationally, there is variation in how successful populists are. So what determines that variation are the features of the political system.

To me, the thing that really plays a major role is the structure of and the strategies of the center-right. In particular, whether they distance themselves from, or ally with the far-right. But there's a third answer: they can try to come up with better arguments. That's the hardest path. That's the liberal democratic path. To come up with better arguments and better solutions to win the political debate. When the center-right can do that, it limits the potential for the far-right in the first place.

That sounds like a pretty good description of what happened in France's presidential election last week.

It does. I think there are two big points there. The first is this. When the center-left fell apart in France, you got Emmanuel Macron. But when the center-right fell apart, you got Marine Le Pen. So there seems to be this asymmetry, because, whatever you think of Macron, he's not a major threat to democracy.

The second point is the role of the center-right candidate Fillon in stopping the far-right Le Pen. Fillon got knocked out in the first round of voting, but kind of crossed the ideological aisle to endorse Macron in the second round. And if you look at the polls of how people voted, a significant portion of his party did in fact support Macron. It may have made the difference in the election.

The ability of the center-right to distance itself from the far-right was critical. We see that happening in France. We see that happening in Austria as well, where some Catholic Party members supported the Green Party in the presidential election. But we don't see that in the U.S., in the sense that a lot of Republicans who don't like Trump nonetheless supported him. Looking back historically, the center-right in Britain, I would argue, sometimes played with real extremists like Ulster nationalists, yet, at the end of the day, still tried to distance themselves from them. The German Conservatives, on the other hand, tried to use these far-right actors, but didn't distance themselves from them as part of this myth that they could contain them.

That's a perfect segue to what I wanted to talk about next.Thereare a couple moments in the book that jumped out at me, where obviously there's some recency bias kicking in, but it sounded to me like you were describing Trump and the Republican Party. Am I reading too much into that?

I think you're referring to the descriptions of the Weimar Republic. This is the curious thing about writing this book. I've been working on it for 8 years, long before Trump was anything but a guy on a TV show that I didn't really pay much attention to, and it was really a book about a historical period. I thought I had identified this more general problem, because I'm a political scientist, and this more general problem seemed to be reoccurring throughout the world in different times. That was the relationship of the moderate center-right that plays a small-D democratic game, and the extremist elements on the far-right that do not. So as events in the U.S. unfolded the last two years, I felt like this was an illustration of that general dynamic. It's not something that's unique to the U.S., it's not unique to Trump, it's not unique to the Republican Party, this is a more general pattern.

What arethe big parts of that pattern?

I have this idea that conservative parties, originally as well as today, often have this dilemma: they rely on an activist base that tends to be more extreme than the party leaders themselves. The question, then, is who has the upper hand in that relationship. If you have a strong conservative party, one that has what I call organizational firewalls that can mobilize voters and mobilize activists while allowing the leaders to keep control of the party, then democracy can be stable. But if you have a party that is weakly organized, and in some ways porous almost like a holding company of different groups and interests, where the leadership doesn't have a monopoly on financing and selection ofcandidates, then it's much more prone to radicalism.

That's really the parallel. The political partiesI looked at were the contrasting cases of Britain and Germany. And if there's one thing to take away here, it's this: I think political parties are a great invention we sometimes don't fully appreciate. Now, in Britain, the Conservatives historically had a well-institutionalized party with party professionals. It's really a coherent organization that has members and activists. At election time, the party leaders are able to turn these guys out to vote, but then after election time, they would calm back down and play the democratic game. Theparty leaders, in other words, were steering the ship.

The German Conservative Party, on the other hand, is one that for a variety of reasons was weak and fragmentary and the party leaders never really had control over the activists. Eventually there was a rebellion of the activists, and they took over the party. And it's that relationship between the grassroots and the leadership withinconservative parties that ends up having reverberations for the whole political system.

That makes me wonder about effect the internet has had onpolitics. We tend to think it's a good thing that it's easier for activists to exert influence on parties, in terms of raising money and pressuring candidates. But is there a downside as well? Has this increase in democracy made democracy less stable?

I think that's right. I think of what I'm describing, if we're giving it a label, as the conservative dilemma. This is something that's latent, or is present and becomes more activated in certain places, and I think one of the things that has exacerbated this for the Republican Party are things like thetransformation of media. What this does is itdiminishes the party's control over its own message.

A provocative point that I think comes out of this is that in order to have a stable national democracy, maybe political parties have to be organized in somewhat undemocratic ways. If you think of the Democratic Party with the superdelegates, this is a way of keeping pretty moderate forces in control. It's a double-edged sword, because it keeps maybe some real grassroots reformers out, but it also keeps extremists out. The larger point, though, is that social media does democratize the party, but there is a cost to that. The gatekeeping function of the party is diminished.

What about the rise of cable newsespecially the influence Fox News seems to exert on the Republican Party? There were a lot of uncomfortable parallels for me between that and the story you tell about Germany's big media mogul of the 1920s, Alfred Hugenberg, taking their Conservative Party over and pushing itfar to the right.

Absolutely. We tend to think that the media technological revolutions we're living through now are the first ones ever, but similar kinds of revolutions took place in the past. And the guys who were at the forefront of those could deploy them for political purposes. So in Weimar Germany, the equivalent kind of media revolution was the emergence of the news wire. That let Hugenberg create a common message across a bunch of newspapers throughout the country, and integrate this right-wing radical message into one. He owned these, and then also took over the party.

The Republican media-industrial complex is a similar thing. I think it's an indicator of the degree to which the party is weak, that you have these outside forces shaping the message of the party and putting real pressure on it. And, again, I can imagine people saying, Oh, that's so elitist to say that the party should have control over the message, and I think in some sense that maybe it is. But I'm just trying to point out that there's a cost to this fragmentation.

What about the other big piece of this puzzle: campaign finance?

Well, asthe party has lost its monopoly over money, this means that other groups can shape the agenda in a way. Parties are coalitions, and they hold together diverse groups, but once you lose control over the money, then the groups can assert their own interests much more narrowly. That can generate this populist style of politics.

Another thing that stood out to me was when you talked about how Britain's Conservatives almost triggered a democratic breakdown in the early 1900s. Part of that was over Irish Home Rule, but to me the more interesting part was their reaction to the introduction of the welfare state. They thought this had changed everything, and that they wouldn't be able to win on their own terms ever again.

It made me think of the GOP's response to the 2012 electionin particular, to Obamacare and the Obama coalition. They thought that Obamacare had changed the social contract in a way that they couldn't live with, and that the Obama coalition was proof that there was this younger, nonwhite group of people that, if they wanted to reach out to, then they'd have to change their positionsbut they didn't want to change their positions.

So they kind of saw this as their last chance. You could see that in the way they were talking about makers and takers, and about the "47 percent who were supposedly bringing us to a tipping point where the poorer majority would be able to vote for whatever they wanted from the richer minority. And so in the last couple of years, at the state level, Republicans tried passing a lot of voter ID laws and other ways to restrict the franchise. Instead of persuading people, they're trying to keep their opponents from voting in the first place. Am I overreacting?

No, I think that's right. I see that parallel too. The second part of the conservative dilemma is that if they represent at their base the well-off in society, then how do they win democratic elections? Because the high end of the income distribution aren't the majority of the population. That, in some ways, is the heart of all this: how do you participate in democratic politics when the people who are your core constituency aren't the majority?

Conservatives throughout history have had different ways of responding to that reoccurring dilemma. One way is, if you don't think you can compete, then you come up with ways of evading fair competition by essentially cheating or changing the rules. There's a clear distinction between those types of strategies, which are highly undemocratic, to ways that can actually facilitate democracy. That's finding issues to compete on. You may or may not like the stances they take on particular issues, they may even be racist or nationalistic or defending cultural values that you don't like, but at least they're playing the democratic game.

TheBritish Conservative Party faced the same challenge in the first part of the 20th century of perceiving themselves on the losing end of history. One of theirleaders Lord Salisbury called this the catastrophic theory of politics: you assume that everything is going terribly, history is moving against you, and you're fighting this rearguard action. What ended up happening, though, is because they had effective politicians and an effective political party, they searched around for issues, forged coalitions, and came up with ways of competing. But it's worth emphasizing that in order for that to happen, they needed an effective organization. You had to have people in charge of the party who were highly qualified politicians, and who knew which issues worked. In some way, the modern equivalent would be having pollsters and the ground game to not only tap into but also mobilize thevoting blocs you're trying to reach.

The modern-day Republican Party certainly is doing well electorally, but, in some ways, we're beginning to witness an undemocratic game beginning to unfold. We're at the tail end of this process. And I don't know if it can be restored. The party has already moved to the far-right, so then the question is how do you put the conservative party back on track? In the cases that I've studied, once that happens, it's hard to do that.

I kind of see two contradictory parts to this. On the one hand, Republicans have been extremely successful on the sub-presidential level the last six years. But, on the other hand, you can understand their sense of despair despite that. It wasn't just economic issues that were moving against them, but also the cultural ones. Gay marriage had gone from being something they'd used to mobilize their base in 2004 to something they had the short end of the electoral stick of by 2012. I think there really was this apocalyptic sense among some of them that society had changed in ways they didn't understand, and what are our issues going to be?

For the last six years, that's just been running against Obamacare. But we might find out that only worked until they won. They don't really know what to do about it now that they have a chance to actually do something. It was the same sort of thing during the 2016 primaries. With Trump, it was more affect than anything else. It was about sticking it to everybody else and every other country. It's hard to see what the issues are there.

Here's the thing. I say that weak conservative parties are a threat to democracy, so somebody might say well, the Republican Party is very strong right now, in what sense are they weak? But I think we're witnessing the product of what happens when you have an increasingly desperate conservative party. It's a mistake to read strength off of electoral success. To me, a strong party is one that is organizationally strong, that isn't just a holding company for disparate interest groups, and that can win elections on issues, not on affect and populist leaders.

We're seeing the tail end of this process. I think the Tea Party, the big-money interest groups, organizations like ALEC at the state level, have all essentially hollowed out the Republican Party. The party is, metaphorically-speaking,a rotten house with a rotten door, even though they're winning elections.

You said that it's hard for conservative parties to get back on track. What would Republicans need to do to get back there?

I can tell you where they need to be. I don't know how to get there, though. The party needs to regain controls of its own money. It needs to be hierarchicalinstead of relying on outside sources of money. But that's a function of campaign finance laws. In some ways, I think that opening up the money has possibly led to the radicalization of the Republican Party. Look at their presidential primaries. Over the years, you've gotten increasingly strange collections of people who, as outsiders, have little chance of winning the nomination, but because they're financed by their own personal billionaire can keep going. In that sense, the party has lost control of the nomination process. This also has to do with media, but it's harder to do something about that.

To go back to the British Conservatives, the reason they did so well in the late 19th century is that guys like Lord Salisbury who were not particularly interested in democratic politics were able to hire people who could play the democratic game. These advisers were proto-political scientists running demographic studies and figuring out the details of election appeals, but, most of all, they were working for the party. These were not independent guys running their own companies. When the party has control over this, it can be more democratic. But maybe that's something that has disappeared into the past, and is no longer there.

The only time I've seen this restored is after great devastation, for example, the German Conservatives getting their act together after World War II. Presumably we don't want to have to go through something like that.

That's very uplifting!

Let me leave you with something slightly more optimistic. Politics and economics go through cycles. There are always moments of crisis, and all we can hope for is to get through it without destroying the political system. After that, we cantry to figure out more robust institutions for the next time around. But there's no permanent solution that will solve this once and for all.

The alternative is to think that we're on this trajectory where the world is fundamentally different than it was in the past, and unless we come up with a way of solving the problems we face now, we're doomed. But actually the problems are not so different from previous eras.There's always a segment of the population that's very sympathetic to nondemocratic political parties, and when the economy's worse, that portion of the population grows. We've gotten through these crises before, and we can again.

Excerpt from:

Why liberal democracy only dies when conservatives help - Washington Post