We are used to thinking that in the US elections are held for… little Americans. This means that they conduct elections solely on image and spectacle, practically without addressing the essence of political issues.
This is often combined with the explanation that in the US anyway there are no significant differences between the two parties and the candidates are mainly engaged in the service of large corporations that pay for their election campaigns.
There is no doubt that the US does have a system of government that effectively means that the two parties in power have no room for radical disagreement and that it is the country that first demonstrated the power of political marketing.
Only I’m afraid that if someone is looking for… American girls, they will find them mainly in Europe.
Because it is precisely in politicized Europe that we began to forget that politics is primarily content, not just “image”.
In contrast, in the US, if you look at how they conduct elections, you will see that it is not “simple marketing” at all.
And even if it is marketing, it always touches on real issues and touches on issues of substance.
That is, there are a number of divisive policy issues that candidates must take a stand on and be willing to take a hit on, but also fight back: issues like wages and how jobs will be created, what will happen to the welfare system health, women’s rights (including the right to abortion), gun ownership and what restrictions should be put in place, public benefits for vulnerable groups such as veterans, crime-fighting policies are actually discussed.
The discussion can be schematic, sometimes simplistic, candidates are fighting for an impressive “word”, but they are discussed.
And the US may be a country where you lose out if you’re found to have had an extramarital affair and you didn’t admit it in time, but it’s also a country where you understand the social divides due to different candidate demographics, and where you’re not get elected if you don’t convince certain segments of society that you will actually do what you promise.
Look, for example, at how Harris chose her running mate to appeal to a certain audience based on his stance on certain issues, from abortion to gun ownership.
On the contrary, in Europe (and in Greece, obviously…), we still pride ourselves on the fact that “we are not little Americans” and that we still have a clear distinction between “right and left” and that we have “principled parties ” and ideas”, in practice we are now far from it.
On the contrary, it dominates generalization, replacement of essential political discourse with easy-to-digest gibberish, political programs are replaced by “statements of ideas” (it is no coincidence that Emmanuel Macron was once considered a role model, essentially a representative of rhetoric that does not become political), and dividing lines are erased or drawn around secondary issues.
The result is a feeling that it is a one-way street, that everyone practically agrees on the same neoliberal policy – the stone years of memorandums played a decisive role in this distortion – and at the same time that society is moving away from politics and is governed at best o.. .Nobody, at worst, the extreme right, with the risk of identifying these two more and more.
And this is what those who want to represent a wide democratic space are called to face. Politicians cannot deal with such generalizations which dominate the internal debates of both SYRIZA and PASOK. Not only with wars against adversaries, however many cases and when they really give. Policy is created from positions on specific issues: on public schools, public hospitals, wages, working conditions, pensions, basic rights, privatization, agricultural subsidies, restoring a sense of security, a model of production that will ensure the development of benefits for all and takes into account the main problems of today, such as climate change.
Social alliances and political representations are built on them, dividing lines are clearly drawn and the electorate is mobilized.