the center-left already discredited themselves and couldn't give a coherent criticism,, while the hard left couldn't step up to take its place.

So what goes on?  Liberalism a la FDP isn't sustainable.  While it's true that Germans have a whole hell of a lot of social safety net to burn before they get themselves into the position that Americans find themselves, it's a possibility.

And this is true basically everywhere.  Certainly in the USA.  When you have no coherent Left alternative, what happens?  

Part of the answer seems to be that initially be that people withdraw from politics.  Europe seems to be at where the US was twenty years ago in that sense.

But now in the US, people are reengaged, and still things stall along.

What happens when their is no possibility for change within the given system of politics, and pressures are building up for change within it?  Rupture and reformation of a new democratic regime?  Authoritarianism?  Something else?

I need to get to Hannah Arendt, but I believe that some of Harvey's (the guy behind a  brief history of neo-liberalism) more academic stuff gets into how liberalism turns authoritarian when it starts hitting these walls it can't deal with.

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg