But even that case is frustratingly rare, and the only guy who seems to have really pushed hard for it is poor, sad ol' Gordon Brown, who's as much a political zombie -- and rightly so, even if the alternative will wind up being far worse -- as Shitigroup is a financial one (probably more so).

The other, um, "model" being used -- giving money to the banks, whether via the central banks or a TARP-like program -- cannot reasonably be considered socialism in any sense of the term.  I'm so old that I can remember when that was called corporatism or fascism.

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

However, the Third Wayers, while subsequently abandoning most (Schröder, Brown) or all (Bliar) actual socialist ideas, did grow out of Socialism, and similar thinking rules the top ranks of virtually every European PES member party I can think of. Even pointing at a party's ideas on various topics when in opposition is little help, when one considers what for example Bliar campaigned for election in 1997. All of these parties had leaders who sold out to neoliberalism, even if all of them had prominent naysayers within the party.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

People expect practical solutions instead of ideological arguments. The party affiliation of politicians or the role of the party itself becomes secondary. "At the moment I would say that most voters will look whether the recipes of their national government will work and they will give credit to any government party which is able to save jobs and make the economy work again", says Detterbeck.

Which boils down to saying that, in a crisis, there's a premium for parties in government. So the "socialists" - here, to be clear, we are talking about the parties that make up the PES - are not winning because they are not in government. This doesn't seem very enlightening.

It's quite wrong though, imo, to pretend that the centre-right parties in  government are applying "socialist" policies: there's little nationalisation of banks, and talk of strict financial regulation is mostly just talk. But they're communicating around the notion that they are (in France certainly), and they are, it's true, to some extent, sucking the air out of the opposition.

More telling is the point that (as I said yesterday re Ilana Bet-El's post) the inevitability of neoliberal ideas has sunk deep into the outlook of the leadership of the parties making up the PES. Partly, no doubt, as a result of the apparent success of the Third Way at one point. So they don't in fact have clearly different proposals (clear to most people) from the governments they are opposing.

Finally, People expect practical solutions instead of ideological arguments... Perhaps, but practical solutions spring from an ideological basis. The PES parties no longer have a coherent ideological approach from which to offer understanding of the crisis and practical measures to deal with it.

Indeed, Sarkozy has put a lot of effort into fighting him. More so than the Socialists (he even campaigned for the Socialist candidate, against Bayrou, in Pau).

Also, in this Overton window, I disagree with calling Bayrou center-right.

Having said that, yes, it's true that a lot of what many socialists are saying makes sense, far more than what is being done. It should be added that France does fare better than many other countries, not because of what UMP did to start to destroy the French social model, but because they did not have enought time to complete the destruction.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed. Gandhi