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Struggling social democratic parties in Europe could learn a few lessons from Democrats in the United States

In the 1990s developments within the Democratic party would lead to the ideological decline, and then electoral decline of European social democracy. Now, almost three decades later, could recent developments within that same party be the start of an ideological and electoral rejuvenation of European social democracy?

The 1980s hit European social democracy hard. Although social democratic parties still performed reasonably well in elections, the postwar social democratic consensus – with a mix of centrist Christian democracy – was under fundamental attack from the first wave of neoconservatism, personified by Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US. Like the Democratic party, the British Labour party was reduced to an increasingly irrelevant opposition party, as neoconservatives dismantled key institutions of the social democratic welfare state and, more importantly, undermined its fundamental belief in solidarity and the regulatory state.

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from US news | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2KNM0u0