NY Times “The Center-Right Moment.” In fact it's Dirty Tricks and racism that beat the Left

David Brooks states the issue properly:

Given the financial crisis, widening inequality, the unpopularity of the right’s stances on social issues and immigration, you would have thought that progressive parties would be cruising from win to win.

But, instead, right-leaning parties are doing well. In the United States, Republicans control both houses of Congress. In Israel, the Likud Party led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled off a surprising win in an election that was at least partly about economic policy. In Britain, the Conservative Party led by Prime Minister David Cameron won a parliamentary majority.

What’s going on here?

What's happening? Well, what's really happening is that the relatively unlimited financial resources of the Right Wing billionaires have bought ascendance over the more ordinary political actions of their rivals.

We're their rivals, competing for power. These are fights and on the evidence not fair fights. Consider the recent skirmishes:

♠ ♠ ♠ In the United States, Republicans control the House of Representatives because massive funding of state elections has enabled in-depth Red States gerrymandering. Republicans get fewer votes by far and take a majority of seats.

♠ ♠ ♠ The Senate is more complicated. Beyond the scope of this article.

♠ ♠ ♠ In Israel the Likud Party won a surprising victory by voicing racist anti-Arab sentiments on election day. This effort produced an 80% voting rate from “settlers.”

♠ ♠ ♠ A Likud offshoot called Kulanu got 10 seats by promising to do everything possible to break the log jam for residential construction. That blockade has forced rents to rise sharply, as high as 3:1 over 5 years ago.

♠ ♠ ♠ U.K.'s Conservatives won by fielding a false flag party, UKIP, that bought them a net 4.6% advantage. Murdoch was the one doing the dirty work. His propaganda operation penetrated pools of Labour voters plus flipping anti-Conservative LibDem bail-outs to choose UKIP.

♠ ♠ ♠ UKIP beats an extremely polite anti-immigrant drum as it blames brown and black skins for the economic woes of Tory austerity. Focus to swing seats gives strong impact in favor of the Tories.

Without the UKIP false flag operation, the Tories would have gotten an estimated 293 seats. Not today's 331 seats and a ruling majority. Costing Labor 2,650,000 votes was quite the trick. (326 seats is the minimum for a majority in the 650 seat House of Commons.)

Long live the King !! King Rupert!

Greens also got a boost from Murdoch's propaganda. They grabbed off another 1,157,613 Leftie votes. That's not figured in cutting 331 down to 293. If the Greens had stayed at the 250,000 level you can imagine that 293 going down to the sub-280 level.

Dirty Tricks

That's how they win. So what's the 800-pound American gorilla?

Lucy Koch does elections:

What else ? Participation in midterm elections was steady with a slight up trend for three decades going in to 2014. Then the vote percent fell from 40.9% in 2010 down to 36.4% in 2014. Here is what that trend looked like, then the fall off to the lowest voter participation rate since WW II:

1986    38.1%
1990    38.4%
1994    41.1%
1998    38.1%
2002    39.5%
2006    40.4%
2010    41%
2014    35.9%

We also see disinformation at online web pages. This from a “history” item with a respectable google standiing:

2014          36.3%
2010          37.8%
2006          37.1%
2002          37.0%
1998          36.4%
1994          38.84%
1990          36.5%
1986          36.4%

That's bogus. Set up to mislead students.

The bump in 1994 was a well documented consequence of the GOP's massive “Contract With America” campaign. The Newt Gingrich theme. Follow-ups, then, reflected conservative response to what was a very expensive ad campaign for the day.

2014 has no such exogenous factor. Voter behavior had no major campaign or war or weather or anything else in the works. Follow-ups also show no such fall off to voting.

Gee whiz. And the falll off in tallied votes hit 38 states. The other dozen states, no.

Looking at RW propaganda campaigns, their Ad Biz operations are nothing if not thorough. Wall to wall lies.

Never underestimate the ambition of an unpunished criminal gang.

That's what we're up against. Sociopaths and ideologues. Their Dirty Tricks have been winning elections all through 2014 and 2015 and at the highest levels.