From Politico comes a warning for Democrats, “Why Europe’s center left can’t stop losing” by Aitor Hernandez-Morales and Jacopo Barigazzi, who write:

Europe’s social democratic parties are collapsing — and their leaders don’t seem to know how to reverse the trend.

For much of the 20th century, center-left parties rooted in trade unions and industrial labor were among Europe’s dominant political forces.

But today, many of them are politically unrecognizable — or in dire straits.

The latest example is Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s Social Democrats, which last week suffered a dramatic slump in national elections. Although the party scored the most votes overall, its results were the worst since 1903.

Working-class electors frustrated by the party’s inaction on cost-of-living issues gravitated to the far-right Danish People’s Party, while left-wing voters frustrated with Frederiksen’s willingness to partner with the center right and take a hard line on migration defected to the Green Left.

Giacomo Filibeck, secretary-general of the Party of European Socialists — the pan-European entity comprising all of Europe’s national social democratic parties — told POLITICO the poor results were attributable to “anger” over the governing center-left party’s handling of the affordability crisis. The issue had become more pressing “due to the war in Iran, which raised energy prices and more,” he said.

Vagn Juhl-Larsen, a local-level Social Democrat party chairman in Denmark, put it more bluntly. “Voters have no respect for a party that does not pursue its own politics,” he said, slamming the Social Democrats’ leadership for giving up on “red” political values.

The situation in Denmark is hardly unique.

After 35 years of uninterrupted rule, Germany’s Social Democratic Party lost its hold on the industrial state of Rhineland-Palatinate in last week’s regional elections, where debate over the stagnant economy dominated the campaign. That defeat followed a March 8 thumping in Baden-Württemberg, where the SPD got just 5.5 percent of the votes cast.

In France, meanwhile, the center left claimed key cities such as Paris and Marseille in this month’s municipal elections, but remains missing in action at the national level. Over the past decade the once-dominant Socialist Party has declined so steeply that it was forced to sell its historic headquarters to pay off debts, and today controls just 65 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly.

“The center left does not seem to know where it fits in Europe right now,” said political analyst Rodrigo Vaz, a former deputy attaché at Portugal’s permanent representation to the EU. “And that identity crisis has led it to defend policy programs that are indistinguishable from those of the center right — a strategy that is neither clear, nor appealing for voters.”

The centrist dilemma

Europe’s center left was built on industrial workers, union members and working-class communities — a base that once powered leaders like Willy Brandt and François Mitterrand.

But that world no longer exists. Since the mid-1980s, deindustrialization has shrunk the traditional blue-collar workforce, while union membership has declined across the continent. Europe’s social democratic parties have yet to find a coherent response to the changes in their traditional voting bloc.

“The center left has yet to come up with a new social contract, one that addresses the concerns of modern-day society,” Vaz said. “There’s no clear narrative on where social democrats stand on automation, artificial intelligence or the future of work.”

More here.