Time to just relax one weekend

I have had a busy week, discussing why the election went the way it did with (for example) Timbro’s Maria Rankka at Canal 7, the information unit at LO, and the (s)tudent club Sapere Aude. You can read my basic analysis in English below.

I will translate my thoughts about what the Social Democratic party needs to do now into English and list them here early next week. But before that, I am going to Italy with Emma for a mini vacation. Time to just relax and eat great food for a weekend, so see y’all early next week.

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In Italy I plan to meet up with a blogger who wrote a very good election analysis and a road map for the way forward. Read Bengtsson's analysis here.

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Saw two decent Swedish films last weekend; “Kim Novak badade aldrig i Genesarets sjö” and “Den bästa av mödrar/Mother of mine”. I actually liked the first one best.

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Guess what did arrive on my doormat a couple of days after we lost the election? Season seven (the last one) of The West Wing. Thank you God, NBC, and Amazon UK for excellent planning.

Election analysis: Why we lost

There is a saying suggesting that the opposition doesn’t win elections. It is the sitting government who loses. However, before listing some explanations to why the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) just ended up with the lowest share of the popular vote since 1914 (35 percent), we must acknowledge a strategy that allowed the Conservative Party to get its highest share of the vote since 1928 (26,2 percent).

Triangulation is a political strategy implying that you should position yourself close to your political opponent, steal the opponent’s best arguments, and create an image of yourself as the fresh alternative of the future, compared to the ruling government of the past. Think Clinton 1992, Blair 1997, Schröder 1998, and so on.

The Swedish Conservative Party managed to implement this strategy perfectly. They claimed that they would spend as much as the Social Democrats on welfare; they managed to get hold of our two best arguments (employment and the ability to govern); and Fredrik Reinfeldt won the presidential battle of the future against Göran Persson (to a large extent thanks to a very biased media coverage). Fredrik Reinfeldt showed up in the last debate with a plaster on his finger. He had hurt himself while doing some domestic work with his family, and had used his kids’ Pippi Longstocking plaster. The contrast with Göran Persson, who has moved to a big house in the countryside, was effective.

But at the same time, Sweden’s economy is growing by 5,5 percent, employment is rising and life in the welfare state is pretty sweet for most people. In order to understand why the Social Democratic Party lost, one has to consider some problems in our own campaign.

1. The vital center/Stockholm/jobs: We tried to counter their attack into the political midfield through rallying our base. It did not work. We lost ten percentage points among old age pensioners (from 44 to 34 percent); we lost five percentage points among members of the blue color union LO (from 59 to 54 percent); the support among voters born outside the Nordic countries for the Left party and us shrank from 73 to 48 percent.

Moreover, in Stockholm City we got 23 percent of the popular vote, and in Stockholm County we got 26 percent. You cannot win elections and perceive yourself as a 40-percent-party if you get a quarter of the votes in the growing, dynamic region were Swedes (and swing voters) move.

One main reason explaining why we lost both core voters and swing voters is because the conservative alliance won the debate about jobs. We had good policies for growth and jobs, but we did not talk about that, and ended up as the party of welfare (and not growth, jobs, and welfare). Somewhere in there, we lost our historic contract between the working class and the middle class (i.e. our polices benefit both groups, since we use market economy to create a more equal society for everyone, which appeals to the brains and hearts and wallets of rather rich people as well). When the Conservatives positioned themselves very close to us, they did not look as the big threat to the Swedish model anymore. Voters then moved from us to them.

2. Election strategy: All Social Democratic campaigns starts by acknowledging that although we are in government, we are in opposition to injustices, and we want to change society for the better. This time, we often ended up saying: “look, Sweden is great, the jobs are coming, vote for us again”. But the voters still saw some cracks in the welfare state, and were surprised that we did not talk more about that. Also, I guess we were afraid of using the same message a third time in a row (“we are in opposition to injustice and we want to spend more money on welfare”), fearing we would not be credible. A combination of a sound realization of the problems in Sweden, a distinct growth/jobs message, and a vision of a more equal and sustainable welfare state would have been perfect. (To be fair, those things were part of our message, but should have been even more in focus).

Moreover, we should have been tougher during the last two years, explaining how the “new right” still wants to dismantle the welfare state (they were allowed to gain a new image and the political middle ground without much opposition). We should also be harsher vis-à-vis their new, dirty campaign methods.

Lastly, I think we should have focused more on some issues where we are strong and they are weak, which could have rallied our base and attract voters in the center at same time. Examples of such issues could be some of the five “f:s”: females/gender equality, fags/LesBiGay issues, foreigners/the rights of and discrimination against immigrants, foreign aid/international issues, and flowers/the green welfare state.

3. Fatigue/time for a change: Ruling governments in post-Cold War Western Europe normally lose around three percentage points when they try to get re-elected. We tried to get re-elected a fourth time, with the same leader we have had for the last 10 years. Naturally, it is easy to build a “time for a change” mood against that, especially when the media was happy to play that tune as well.

So, y'all: Sorry if this update took a few days, and ended up too long, but I just have to say one more thing. The most important date in this election campaign was the 10th of September 2003, as the magazine Focus concluded. The murder of Anna Lindh changed everything for the SAP, and we are now in a situation were we have lost both the general election and our future leader. That’s quite a challenge, but I strongly feel that a new generation of Social Democrats already has accepted the new political landscape and we are ready to fight back.

As Joe Hill said and as loads of people are saying now: "Don’t waste any time mourning - organize!"

Life goes on anyway...

Alonso's Super Goal

Needless to say, this have not been a great week, but I am glad my red team cheers me up. What a goal!

And now?

Yes, it was a crap election, worst result for the Social Democrats since 1914. 1914, folks. I have been busy doing newspapers and I am traveling today so I will just link to my first texts/thoughts about this [only Swedish so far]:

1. A column about the terrible defeat in Stockholm, which explains why we could not win on the national level (here).
2. My editorial about what must happen now (here).
3. Three short points about what went wrong (here).

And to all my friends from around the world who are sending me sms-messages and e-mails: yes, I am definitely ok, politics is a blood sport, we lost this one and will be back in 2010. At the latest.

Election watch: Guess how I’ll vote?

The last couple of days have, of course, been really busy. I am preparing the election issue of the newspaper I work at, and we must be done during the afternoon on Monday, and then the newspaper will be distributed to our readers Tuesday (will have a final result by then???). Our articles will be available earlier online.

I have also been doing quite some hours of local campaign work in the district where I live (Kungsholmen). The positive response I have got in this heavily Conservative district has surprised me. As everyone else I think this election will be veeeery close, and my guess is that the left block will win with 48,2 percent against 48,0. We are somewhat behind in the last polls, but don’t forget that we were underestimated in 2002, and that there is another election campaign going on outside the pond in Stockholm. That’s where we’re really strong.

To sum up these weeks of election blogging: I will vote for the Social Democrats because of the following reasons:

1. The Swedish model: I believe in the combination of market economy, strong and progressive trade unions, and a generous welfare state. That’s a model that creates loads of real competitive jobs right now, stellar economic growth (5.5 percent), which enables us to redistribute to those in need, which increases the equality in society.
2. “The green welfare state”: We have a kick-ass vision for the future, which says that we should break our dependency on oil and create a green and equal way of living with room for everyone.
3. Internationalism: We give one percent of our GDP in aid to the developing world and the Social Democratic party is built on the borderless principle of solidarity and human rights for all. The world is not in balance, and a Social Democratic government always works hard to put that right.

That’s the way I think, folks.

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The left block did really well in the last TV-debate Friday night. Göran Persson was solid as always, but the one who surprised me the most was the leader of the Left Party (Lars Ohly). He totally owned that debate. But you can be calm, I went to few meetings with the Left Party's youth section when I was young, which convinced me that I am a Social Democrat.

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The picture above was taken when Göran Persson came to the Party Headquarters after the debate Friday night. The Secretary General of the Norwegian Social Democratic Party, Martin Kolberg, is congratulating him. Is Forza Italia in Sweden to meet with Reinfeldt?

Election watch: An even bigger scandal

Tuesday and Wednesday we have had important TV-programs about the election at different channels (SVT and TV4) at the same time. And then there is Champions League football as well…

Anyway, Leijonborg got really tough questions about Leijongate yesterday, and he still cannot answer why he and Jacobsson (the party secretary) lied about the espionage for two days.

But the big, major, scandalous piece of news was revealed in SVT yesterday. Opposition leader Fredrik Reinfeldt has had different au-pair girls from Baltic and Balkan countries in his home for a few years. He has been paying them 3 500 kronor a month, very little, but that’s the au-pair deal.

However, you can only keep a worker in your home for one year on au-pair status. Thereafter the worker becomes part of the regular working force and should receive better pay, thank God. But Reinfeldt continued to keep the same woman cleaning his home for the same salary, 3 500 kronor a month. That’s less than 4 euro an hour, folks. In Sweden. That is also 40 percent below the lowest wage you should pay someone working for you, according to collective bargaining agreements in this country.

In this election, Reinfeldt is claiming to lead “Sweden’s new working party”. But a woman who has unreasonable wages is cleaning his home.

Imagine if Göran Persson had a Polish au-pair out at his country house, and turned him or her into a worker who helped out with peasant duties for 3 500 kronor a month. The media would go crazy.

Now it’s Reinfeldt, and the story is passing through the media as a calm breeze. Why?

Election watch: Leijongate, Persson, etc

Leijongate: This sad affair might have taken a new serious turn: the “24 year old press secretary at Liberal Youth” has said to the police that when party secretary Jakobsson sent him to the media, he was not asked to confess. He was told by Jakobsson to give the password away to a journalist, so that the media could dig up dirt about the Social Democrats. The journalist who the “24 year old” eventually went to says the same thing. Did Leijonborg know? Why isn’t Reinfeldt answering question about whether he knew?

Imagine if the Social Democratic party secretary Marita Ulvskog sent the press secretary of the Social Democratic Youth (SSU) to a journalist, telling the press secretary to encourage the journalist to spy on the Liberal Party, giving him a secret password. The media would go nuts. But so far this is not a major story. And when TV4 broke the news about a site put up by the Liberal Party, a site predicting the Social Democratic party’s next political move!!!, that story died down pretty quickly as well. Imagine if the Social Democratic party put up a site like that, got the predictions right, and at the same time had been spying on the Liberal Party through their intranet…

I agree with Per Wirtén who said on the weekly public radio show Godmorgon Världen that this ought to be a bigger story. But my advice to the Social Democratic party remains the same: focus on a positive message and the own campaign, and let’s hope that other journalists will do the digging.

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Tonight SVT will broadcast a documentary in which journalist Jan Josefsson will discuss the moral of the Social Democratic Party. As far as we know, Josefsson will make a contrast between Göran Persson’s speeches about poverty and the “classless society”, and the new, big farmhouse that the Prime Minister is building.

My whole take on this is the following. I wrote my first article about the “triangulation” tactics of the Conservative party already in 2004. I think the article was called “When Reinfeldt reads Dick Morris, the fight gets tougher”. The basic idea with “triangulation tactics” is to move as close to your political opponent as you can, steal their best political argument (jobs, in this case), and then beat them through being the “fresh”/”younger”/”less corrupt” alternative.

Since we have known for quite a while that this is the new Conservative strategy, Göran Persson’s new house and all the Social Democratic scandals came in almost too handy for the opposition. I have warned about his before, and to a certain extent we have helped them with their strategy.

Personally, I have no problems if Göran Persson wants to use his hard earned money to build a house, together with his wife. It is their house, their money, and their decision. He knows how most Social Democratic party leaders have lived before (less fancy, that is). The problem, from my point of view, is that the media easily can fit this into a story of how distant some Social Democrats are supposed to be from their core voters.

My experience after quite a few years in the Social Democratic party, two of them as a member of the Executive Committee, is that all people I have worked with are in it for the politics. They are in it for the values and ideals of the Social Democratic party. Not for the money or the urge to become part of some kind of “elite, political class”. Honestly, that’s my view, and if you have heard Göran Persson talk about his house and his love for the nature and the region where it is located, it is pretty clear that he has found new energy out there. Energy he needed after the death of Anna Lindh.

And naturally, Åsa Petersen is right when she writes that the most important thing Göran Persson can do is to continue to stand up for policies that can enable many more people to do the kind of class journey like the one he has done. And that’s what this election is about.

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16 out of 16 professors in economics at universities in Stockholm support congestion charges in the city. More here.

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Professor Bo Malmberg shows that Göran Persson was right in the debate against Reinfeldt about inequalities in Sweden and Europe. More here.

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I have already forgotten The Merseyside derby I watched Saturday, and I am sure Liverpool will beat PSV Eindhoven tonight.

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“All the King’s Men” will soon hit cinemas in Sweden. A film about US politics, with Sean Penn as leading actor… But the gossip from across the Atlantic is that it did not live up to expectations!? I will watch it anyway, cool trailer here.

The 11th of September

The 11th of September carries memories. On that date in 2001, I was having breakfast in the house at Piney Branch Road in Washington DC, where I was living at the time. CNN was on in the living room. All of a sudden my friend Tom screamed, in a very American way, “dude, what is going on”. We then watched the second plane hit the WTC, and my only lecture at Johns Hopkins SAIS that day was cancelled. The speaker who couldn’t show up? Condoleezza Rice. The world has changed a lot since that day.

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One fantastic woman who had a strong compass when navigating through complex and difficult political situations was Anna Lindh. Three years have passed, my memories of the days around the 11th of September 2003 feel close and yet distant at the same time. Tonight I will lead a seminar about Anna Lindh and her work for a sustainable development. I feel very honored, to say the least. Carin Jämtin, Marita Ulvskog and Måns Lönnroth are the participants and I am confident it will be a nice evening honoring one of Sweden’s best politicians ever.

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If you feel like it, read Göran Persson's speech to the nation following the death of Anna Lindh here [both English and Swedish].

Election watch: Not K.O., but on points

Göran Persson won the debate against Fredrik Reinfeldt tonight. Full stop, period, over and out. I must admit I feel quite relieved, I know our guy is better, but you never know in these debates.

OK, I can agree that it was not a knockout. But it was a clear victory on points (I’m talking boxing now, folks). Three things gave Persson the victory:

1. Jobs: This time, Göran Persson explained our job-creating policies much better. The two alternatives were made clear, and the whole difference was obvious when Persson said that he did not want to pay (through tax subsidies) the person who cleans Reinfeldt’s house. Should Sweden compete with a knowledge-based economy, a competitive industry, green technology, and generous safety nets? Or should we create a market for low-wage jobs?

2. Sustainable development: This is Persson’s home turf, and it was clear that he has a vision and a personal commitment in this field. And it was very easy to see that Reinfeldt a) knows very little about this; b) really doesn’t care. This section clearly showed that it is – maybe surprisingly – the current government who has a vision for the future.

3. The plight of modern man: One thing that disturbs me is how Reinfeldt talks about people in this country. Reinfeldt’s attitude is negative, cynical, and skeptical. Sometimes I get the feeling that Reinfeldt does not think that people who are sick, unemployed, and early retirees really exist. They are just made up by the Social Democrats. And therefore you can lower their social benefits in order to give the rich a sweet tax cut. Sweden should be a more humane and equal society than that, Mr. Reinfeldt.

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Polls: Quite a few polls this weekend; they all show that the two blocks are neck to neck (we were just ahead in one and just behind in one).

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Weekend: I have been handing out quite a few leaflets and I have been putting up election posters in the area where I live (Kungsholmen). But I also watched the film Bin-jip (3-iron). A beautiful love-story, wonderful photo, masterful acting and it all takes place on the borderline between dream and reality. 88 minutes you must see.

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Reading: Dagens Nyheter had one interesting article about the training of US soldiers before they go to Iraq (here), and I really liked Olle Svenning's editorial about Leijongate today, in which he compares Leijonborg to Nixon (here).

Election watch: ”Leijongate” continued et al

“Leijongate”: There are three more questions that must be answered.

1. Jan Björklund and Erik Ullenhag, two heavyweights in the Liberal Party, have used information they got through espionage in order to prepare political attacks against the Social Democratic Party. How much did they know? Is it totally unlikely that their staffers bragged a little bit about how they got the information?

2. In March, Liberal party secretary Johan Jakobsson learnt about the espionage. He told the “leading spy”, the press secretary of Liberal Youth, to go and tell a journalist about his espionage right away. Is it weird to think Jakobsson told party leader Lars Leijonborg that a big political scandal was about to hit the Liberal Party? Is it weird to think that a party secretary normally informs his party leader about things like this?

3. The right-wing alliance has been bragging about how close they are and how much they hang out together. Can we be sure that the unique information some people in the Liberal Party had also stayed only in the Liberal Party?

Otherwise: My main advice to the Social Democratic party is to stay calm and focus on our own campaign. Talk about all our job proposals, talk to voters about the difference between left and right, and make sure to mobilize the base.

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TV-debate Thursday: I think the TV-debate Thursday was a pretty even affair. Göran Persson should have been more concrete about our job proposals, but Reinfeldt had nothing to say when Persson talked about the Conservative proposal to privatize emergency aid in hospitals. Moreover, Reinfeldt was wrong when he talked about tax-cuts in Stockholm County. Reinfeldt said that the Conservative Party wants to lower taxes only by 10 cents/öre, but according to their budget proposal they want to slash taxes by 1,95 kronor (roughly seven billion kronor).

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Radio-debate Friday: Another steaming hot debate on public radio today, and Göran Persson won this one. Reinfeldt screwed up the foreign policy section about Iraq totally, and Persson was much more concrete about our job proposals this time. And Reinfeldt really cannot explain why he wants to make life more difficult for the sick, elderly, unemployed, and early retirees. And Reinfeldt really cannot explain how those policies are supposed to create more jobs.

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New opinion poll: Left block 48,1 percent, right block 47,6 percent.

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From “Politics this week” in The Economist: “A survey of European public opinion revealed rising disapproval of George Bush's handling of international affairs. The survey, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found that 77% of European Union citizens disapproved of the American president, up from 56% four years ago.”

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Red and green: A faithful reader of the newspaper I am working at gave me two pieces of good advice: read the article “A deeper shade of green” in the National Geographic, and this article about Al Gore by Olov Abrahamsson in NSD.

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TV again: I was on SVT24 again late Thursday night, talking about the scandal in the Liberal Party, the media and election campaigns. Watch it here [Thursday's show]

Election watch: It did hit the fan, in a major way

"Swedish Watergate" (a.k.a Leijongate): One of the purposes of this blog right now is to give y’all news about the Swedish election campaign in English. But the magnitude of the still developing scandal – how the Liberal party has been spying on the Social Democratic Party – now means that you also can read about it at the BBC website!

One thing that the BBC article is not referring to is how the leader of the Liberal party, Lars Leijonborg, more or less lied on nine o’clock news yesterday. All Monday and Tuesday Mr. Leijonborg has been trying to blame the whole scandal on “young activists”, protecting the Secretary General of the Liberal Party, Johan Jakobsson. But Leijonborg knew, already on Sunday night, that Jakobsson learnt about the spying in March!!! But Leijonborg did not tell us the truth for two longs day. Not when Swedish journalists asked what he and/or Jakobsson did know. Or when Leijonborg spoke to the Swedish Prime Minister about it.

What do you think would have happened if the leader of the Social Democratic party had been covering up and withholding information like this for two days? Not telling the truth when asked on national television? Take a wild guess.

This will of course hurt the Liberal Party, and thus the alliance of the four right-wing parties, badly. It has been proved that the Liberal Party used the information they stole from the Social Democratic intranet in order to prepare their own political counter-attacks. If the scandal continues, the Liberal Party should worry about the four percent threshold they need to pass in order to get in to the Riksdag.

But this scandal might also demobilize voters, and that normally hurt the Social Democrats.

I hope that the Liberal Party has told us everything, for by now we should know if more people (individuals or parties) are involved. Then the election campaign will continue soon. And I hope we, the members of the Social Democratic party, will use all our energy to talk about our own political proposals, visions and ideas. That's enough to win this.

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I participated in a very interesting political seminar today, hosted by SNS. The topic was the media, the voters and election campaigns and it was broadcasted on SVT. You can watch the whole two-hour seminar here, my main contribution starts roughly after one hour and nineteen minutes.

Election watch: What’s going on?

“Swedish Watergate”: It is now cleat that the press secretary of Liberal Youth (Luf), who seems to have a quiet central position in the Liberal Party Headquarters, has done infringements into the Social Democratic Party’s intranet. Another member of Liberal Youth also seems to be involved. The police are apparently conducting house searches right now.

I have no idea where this incident will end. The most ridiculous thing I have read so far is various blog-accusations suggesting that the Social Democratic should have tried to time the occurrence of this “Swedish Watergate”. I think this incident is way above any level of “political spinning”, and I just hope that politics will be in the center of the debate again soon. One example that I would love to see all over the news instead: the meeting of Nordic Social Democratic Foreign Ministers today [read Mats Engström’s blog about that meeting here].

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Guess you have all heard that Rumsfeld has compared Iraq war critics to Hitler appeasers!!? Watch and hear his statement here, and read an insightful remark spelling out the difference between Robert McNamara and Donald Rumsfeld here.

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Been some time since you thought about democracy related to the Iowa caucuses? Article here.

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After having some hopes about an international peace keeping force to Darfur, the situation seems to be heading from bad to worse. Article in The Economist here.

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I don’t remember where and with whom I first saw it – and my memory normally scares people – but yesterday Emma and I watched the fantastic movie “Donnie Brasco” for a second time. If I still like it? Forget about it…

Election watch: Something hit the fan

A major political scandal might be spreading in Sweden right now. The Swedish Social Democratic Party filed a report with the police tonight. The reason is that the party’s internal communication platform has been infiltrated at the highest level, possibly by an individual or individuals with ties to the Liberal party. This means that – possibly – individuals in the Liberal Party have perfect information about some of the most important details of the Social Democratic campaign.

I was at the press conference, held at midnight at the Social Democratic Party HQ, and I just feel very sad. Whatever happens now, I don’t think will be good for Swedish politics or this election campaign or the general view of politics in this country. It is impossible to say how this will unfold, so let’s start by keep on talking politics and await the investigation by the police.

[Dagens Industri broke the story, read more at aip.nu and in all the tabloids etc etc].

Election watch: Sweden deserves better

Tonight the leader of Sweden’s Conservative party, Fredrik Reinfeldt, was questioned for one hour on SVT. He was asked quite a few tough questions, had to play a lot of defense, and generally looked very tense. I don’t think he won a lot of new votes tonight; his answers were complicated and technical. OK, he did not mess up totally as he did on radio, but the hour was quite informative if you wonder what Reinfeldt stands for. If you missed the show, all these things were actually made clear:

• Reinfeldt is not a feminist.
• Reinfeldt thinks that if the traffic insurance for driving a car is a) private and b) more expensive for ordinary people, there will be fewer accidents.
• Old age pensioners will get higher taxes, since Reinfeldt only proposes tax cuts for people who are currently working. If you have worked all your life, you don’t qualify.
• All the fees he wants to increase and/or introduce will then (of course) hit old people more (since they don’t get the tax cut). One example is a new fee that will be introduced when you buy medicine at the pharmacy.
• The unemployment insurance will be reduced to only 65 percent after 300 days, but Reinfeldt was sure that “it is possible to adopt” to these lower levels. He did not manage to explain how this could create new jobs.
• Early retirees and people with a disability pension will also get lower income levels for the rest of their lives.
• Trade union membership will become more expensive.
  
• To have a public library in each municipality will no longer be a requirement (rich kids can buy books anyway?).
• The free entrance to public museums will be abolished (except for kids).
• Swedish development aid to the poorest people in the world will be cut by eight billion kronor. (This will finance lower taxes for people with jobs in Sweden, one of the richest countries on earth).
• The Conservative government has voted against a lot of green proposals in the Riksdag, which have aimed at leading Sweden towards a sustainable development.

I think it was very good that these things were said clearly tonight, so that the voters know what proposals the Conservative Party stands for. When I re-read this list I get hopeful about this election. After hearing all these proposals, I understand why Fredrik Reinfeldt and George W. Bush are members of the same international political organization (big tax cuts, worse conditions for the poorest both at home and abroad, lack of environmental policies, no feminism...).

Now it is up to us Social Democrats to communicate our ideas and vision of a strong, green, modern and equal society. That is more fun and much more important. But the list above is good to have as an illustration of the alternative.

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Nina Blomberg has already commented Reinfeldt's hour on television at aip.nu, the same goes for Marta Axner.

Goldies at YouTube

Friday always means writing a lot for the newspaper, and often I search the web for good music (and videos) to listen to meanwhile. I guess I am not the first one to realize that YouTube has a lot of fantastic stuff, and since I am having a John Mellor kind of day I ran into this tribute. Wow.