I agree with the main premise that most, if not all, of the current parties lost touch with what the voters demand, for the reasons - isolated political elites - that you describe.
I don't agree though that it is because those parties would see it as only on the X-Y axis of economy. I actually think the issue is deeper, and for one, common to situations before all revolutions, where you have basically three political factions (it's a spectrum, but broadly):
- status-quo party (which, by definitions, most of our "old" western parties are). It doesn't really matter whether the status-quo is a "Western Liberalism as interpreted by Thatcher/Reagan" or "Louis XVI style absolutism", the main interest is in preserving _their_ status quo, and tone-deafness is more or less a pre-requisite. I'd call it conservative, but it'd really overload the word even more than it is, so I like the status-quo.
- evolution party, which recognises that status quo doesn't work anymore, but the changes it wants to do are incremental. Here it's often not the tone-deafness that is the problem, but the fear of the change, especially any rapid change. Because of that, they are often not really progressive, but more progressivist (talk but no action).
- revolution party, which also refuses status quo, but believes the whole system has to be thrown out and redone. These parties tend to be "let's change and damn the consequences!".
It is rare that an evolution party can get power and implement changes that do change status-quo fast enough and substantially enough. I can think of New Deal in the US, and some regime changes in post Soviet bloc countries as examples. Often these win only because what they really do is actually fairly revolutionary, but manage to do it w/o the chaos of blowing up all of the system first (even though say the post-Soviet bloc change did have some chaos, but it wasn't a total breakdown).
TBH, revolutionary parties have massive issues too, because - assuming they are really revolutionary, and not just a vehicle to a personal autocracy - to have revolution, you have to do revolution, and to do that you need a kind of person who rarely knows when to _stop_ doing revolution.
But we've been there again and again, yet we still claim that "today, and this is fundamentally different". Going back to your engineering metaphor from a few post back - it really can't, the options are limited, the cards are dealt, gravity works the way it does.
On the off chance that your “forgetting” the other handset company that Apple’s iPhone bulldozed isn’t a rhetorical flourish, you’re likely thinking of RIM (Research In Motion), which was more widely called, and eventually renamed, Blackberry.
I agree with the main premise that most, if not all, of the current parties lost touch with what the voters demand, for the reasons - isolated political elites - that you describe.
I don't agree though that it is because those parties would see it as only on the X-Y axis of economy. I actually think the issue is deeper, and for one, common to situations before all revolutions, where you have basically three political factions (it's a spectrum, but broadly):
- status-quo party (which, by definitions, most of our "old" western parties are). It doesn't really matter whether the status-quo is a "Western Liberalism as interpreted by Thatcher/Reagan" or "Louis XVI style absolutism", the main interest is in preserving _their_ status quo, and tone-deafness is more or less a pre-requisite. I'd call it conservative, but it'd really overload the word even more than it is, so I like the status-quo.
- evolution party, which recognises that status quo doesn't work anymore, but the changes it wants to do are incremental. Here it's often not the tone-deafness that is the problem, but the fear of the change, especially any rapid change. Because of that, they are often not really progressive, but more progressivist (talk but no action).
- revolution party, which also refuses status quo, but believes the whole system has to be thrown out and redone. These parties tend to be "let's change and damn the consequences!".
It is rare that an evolution party can get power and implement changes that do change status-quo fast enough and substantially enough. I can think of New Deal in the US, and some regime changes in post Soviet bloc countries as examples. Often these win only because what they really do is actually fairly revolutionary, but manage to do it w/o the chaos of blowing up all of the system first (even though say the post-Soviet bloc change did have some chaos, but it wasn't a total breakdown).
TBH, revolutionary parties have massive issues too, because - assuming they are really revolutionary, and not just a vehicle to a personal autocracy - to have revolution, you have to do revolution, and to do that you need a kind of person who rarely knows when to _stop_ doing revolution.
But we've been there again and again, yet we still claim that "today, and this is fundamentally different". Going back to your engineering metaphor from a few post back - it really can't, the options are limited, the cards are dealt, gravity works the way it does.
On the off chance that your “forgetting” the other handset company that Apple’s iPhone bulldozed isn’t a rhetorical flourish, you’re likely thinking of RIM (Research In Motion), which was more widely called, and eventually renamed, Blackberry.