Joseph Sternberg, in his WSJ op-ed last Thursday, opined that the Democrats aren’t the only liberal party in collapse, averring that Great Britain’s Labour Party and Germany’s Social Democratic Party are in similar straits. He claimed early in his piece that

three of the West’s major economic powers are undergoing leadership turnover within their main center-left parties.

While the US’ and Great Britain’s leftist parties are threatened with leadership turnover (Germany’s SPD has already undergone one, and it may be continuing), Sternberg is operating under a false premise with most of his claim. Neither the US nor Great Britain have a center-left political party anymore.

The US has only the Progressive-Democratic Party, a far-left party given life by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and vigor by Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and such (so far) lesser lights as Bill de Blasio and Gavin Newsom.

Great Britain has only its Labour Party, which has gone as far-left in the British political spectrum as has the Progressive-Democratic Party in ours. Labour has been enthusiastically taken there by the party’s continued and continuing leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the party’s own lesser light Sadiq Khan.

It would be good for both our nations did our two actually have center-left parties, but there’s nothing forming even in the wings for either of us.