The big story out of Sweden is the victory of an alliance of parties on the right. Sweden’s right is much less conservative than America’s, of course. Even so, this is a rare and significant defeat for the Social Democrats, founders and custodians of Sweden’s massive welfare state.
As a footnote to the big story, the new “Feminist Initiative”appears to have fallen well short of the 4 percent threshold that would allowed it to enter Parliament. (I told the story of the dramatic rise and crash of this new political party in “Fanatical Swedish Feminists.”)
Last-minute campaign visits to Sweden by Jane Fonda and “Vagina Monologues” author Eve Ensler were apparently not enough to overcome the taint of last year’s disastrous man-bashing scandals.
FI has had an effect, however. The early core supporters of Feminist Initiative came out of Sweden’s Left Party. To bring these voters back, the Left Party now bills itself as the only truly socialist and feminist party in Sweden. So when a coalition of the left returns to power in Sweden, the Left Party may extract promises of feminist reforms as the price of its place in a coalition.