USA elections - Epochal? Think Long Term. Contribute to openDemocracy.

jan14.html Dear readers, members and supporters,

Thank you to all of you whose gifts keep coming to the Think Long Term campaign.

The question we posed at the start of the campaign was whether we face a new epoch. A combination of US defeat in the Middle East, economic slowdown and the dollar's fall, the realization that climate change really needs a global deal, and the retreat from a belief in the guiding principles of democracy and human rights at the highest levels of international policy-making---do all of these forces lead to global realignment?

And if so, what will it bring? Please support openDemocracy to maintain our independence as we think, analyze and report all the subtlety in the big picture.

We are all braced to hear a lot about the American elections this year. Godfrey Hodgson opens our season of commentary when he asks the epochal question of the American electorate: yes, America wants change. But is it a realignment in politics, an FDR-style moment? or even like the 1968 Nixon election, the moment that marks the start of 4 decades of ascendancy of the right?

Godfrey Hodgson is not so sure. America wants a change from Bush because Bush failed. Where are the real, underlying shifts that make for a realignment, he asks? Not in Hilary's tears or Barak's belief, for sure.

Please give to us so that we can keep commissioning articles like this. These are the articles that deliver in-depth, independent insight from those who know their subject from the inside. It is a perspective that needs real editorial and expert resources, and openDemocracy uniquely delivers this for all to consume freely on the web.

Many thanks,

Tony Curzon Price
Editor-in-Chief