Devlopments in EU: end of a union that could have balanced US hegemony?

In the past two weeks, two stories coming out of Europe might bode ill for the EU.

In France, it looks like they might reject the EU constitution because...economic malaise is making people who aren't doing well think the welfare state might come to an end if they vote for the constitution.

In Germany, Schroeder's party might lose local elections in a region his party has held for decades, even when more conservative parties dominated national politics because....economic malaise.

Why is there economic malaise? Because the US (without a powerful EU) dominates the global economy and because the Republicans have very conscisously and intentionally created chaos and malaise. Who is getting punished for it in Europe? The liberal governments who want the EU to organize around liberalizing principles that will create wealth and deliver more of it to a broad middle class.

What the US has done to Europe (particulary, driving up energy prices when these countries are trying to grow as a union) is not very different from what Kissinger and Nixon and IT&T and Pepsico did to Allende in Chile and what Bush and Cheney and Rove and Enron and the Wall St bond rating companies did to Davis in California. When there's economic malaise, voters blame progressives even if progressive policies are intended to shift power away from IT&T and Enron and Wall St and to the people.

The Republicans are really good at creating the conditions that make voters reject liberals even though those liberals have the best interests of the people at heart.

And average voters are really bad at seeing these patterns and resisting the impulse to vote agains their best interests.

if a consolidated EU would counter-balance the US and dilute the global power of the US economy, why wouldn't the Europeans be 100% behind it?
They can't be so short-sighted as to value the immediacy of today's economy over their own long term well-being. Can they?

Why did a solid democratic state vote out Gray Davis andvote in Arnold?

The recent mobilisation of "people power" to reject the constitution could be seen as a very positive development. The concept of the EU and much of its work is sound, but it has been dominated increasingly by a self-serving political elite, and the flawed constitutional treaty is the product of the.

If France gives a resounding "non", then we could see a renegotiation of the constitution that backs a genuinely representative vision of Europe.

Call me an optimist, but this is what I'm rooting for.

The Social Democrats lost the election. So that was the end of the last red-green coaliton...
There are talks of new elections this autumn in 2005 now.