Burst of resignations, the response of the Democratic Party: “We were at risk of extinction, now with us 20,000 new members and closest to FdI in the polls”

Five goodbyes in the last two months against twenty thousand new members of the Democratic Party in the same period of time. Just five, including MPs and exes, who have decided to greet the party born on the ashes of the Olive tree due to the drift to the left impressed by the new secretary – most recently the senator Carlo Cottarellipreceded by the colleague Enrico Borgoby the MEP Catherine Chinnicimore Andrew Marcucci And Beppe Fioreni – against the 5 points recovered in the polls since Elly Schlein won the primary. With the result of considerably shortening the distance from the Brothers of Italy of Giorgia Meloni.

The new course

It is the answer of the Nazarene to the defections that Matthew Renzi expected to be “just the beginning”. A sign, for some, of the growing malaise in the reformist and catholic-dem area that the leaders should take charge of; for others, the inevitable price to pay for the discontinuity line imposed by the young leader. Which, it should be noted, is arousing a wave of enthusiasm the likes of which have not been seen for years: witnessed – as well as by the membership numbers – by the success achieved in the squares. “Before the extraordinary mobilization triggered by the primaries, the Democratic Party was at an all-time low, relegated to the third party in the country and we had lost the leadership, at least in the polls, of the opposition”, he explains Marco Furfaro, responsible for political and welfare initiatives in the Schein secretariat. “We seemed to go ahead so much by inertia and with so little response in society that some commentators even put our existence at risk”, continues the manager. “Fortunately, everything changed in the primaries. Of course, we had good signs of the enthusiasm generated by Elly’s race, but it is precisely in the primaries that an unusual and decisive event happens: tens of thousands of people who came to vote abstain from the Policies”.

A Pd of struggle

A party that was dying out, with no life left, unable to relaunch itself, therefore reverses course. “With Elly’s victory, hope has been reactivated: he has brought those voters who no longer believed in the left back to believing in the Democratic Party, dragging them out of abstentionism”, argues Furfaro. “An enormous fact, which speaks of a party that reconnects with the wishes of the people. And which is testified by the reception in the squares: those of work, for rights, in the celebrations of April 25, in the anti-mafia places”. Where once there was a risk of protests, “now you get applause, smiles, hugs. You, like all of us, are given a renewed desire for change”. Feelings which, according to the young exponent of the dem secretariat, are not shared only outside the party, “we see it also inside”: he concludes: “In a few weeks, 20 thousand new members have decided to take part with us. After a long time in which they seemed neither meat nor fish, where we received neither sympathy nor passion, today the Democratic Party is the first opposition party, we have reduced the distance compared to FdI from 15 to 8 points. We have finally returned to being a popular, contemporary party, that finally does what it says, but always broad, inclusive and plural, respectful of the political cultures of origin. In a word: democratic”.