Re: flagged status, I presume this submission was flagged for seeming "political". However, the concern, as I understand it, is over articles that are not so much "political" (many of those are never flagged), but rather blatantly "partisan" or "factional" (which can go unflagged as well). "Liberalism" here refers to something much deeper than partisan squabbling. It is a political philosophy having its most prominent origins in Locke, and a worldview that underpins Western democracies. As the article notes, both prominent American parties are in fact liberal parties in this sense. The question being addressed isn't "is the Democratic party finished?", but rather whether the liberal worldview and the liberal order is playing out its own demise. There are tensions deep within liberalism, e.g., between science and liberty, that we see manifest across the American political spectrum. Many of the issues raised in many submissions are grounded in a tacit and particular variation of liberalism. This article addresses the much more fundamental question whether liberalism as a whole, not a particular variation of it, has failed.
There are some topics that are just not usefully discussed on HN, even ones that many people are interested in. Part of it is the nature of internet forums in general, and some I think are due to HN in particular. This isn't meant as a judgement of either: it's not dissimilar to how you may want to talk about some things with one group of people and some things with others if you want a productive outcome. I suspect it was flagged at least in part due to expectations of the ensuing discussion.
No liberalism ("a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality") hasn't on the whole failed although there may have been glitches here and there.
//Breaks resolution never to comment on political subjects on here again
The first thing to do in going about non-futilely answering and discussing the question would be to broadly define liberalism, about which there are presumably many different definitions/ideas/understandings, to bring to light some of the presuppositions that debate would otherwise be a blind struggle over. (That's an assumption of mine.) Is it to be just 'what we have in the western democracies nowadays'? But it means different things in different regions and countries. Is it something people aspired to in the 18th C and we've not achieved, or achieved and lost, or achieved and have moved on? (In discussions of 'Has communism failed?' the huge gap between what the word meant originally and what the Soviet system became is central, and even that is not a simple question to answer. It depends which definition you use.) Maybe every system fails.
That reminds me what I was reading today in the comments on the agile theory vs reality story. Radical cool new ways of doing become their own opposite when set in stone and blindly followed. Which reminds of how in the USA the Amendments are usually touted to justify some asinine practice nothing to do in spirit with the original Amendment in any way, and more usually its opposite.
Democracy itself is hardly a total success or free of contradictions, exploits, shortcomings[0]. Depends which sense you use; there are wholly differing definitions of democracy used by the major writers/theorists of the subject.
And failed relative to what?
The shortest and quickest answer, here a good one I think, is that given by Betteridge's Law[1] — No.
But it depends.
[0] A couple of very readable and more-relevant-than-ever classics on this theme: Michels' Political Parties (1911) and Lippmann's Public Opinion (1922).
