Right Face
The Conventional Wisdom on the “progressive” left is that Democrats do better if they run to the left; that the more they speak to the (mostly mythical) “Democratic values,” the more they don’t ape the Republicans, the stronger they will be.
I’ve said before that while this theory — like Western Civilization itself– is a nice idea, unfortunately I’m not convinced there’s much reality to it. Is there evidence that Americans would more warmly embrace Democrats if they were simply more liberal? I’d sure love to see it.
I’m not even sure Democrats themselves want their candidates to be more liberal. In one primary after another of recent vintage, the more self-proclaimed progressive candidates have flopped. Look no farther than the case of Howard Dean who entered the 2004 race as more of a quirky, but firmly anti-war centrist and yet was overcome by candidates to his putative right.
The most egregious recent exception, of course, is Ned Lamont. But again, Lamont is much more similar to Dean of 2004 than to, say, the Jesse Jackson of 1984. Or 1988. Nor is Lamont’s victory anywhere near guaranteed. Quite to the contrary.
Now comes a piece in the L.A. Times that suggests that a Democratic victory in the coming election might be stemming from, indeed, the more conservative wing of the party:
Among the party’s House challengers, 33 are conservative enough to be endorsed by either the Blue Dogs or the political arm of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council. Nearly all are on the Cook Political Report’s latest list of Democrats most likely to win seats now held by Republicans. The party needs to pick up 15 seats to win a majority in the House.
The Times piece focuses on what the ideological tinge of a Democratic House might look like (and concludes it might not be quite as liberal as the right-wing alleges it wil)l.
Not mentioned in the piece are some of the key Senate races where, again, the future balance of the upper house also seems leveraged on the victory of some decidely conservative Democrats. Ford in Tennessee. McCaskill in Missouri. Webb in Virginia. The pro-life Casey in Pennsylvania. And if not outright conservative, then certainly more libertarian than liberal, as is the case with Joe Tester in Montana.
Before y’all start tossing mudballs at me, I want to re-iterate that I’m not arguing for this more conservative position. I’m merely raising some questions as to what actually constitutes a winning strategy. And just what sort of outcome does that strategy produce.
I suspect there will be a lesson to be had if some of these more conservative Dems prove to be the lancepoint of victory. But concluding that voters want Dems to be more conservative could be as mistaken as believing they want more liberals. I would hope the real reason for success would be that voters want candidates who are at once more populist and more culturally appealling (i.e. mainstream). But, frankly, I don’t know.
Do you?
October 26th, 2006 at 1:27 am
On the subject of the dubious genius of Turd Blossom, Brian Mann’s book, “Welcome to the Homeland” says that the GOP has based its success in recent years on appealing to rural voters who turn out in disproportionate numbers, disdaining even the suburban voter. Isn’t this sort of a short-sighted strategy? It seems to me that even if it’s working now, it’s counting on a segment of the population that’s been proportionately shrinking for decades and a pattern of voting that could change, and it requires taking positions that could alienate the majority of eligible voters, and the most productive ones at that. Depending on a working majority that’s only circumstantial sounds like a house of cards.
October 26th, 2006 at 1:30 am
P.S. on the actual point of the posting, I think this illustrates the principle that in a two party system both parties tend to conform to positions that voters have demonstrated they are willing to vote for.
October 26th, 2006 at 4:15 am
Your last paragraph, I think, is a reasonable conclusion and captures the political moment we’re in IMHO. Candidates like McCaskill and Webb are just fine – given their turf – for forging the coalition of centrists and liberals that can actually govern and begin to dig us out of the hole we’re in. Howard Dean had some obvious flaws as a campaigner, but what was most attractive about him wasn’t that he was a flaming liberal – he’s not – but that he had backbone on a couple of key issues and projected something approximating integrity.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:17 am
“It seems to me that even if it’s working now, it’s counting on a segment of the population that’s been proportionately shrinking for decades and a pattern of voting that could change, and it requires taking positions that could alienate the majority of eligible voters, and the most productive ones at that.”
Actually the GOP does best where housing is cheaper and marrieds with children live, while the Dems do better among non-breeders. Secular liberals are a sterile bunch, and like the celibate Shakers, must recruit or die.
October 26th, 2006 at 5:49 am
Robert Fiore:
I think Robert is exactly correct. For the most part, party organizations tend to support those policies they think will elect thier candidates and bring them to power. The main difference is, I think, that Democrats in general (not all by any means) pose conservative not out of ideology but out of a need to get elected. For the most part, conservative Dems tend to vote with their party’s liberal stance more often than with Republican conservatives.
Republican conservatives tend to vote like democrats when it comes to heavy spending, pork voting if you will and things that tend to get them re-elected.
Both parties believe that if they present a pretty pie, they win the grand-championship. It doesn’t matter what the pie tastes like, as long as it looks good to the electorate.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:20 am
Bill Clinton has said that that the Dems should reach toward independents and disaffected Republicans in this election. And, as I never tire of reminding you all, he diagnosed Al Gore’s defeat in 2000 as a case of leaning a little too far left on “cultural issues”.
October 26th, 2006 at 8:57 am
I hate to agree with Paul Begala and James Carville, but in a recent interview they said that Dems don’t need so much to lean left or right, but that they need to come off strong. They use the example of the 2004 convention where the Kerry campaign forbid speakers from mentioning Bush by name.
Check out this Dem campaign ad that was posted yesterday on Talking Points. http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/010567.php
I think it’s really good, but I wonder if they’ll run it or bag em like those really good Errol Morris ads from 04….
October 26th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Isn’t this election more about rejecting the disasterous Republican leadership than installing Democratic ideas? Liberals (and the left) haven’t made a good enough case to convince the public at large that their ideas are really winners. So the vague idea of universal healthcare is popular and people like the sound of “fair trade”, but the American public isn’t quite ready to step back from the conservative positions that have dominated politics for the past ten years. Instead, people have had enough of conservative politicans and their hypocracy and bad governing. So Marc’s right, for now, that most Americans don’t want a signifacant swing to the left – they just want a government with competence and oversight. Pushing the entire debate to left is gonna take a lot more work than allowing the Republican Revolution to implode.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:28 am
What generally goes unspoken in these discussions is the fundamental unfairness of the current unbalanced electoral system. The Senate “majority” was elected by less than 47% of Americans over the last three election cycles. The “minority” was elected by more than 48%. But the split is 55-44. There’s an anti-Democratic – and anti-democratic – bias bulit into the current system. It’s been made even worse by partisan gerrymandering, but it’s built into the system.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2005/06/why_the_democrats_will_keep_losing.html
So even when it’s a “majority” the liklihood is tht GOPers don’t represent most Americans but a slice of the country tilted toward the rural and the right, which explains Fiore’s comment. Urban and more liberal-leaning voters get fairly consistently screwed. Gore v Bush 2000 was just the tip of the iceberg.
As for GMs comment – the fact is that a moderately liberal agenda not only looks good but tastes good to a majority of the electorate. Many liberals may have run away from the liberal label in the age of the Reagan Myth and Atwater/Rove, but conservatives, while not shy about flying flags, tend to run away from anything resembling coherent conservatism. They’ll cut taxes but won’t cut popular programs or even the most indefensible pork. Nor, for all of their rhetoric against government, will they stand up to the expansion of federal power if their party leadership controls the executive branch. The truth is that, “Post-Reagan Era” or no, the broad economic and governmental agenda of moderate liberalism will continue to be dominant because it actually works.
What passes for “conservatism” today ihas two legs: (1) anti-tax rhetoric without the political will to follow through on the spending end – which of course results in massive “conservative” deficits and the apparent paradox that a moderately liberal Democrat like Clinton becomes a beacon of fiscal responsiblity by comparison to right-wing hypocrisy and opportunism; and (2) various forms of bigotry and reactionary fundamentalism driving shrill mini-crusades intended to divide the country, topped off post-9/11 with attempts to paint Democrats as somehow in league with American’s enemies. Pretty ridiculous when it’s not outright nauseating, reckless and hateful. And, as Bush has proven, this crowd is competent at exactly nothing – not even the supposed GOPer “strong suit” of defense and military strategy which, in a shameless combination of glib opportunism and blindered recklessness, they have managed to turn into a total disaster.
October 26th, 2006 at 9:51 am
What “Conservatism” hath wrought:
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/worst_congress_ever/page/1
October 26th, 2006 at 9:56 am
“Is there evidence that Americans would more warmly embrace Democrats if they were simply more liberal? I’d sure love to see it.”
Even putting aside the fact that the “Americans” who annoit the eventual nomination nods are party bosses, union heads, and wealthy contributers; that rather sweeping blanket statement discounts a few important things to bear in mind.
To wit, the people of the state of Wisconsin – hardly a solid blue state, and a state which I am very familiar with – has for the last fifteen years on election day consistently rejected the many Democratic candidates who have been labeled as “Tommy Thompson lite.”
Instead, the star of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin is U.S. Senator Russell Feingold, who can hardly be called a “conservative Democrat.” Indeed, Feingold is the overall political celebrity in a state that is mostly Republican.
Minnesotans here in the heartland have routinely voted against the candidates in the Bill Clinton wing of the Democratic Party in favor of the far more progessive candidates such as the late Paul Wellstone, and Mark Dayton.
Speaking of Clinton; polls taken of core voters, moderates, and independents who voted for him in both of his election victories revealed that the bulk of them did so because they considered him to be a champion of “universal health care,” “income redistribution,” etc. In fact, The Nation magazine published an interesting article on these polls. To paraphrase the last sentence: “Americans love the liberal Bill Clinton, event though he doesn’t exist.”
Nice try, Marc.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:10 am
Could you please lay out what is meant by “left”, “right”, “center”, “Conservative”, “Liberal”. I’m confused.
As a member of the working class I want healthcare for me and my family, good safe schools, a balance federal budget, ability to not have my labor undercut by low wage workers in other countries, Wars only under taken in Defense of my nation and not on a personal whim of a fat head and his corrupt cronies.
I would like a government that seeks peace and works cooperatively with other nations as much as possible and no longer behaves like a second-hand imperialist.
Which of these falls into the above categories?
October 26th, 2006 at 10:13 am
Furthermore, Claire McCaskill – whom I agree is not a progressive Democrat – nevertheless represents probably the most un-conservative Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate from that state in quite some time. She is certainly more reasonable on a host of issues than the last Democratic U.S. Senator from that state, Jean Carnahan (who voters tossed out in 2002). By the way, McCaskill in 2004 engineered a primary upset of the then-sitting Governor of the Show Me state by running to the left of him (sharply criticizing him for the funding of public education in that state).
Even in the case of Jim Webb in Virginia, he would represent a far more sane voice than other Dixie Democrats in that region, such as West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd and ex-Senator Fritz Hollings from South Carolina. Unless I am mistaken, it was Byrd who said that he voted for Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court because he “liked conservative judges.” Webb, on the other hand, said that he opposed Alito.
Finally, I will add that it is more a testament to the growing influence of money in the political process than the wishes of “Americans” who vote that there are so many conservative Democratic nominees these days…if they actually are “more conservative” relative to past candidates, which is hardly a given, as I’ve hopefully shown.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:19 am
I’m curious Marc. Who are all these people saying the Dems should be left-wing? Not KOS. Not Jerome Armstrong or Matt Stoller. What they are saying is that Dems should stop being a beltway party trying to “Triangulate” positions. And they should stand for something and fight for them. And when attacked defend themselves on the grounds that if Dems won’t stand up for themselves they won’t stand up for you.
On the issues the Dems own the field – even security according to the latest polls. As George Will puts it Americans are ideolgically Conservative but Operationally Liberal. Nancy Pelosi’s “100 Hours” agenda polls wildly popular with the lowest score in the high fifties. And look at what Arnold is running on here in “Kailifornia” – not exactly the libertarian model. Reg is correct, Republicans dare not try to implement their program – look at the Social Security Fiasco!
But you know what? The incoming Dem Congress will have nearly half its members in the Progressive Caucaus. And look at the incoming Chairmen – Rangel, Waxman, Dingell, Conyers in the House and, if the Senate goes blue, Kennedy, Biden, Feingold, Boxer. Quite a change and these are the people who count since they set the agenda.
No the Dems won’t be as Left-wing as you or I may like. No Single-Payer, no deep cuts in Defense, no massive new social programs funded by huge tax increases on the wealthy. But it will sure be a different agenda than Pat Dobson’s or the Business Roundtable.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:22 am
David – the upper midwest, with regions which were once a stronghold of socialism no less, has traditionally elected some of our most left-wing politiicans. It’s typical of what it is. “The Heartland” is no more of a monolith than is California. Because Feingold can win in Wisconsin doesn’t mean that every Democrat in every state will win by emulating him. I think that if the examples of Feingold and Wellstone prove a general point, it’s more about the potential that projecting integrity, pragmatism and coherent values have for attracting voters than the specifics of a left-liberal political agenda – although I’ll agree that a left-liberal agenda can do (what might seem to some) surprisingly well in the “heartland” if its advocate is an attractive, articulate, down-to-earth candidate who’s comfortable with the electorate.
October 26th, 2006 at 10:31 am
I forgot to mention I also want policies that preserve the health of the planet, and the cleanliness of our water, land and air.
Are these “right”, “left”, “liberal”, or “conservative” concerns?
October 26th, 2006 at 10:35 am
I want to vote for pam.
Don’t settle for spam, vote for pam! (I think I’ll keep my day job)
October 26th, 2006 at 11:40 am
They are both liberal and conservative in the best sense of each word. Even politics doesn’t demand binary or manichaen thinking. Something – ecological issues are the most obvious example – can have both a conservative and a liberal aspect in the realm of the intellect and the heart, if not in the realm of rabid partisanship.
There can be conservative ends – i.e. community preservationist, traditionalist, family-oriented – that require pragmatic liberal ends in the real world. An ideological belief in the market above all else is libertarian, not conservative, although it’s often sold as such. Capitalism is the least “conservative” economic system in human history.
Ideological leftists often make the argument that liberalism “saved” capitalism – and in many ways they’re right. They have a cynical attitude toward liberalism in the U.S. and social democracy in Europe – which might be justified if they’d ever managed to cobble together any alternative that actually worked – i.e. grew economic productivity, unleashed people’s potential in both the social and individual dimensions, and didn’t rely on firing squads and prison camps.
I’m not satisfied with what Capital L “Liberalism” has wrought to date – and I think that to be most effective it needs to pay attention to many of the concerns of people at the grass roots who identify themselves as “conservative” and I think it’s better nature is too often subjugated to the interests of its (dominant) elite and corporatist elements – but I sure as hell don’t want to reject liberalism for its avowed enemies on either the sectarian Left or the hard-core GOP Right.
October 26th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Reg:
Either reg means the house or he has a fundimental misunderstanding of how election to the Senate works. While gerrymandering may indeed affect house races (Gee reg, when the dems did it and they were in control of the house and senate, was that anti-democratic and anti-Republican?) it has no effect on the Senate in which each state, regardless of population or electoral votes gets to elect two Senators. Direct voting by the people reg… it’s built into the constitution via the 17th amendment.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Read the article. It deals with the more general case. The issue at hand in the Senate example is that the low-population states consistently elect more GOP senators. But congressional seats are also more unrepresentative than they shouild be, despite their supposed proportinality in contrast to the senate. I know what’s in the constitution. I’m talking about how power in the Beltway actually gets distributed among political parties as compared to the demographic realities that would trend toward liberals in a more representative system. It explains why Democrats need to get to work and not whine (I’ll leave that to Limbaugh), why we have can’t just be as good at politics as the GOP but have to be better in order to succeed – given the quirks of the system – and why an increasingly incoherent coalition like the GOP is able to cobble together electoral success from a hard core of grubby and divisive parochialism, short-sighted incompetence, Beltway corruption and crackpot ideology emanating from alleged “think tanks”.
This is the political parallel to the fact that our more productive, innovative economically successful states have increasingly been subsidizing the sparer regions where people love to be rhetorically anti-tax but enjoy taking a disproportionate share of federal funds to compensate for regional deficiencies. But I’m not really complaining because I find hype and hypocrisy very unbecoming and am more than happy to leave the lion’s share to your crowd.
October 26th, 2006 at 12:35 pm
This is off-topic but worth reading. It’s incredibly damning of the Bushnik Osama-enablers, but it’s a POV worth consideration by the anti-war folks. There are no easy answers to where we are now and no way of avoiding consequences from an idiotic policy that’s gone even farther south than even most critics would have predicted. Food for thought. What, precisely, is to be done ? I dunno…but I do know that the current administration has proven itself incapable of redefining any reasonable end-game in Iraq and coming up with a “limited goals” policy that might succeed. Denial that they’re architects of a disaster and all that…
Frankly, allowing a neo-Saddamist Sunni regime autonomy in the so-called Sunni triangle and allowing them to consolidate power as long as they ruthlessly liquidate the “foriegn fighters” increalingly looks like the most practical strategy for achieving the only 2 goals that should matter to us any more: eliminating any significant al Qaeda threat in Iraqi provinces and gettiing the hell out of a war that’s got so many sides we don’t even know what “winning” would look like or who we can trust.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/26/opinion/26bergen.html
October 26th, 2006 at 1:19 pm
Oy Marc, don’t the races that the Democrats need to win point more to regional temperment then ideology. I mean, are any of the candidates for say, privatizing social security, cranking up the war, proclaiming global warming a “myth.” Making Terri Shiavo rise from the dead. (ok the last one’s pretty far-right.)
I don’t think so.
October 26th, 2006 at 2:31 pm
It may not be a question of “Left” or “Right” but simply this. Democrats will win when they are seen to stand for something. And when that something is the type of political program that most Americans consider sensible. Right now the issues belong to the Donkey and the question is will Americans decide that the Democratic Party is serious about what they say. That means passing bills, at least thru the House, to back up the promises. Then let Bush veto them and force congrssional Republicans to sustain vetoes of popular measures.
Note that Arnold is winning in CA by acting like a Rockefeller, (“Liberal”) Republican. And note that his party affiliation is the side that dare not speak its name.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Pam,
Unfortunately you may not get a response from the posters on this site.
I agree with Marc, it smells like populist fever. Liberal ideas sound great until “we” think they’re going to mess with our Rayndian notions about our “Libretarian” economy as Reg called it. Like the “death tax” really affects average Americans.
Ford and Corker (pro-life, evangelical, pro NRA, fiscally conservative),are pretty much running in agreement on most issues which is why a 36 year old single black man has been able to run such a tight race with well established older (I believe 57) married white man which is great for race relations, sucks for liberalism – or does it?
A point I tried to make in a previous post was that African-American, I beleive are always consistently mis-characterized as “liberal”. However, when one examines polls on single issues, you’ll find a lot of predominantlly Evangelical African-Americans skewing right. The Democrats have maintainted the vote because of their consistent stance on Civil Rights. However, when given the opportunity to vote for a Republican candidate that emphasises fiscal responsibility, education, home and business ownership and does not play the race card, blacks will support said candidate in higher than usual numbers (Bloomberg & Schwartzenegger – “liberal” Republicans).
Here’s an article on Michael Steele with a just a 7 point deficit before the recent debates with Cardin this week with enough undecideds to possibly make a historic upset.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301285.html
And can anyone, other than Michael Turner, kindly explain to me what TinyCurl does? If can help me shrink my links, I’m all for it.
October 26th, 2006 at 3:57 pm
“There can be conservative ends – i.e. community preservationist, traditionalist, family-oriented – that require pragmatic liberal ends in the real world” should have read “pragmatic liberal MEANS”, of course.
It’s “tinyurl” – google it and go to the website – it’ll be clear how it works once you’re there.
October 26th, 2006 at 6:53 pm
reg: “What “Conservatism†hath wrought”
Jesus Fucking Christ. Just when you think you’re cynical enough…
Matt Taibbi: “Keep in mind, that number — fifty-eight grand — was for a single favor.”
That’s really not much. I was hoping government hand jobs, I mean hand outs, would have a bit higher asking price. I can’t describe how uplifting it is to find out that my government is a $10 crack whore peddling its chancre-ridden ass on the corner of fucking K Street. How can you respect Democracy when she doesn’t respect herself?
October 26th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
See
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=857
October 26th, 2006 at 10:57 pm
“… appealing to rural voters who turn out in disproportionate numbers, disdaining even the suburban voter. Isn’t this sort of a short-sighted strategy?”
Tell it to the LDP here in Japan. They’ve enoyed virtual single-party rule in the post-war period. They throw a lot of pork-barrel infrastructure spending into rural areas (lots of “bridges to nowhere” here), and support patterns of agricultural regulation that subsidize and help maintain the rural population. (In the cities, their minority constituency is maintained through a pattern of regulation that keeps many small shopkeepets in business.) Some rural districts in Japan outweigh some urban ones in Diet representation even at 1/7th the population size. The rather neutered Supreme Court here, from whom one seldom sees any decisions, decided a few years back that there wasn’t anything terribly amiss about such lopsided ratios.
I’m not a great fan of representative democracy, but it’ll do until the real thing comes along. What irks me is UNrepresentative NONdemocracy: an ever-tightening bind in which the representatives a party representing a minority constituency gain control of the legislature, and can legislate for themselves an ever-firmer grip on that control even in the face of a shrinking of their constituency, whose votes they keep buying. The GOP might style itself the party of economic dynamism, but eventually sheer demographics might turn them into an LDP. Believe me, conservatives out there: you don’t want that.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:04 am
Rural voters are addicted to big government. And not just for farm price supports. Read CADILLAC DESERT if you don’t think so. Someone upthread spoke of the populism of the upper midwest. I couldn’t help noting that rock-ribbed “Red” North Dakota has two Democratic Senators and a state owned public power system and has had one since the early 1900′s. Socialist and Republican!
October 28th, 2006 at 3:37 pm
“Rural voters are addicted to big government…Socialist and Republican!”
Richard -
Your on-target analysis leaves out one crucial element….Rural voters are “socialist, republican, and religious.”
I’m here in Kansas, and even though the Department of Agriculture keeps virtually all of our farmers in business (and the Department of Defense in relation to our aircraft workers), our two Republican U.S. Senators in congress (Brownback and Roberts) are very far to the right.
What makes the difference here is that these two men can talk to their constituents in common language about the issue that a majority of Kansans most care about: religious values.
A few years ago, Kansas elected a pro-choice Democrat (Kathleen Sebelius) because even though most Kansans don’t support her views on abortion, they know that she respects their religious values, and that she can talk to them about those values.
If the Democrats want to regain power, they don’t need to do away with progressive values. What they need to do is to tie those values in with religious faith, the way that William Jennings Bryan once did. Too many people here in the heartland associate many Democrats with anti-Christian values. Democrats can change this perception, and it does not require that they abandon their core beliefs.
October 28th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
Re Sebelius: Actually, to clarify: Sebelius was elected as Governor in 2002, and polls show that she will be re-elected this year by beating her right wing challenger this election season handily.
March 18th, 2007 at 1:09 am
fioricet…
news…
May 11th, 2008 at 2:57 am
0de3d20c47a1…
0de3d20c47a14b27b0e8…