Irate Moderates

by digby

The day after the Connecticut primary the NY Times published an editorial that I have been thinking about in the days since. It was called “Revenge of the Irate Moderates” and I think it was more insightful than I recognized at the time:

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president’s choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration’s contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person’s right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative.

When Mr. Lieberman told The Washington Post, “I haven’t changed. Events around me have changed,” he actually put his finger on his political problem. His constituents felt that when the White House led the country into a disastrous international crisis and started subverting the nation’s basic traditions, Joe Lieberman should have changed enough to take a lead in fighting back.

It seems this race in Connecticut has become a clarifying moment for many people and in the long run Lieberman may have done his the party a favor. Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum each have interesting posts up today discussing their personal odysseys. I urge you to read them both because it’s important for those of us who are temperamentally fiery partisans to understand how this unfolded for those who are more temperamentally moderate. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that either Drum or Marshall needed any kind of political educating or conversion experience to understand modern politics — they are smarter than virtually anyone I know. It was, I think, a psychological reckoning rather than a political one and I believe that’s key.

Those of moderate political temperament are naturally resistent to the rather radical belief that politics have become an ugly, bare knuckle battle in which winning is defined as stopping the other side cold — or winning elections and passing legislation through brute partisan force if necessary. I suspect that many people are resistent to this idea and for good reason. While there are some on the right who enjoy getting in others’ faces, most people prefer a peaceful existence and avoid confrontation until they are absolutely forced to do it.

It took me a little while to recognize what was happening too. I was a Clintonite who was willing to see if the third way could work. But I’ve got a strong streak of anti-authoritarianism in me that viscerally recoiled at the conservative movement’s partisan misuse of the congress and the legal system during that era. Perhaps because I grew up in a rightwing household I understood that the bipartisan rules we had all assumed were a permanent fixture in American politics were no longer operative. By 2000, I was thoroughly radicalized and believed that Democrats had to play a different, more disciplined, brand of politics even if it meant losing in the short term (which, after 9/11, I figured would happen anyway.)It was clear to me that third way politics had no future once the Republicans had a taste of power and revealed themselves.

But that’s me. I’m naturally partisan anyway. I grew up in a rightwing family and I’ve had emotional, take-no-prisoners political arguments my whole life — I get how these macho wingnuts love the fight and will do anything to win. Most of us have been lucky to avoid such highly charged confrontations (at least since the Vietnam era) and quite naturally assume that the opposition is reasonable. (Most people you meet in real life are.) Modern rightwingers, however, are a different animal.

Atrios touches on how this led to Democratic paralysis in a post today in which he discusses the policy implications of all this. In his own pithy style he puts it this way:

The politics side has to do with a Democratic party in which all the leading Democrats are forever running against their own party. Triangulation can work for one man, but when every leading Democrat is constantly falling all over themselves (yes, this is exaggeration) to distance themselves from Those Damn Dirty Democrats, you have a party which is without foundation and where capitulation is confused with bipartisanship.

The Lieberman race seems to have finally resolved the Democratic party’s confusion on this. When even Joe Klein is correctly characterizing the Republicans as using the war for partisan gain, the zeitgeist has clearly shifted. All factions of the Democratic party, with the exception of the actual DLC membership, seem to be coming to this realization which is absolutely key to making a case for the Democrats in November and beyond.

I think we are now seeing more political analysts recognizing this than not and that’s a huge step. I cannot predict how a message of contrast and confrontation will affect the unaffiliated moderates in the electorate but I think the Democrats must at least try it. The strategy of blurring differences has not worked for us in this partisan era and we need to try something new.

But because of this recent shift among Dem moderates, I think there’s some hope that the Independents and moderate Republicans who are appalled at the results of total Republican rule may also see that the Democrats are getting their act together and are willing and able to confront the Republicans and change course. I believe our biggest problem among those people has not been the hippie boogeyman (which nobody under 50 really gets anyway) but rather the idea that Democrats don’t stand for anything and are ineffectual against the Republicans. People won’t vote for you if they feel that it’s pointless. Going with the confident winners and hoping they will learn from experience is a better bet.

No matter how upsetting the current political situation may seem or how unpopular the Republicans are, if people feel that it will make no difference they won’t bother to vote. A strong, united Democratic party can change that. I think we might be getting there.

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