Now the bad news on the “L” word
by digby
Simon Maloy at Salon makes a good point about this recent polling on the word “liberal.” Yes, people are starting to feel comfortable calling themselves socially liberal but they are still unwilling to admit to being economically liberal:
This bears out in Gallup polling on economic issues. By a 39 to 19 percent margin, more Americans recognize themselves as “conservative” than “liberal” on economic issues. This wide disparity has been intact consistently since 1999. Among Democrats, too, only 33 percent will recognize their positions as “liberal,” compared to 45 percent who prefer “moderate.” Republicans, meanwhile, just can’t wait to let everyone know how conservative they are. Sixty-four percent of Republicans label themselves economic “conservatives,” compared to only 27 percent who go with “moderate.” You can understand the ring to it on a personal level. Describing yourself as “economically conservative” makes the pollster think that you’re an upstanding financial manager who dutifully balances your checkbook every month.
Think of all those rich people you know (or have heard say) they are social liberals and economic conservatives. It’s quite common. In fact, I’d say that a good many of our Democratic party elites would describe themselves that way.
But as Maloy points out, it’s kind of self-defeating for average folks to join them in that:
Liberal doesn’t need to be a naughty word when it comes to economic issues. Americans lopsidedly support quintessential “economically liberal” positions like protecting Social Security and Medicare, raising taxes on the wealthy, and maintaining discretionary spending programs for education, medical research, infrastructure, etc. People may conceive of these as “moderate” positions, and they may have once been. But now they are positions that are under withering assault from “economic conservatives.”
It may be a chicken or the egg situation, but this may explain why so many people are afraid to call themselves liberals:
You would never, ever catch President Obama — at least before he was a lame duck — going out there and describing the aforementioned positions as “liberal” ones, or himself as a “liberal.” He would describe his economics as “common sense,” “middle class,” or some other milquetoast phrase. He would go to great lengths, in fact, when accused — gasp! — of being a “liberal.” As long as Democratic standard-bearers refuse to describe these economically liberal positions as such, though, Republicans will continue using “liberal” as a caricature — and an effective one.
They are the ones who are supposed to “lead” at least in theory.
Clinton calls herself a progressive which is better than nothing. Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist which is actually the right term for what the modern left believes. Liberal is freighted with a bunch of baggage, some of which the left hates and some of which the right hates. But we have to call ourselves something and there’s a part of me that loathes the fact that the right continues to be able to demonize the left by turning their identifiers into epithets so I stick with liberal. But the fact that we continue to have this discussion tells us the problem continues on some level. Someday it would be nice to see the shoe on the other foot.
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