Job One
In a powerful post, Brad DeLong brings up a point that I think needs to be said about current politics in the Democratic Party by simply juxtaposing Barbara Ehrenreich’s essays in support of Nader in 2000 and her repudiation of him in 2004.
Ehrenreich’s pro-Nader argument (or rather her anti-Democrat argument) from 2000 is truly puerile — but typical. I respect her for many things, but modern partisan politics is obviously not a field that she understands in the least. Her primary concern in the year 2000 was the perfidy of the centrist Democrats who had been leading the country, in her view, into ruin. Indeed, she seemed almost wholly unconcerned with what the Republicans would do with full control of the government, characterizing Junior as some kind of DLC Democrat who might try to place a couple of conservative judges on the Supreme Court but that’s about it. She was completely self-absorbed and laughably naive about the nature of the political opposition.
DeLong asks the question, “What changed between 2000 and 2004?” Commenters predictably said, “four years of George W. Bush.” And once again, I reply, “what in gawds name were you people doing for the previous eight years?” Apparently, many Democrats were watching their favorite infotainment programs and uncritically saw the partisan bloodshed of the 1990’s as some sort of sit-com instead of the bare knuckled, political power grab it was.
It was clear to many of us in 2000 that the Republican Party had completely run amuck and that George W. Bush was simply a brand name in a suit that the Party was putting forth to hide their essential ugliness from the American people. It was obvious to some of us that this was an unprecedented partisan battle and that this insular, myopic view on the left was going to hurt us very badly. I have little patience for the idea that it took this massive demonstration of GOP power under the Bush administration to convince people that the first, most important order of political business was to check the Republican power grab. It was obvious in 2000 to anyone who was paying attention.
Nowadays, I’m told it’s not that the Democrats are just corrupt but that they are corrupt pussies who never fought back until we gave them some spine. This is simply untrue. For a decade Democrats battled back a Republican juggernaut of unprecedented force (and a GOP landslide in 1994) while simultaneously fighting an extremely hostile media and a left wing faction that couldn’t deal with the fact that the Democrats, after 12 years of right wing ascendency, found a way to get elected and stop the inevitable slide to a permanent Republican majority. On that, (and not for the last time) they actually joined with the right wing in their loathing of the strategy that won elections in a conservative era and kept the Republicans from total political dominance. (This is not to say that the same strategy would work today. But, the argument of purism vs pragmatism hasn’t changed for the last thirty years, no matter what new strategy was proposed.)
Now that the purists have finally been sufficiently schooled in the consequences of letting Republicans have their way, I’m glad to see they are rejecting quixotic, third party politics for the time being. However, their view of modern partisan politics is as parochial as ever. For instance, I hear tell that we are going to finally “fight back.” And that seems to consist of charging mindlessly onto the battlefield, shouting slogans and beating our chests about taking our country back. It seems to be thought that if only we shout loudly enough, everyone on the sidelines will be impressed with our passion and join the fray on our side. And the Republicans, I guess, will be so shocked and awed that they will lay down their arms and capitulate.
I’m afraid that it’s far more likely that when the Democrats rush onto the field shouting our high minded slogans, the Republicans will simply explode a dirty bomb, killing untold numbers and scare the shit out of everybody else. The cable news ratings will go up and up and up as the media once again embeds itself on the side of the GOP in denouncing the “crazy” left wing terrorists.
Inchoate passion is not persuasive. And, to believe that “fighting back” consists of browbeating our elected politicians into standing up and denouncing Republican badness and wrongness is infantile. We grassroots types and bloggers and blowhards — as well as strong unelected voices like Gore, Dean and others — can stand up and give fiery speeches and have some effect if we’re willing to take some social heat for it. But in the real world of power and politics, passionate rhetoric is just one small piece of the puzzle.
The reason the Republicans have been as successful as they are, despite their policies being unpopular, is that they use their power to the nth degree, whether the public mandates it or not. They are confident in their ability to spin their partisan use of democratic institutions with bromides about values and morality and freedom and democracy. Underneath their rhetoric is a pure lust for power, but they have been very good at obscuring that by claiming victimhood and portraying themselves as the party of strong individuals speaking truth to(liberal) power.
Our problem is that we actually believe in democracy so we don’t think it’s right to shove our agenda down the throats of the American people without their permission (hence Clinton actually delivering on the centrist policies he ran and won on.) This means that in order to defend the country from impending fascism while we try to further a progressive agenda, we have to to protect democratic institutions, allow moderates a voice proportionate to their constituency and patiently try to bring the country around to our way of thinking.
Bill Sher at Liberal Oasis has been talking about this for months. As he says, liberals haven’t made the case that “liberal ideals are politically pragmatic” (and it’s not as if they weren’t given the opportunity during the primary campaign to do that.) Deluding yourself into believing that the public is just going to wake up one morning and reject this Republican image of us (and them) that’s been painstakingly stitched together for decades is wishful thinking. Only 20% of people people identify themselves as liberals and that should tell us something. We have a lot of work to do and it isn’t going to get done by standing around giving our politicians vague orders to “fight back” whatever that means.
Certainly, fighting back as a minority party is about as useful a pitting a high school baseball team against the New York Yankees. The first order of business to is win the presidency so that we can reverse this frightening foreign policy debacle and stop the bleeding on the domestic front. And that’s a big agenda at this point. But if we want to actually enact a progressive agenda it will not be enough to stand around and rail at the Democratic minority in congress for being unable to “win.” We need to be in a majority before anything gets done.
The fact that in one short three and a half year period this government has managed to spend the country into oblivion to the benefit of the very rich and has completely shot a half century of international leadership all to hell should, by all rights, translate into a landslide election for our side. And, yet it remains neck and neck. We have a Democratic base as fired up as any in my memory and yet we are still fighting among ourselves about the relative purity of our candidates and how if only they’d “fight” we’d win — as if we haven’t had some recent lessons in how certain satisfying fiery rhetoric is spun in the media to our extreme detriment. We can go down “fighting” like that or we can win by “fighting” using superior tactics and strategy.
And, yes we need to work to change this toxic political environment over the long term. We should use the newfound energy created by this Bush backlash and the new communications tools at our disposal. It was long past time that we created some political instutitons of our own to battle the political institutions of the right and groups like CAP and MoveOn and fledgeling efforts like Air America are our future.
But, right now we simply cannot forget that the single biggest problem we face is not our own lack of ballocks or the perfidious compromising DLC or the money that is required to run a modern political campaign. This country is in grave danger if the Republican Party maintains its grip on total institutional power. And they will not give it up easily and if they lose in the short term they will scratch and claw to get it back. They aren’t going away. Keeping them from total power must be our first priority, what ever it takes.
If Kerry wins, I’m sure that Barbara Ehrenreich and others will be upset that he is not sufficiently liberal. On the other hand, the right wing will be apoplectic that he is preparing to sell the country to the terrorists. The media will be slavering for anything juicy the David Bossies of the Mighty Wurlitzer will feed them. That is the nature of our politics today. That is the reality in which President John Kerry is going to be operating. And it would be nice if most Democrats didn’t put their sleep masks back on and pretend that John Kerry can be a super-hero who magically defeats terrorists and Republicans with one hand tied behind his back, while providing health care and prosperity for all — and then claim that he and the Democrats are pussies because they can’t perfectly accomplish all that in the face of a powerful and ruthless opposition.
It’s a new day, but the Republicans are hardly down and out. We need to get our priorities straight and start thinking like strategists instead of petulent teenagers. This notion that we will prevail if only our politicans will just speak up is to say that the problem has an easy, emotionally satisfying solution. It doesn’t. It’s a big, big deal and this party had better get its act together and figure out how to neuter this radical Republican Party before they immolate the lot of us.
Dave Johnson has some excellent advice on the kind of thinking that can actually defeat the GOP and pave the way to a new liberal ascendency. It’s a very good place to start. Also read the Republican Noise Machine by David Brock. Maybe it takes a former right wing operative to see that left still doesn’t understand the insidious nature of their opposition.
Update: Hats Off to Matt Stoller who is trying to do God’s work in bringing the fractious Democrats together. An e-mail exchange with him is what set me to thinking about this again. The pragmatists vs. the purists — the eternal battle for the soul of the Democratic party. It’s good to remind ourselves that our internecine battle is, and always has been, about the right strategy to get where we all agree we want to go.
The Republican schism is much, much deeper.
