When you put it that way, yeah, we kind of are dicks.
I am unconvinced that (1) will be as big a deal as it has been recently. (2) and (3) seem plenty likely, and I would add (4) once they get their grubby little mitts on the levers of power Democrats will fall over themselves to do as many -- or more -- favors for various cronies who've felt slighted and out-in-the-woods over the past decade and change, as well as some (looking at you, hedge funds) who are nothing of the kind, but still want some grease.
All things considered, though, it'll be a hell of a lot better than it has been.
2. Despite a far weaker electoral position than the Democrats ever had to deal with, the GOP will have no problem behaving like an effective opposition party.
The unstated corollary to this is that such behavior will have precisely no negative effect on the GOP rump, but maybe that's implied clearly enough in number 3.
4: I actually think the negative effect on the GOP is visible, like, now; the fact that they're so completely built as an opposition party makes it very difficult for them to figure out how to be the party in power in any kind of politically sustainable way. The Democrats are much better at staying in power by compromising all the juice out of their impulses.
(Impulses have juice? Ewww.)
Re: TNR, how much of that is because of Peretz? A non-scholar from Harvard who screwed his way into a fortune, bought a magazine with a long glorious tradition, and ruined it. His ownership of one small-circulation money-losing magazine gave him enormous leverage in the tiny, impoverished opinion-journalism world. He seems to have hired people who were already shitty, but I still suspect that a bunch of them might have turned out much better with different incentives.
Tom Friedman married money. Mickey Kaus inherited money. Bill Buckley inherited. Kristol, Podhoretz, Bellow, and others had eminent fathers with some actual talent. And then there's Jonah Goldberg, son of a successful fishwife.
Two and three are obviously true. You're not going to get anyone to take the other side of that bet. I'd place even odds on 1. I'm giving it such a good chance of being wrong because if it is true we are all so fucked.
The Gingrich-Delay-Rove-Bush Republicans were very, very successful during their time in power. They transformed the country. Whether the damage can be done is an open question; I'm hopeful but not at all confident. The Democrats would be playing under Republican rules even if the Democrats themselves were not fucked up.
"undone"
I make more caffeine errors than alcohol errors, in case malicious gossip claims otherwise.
perhaps the "opposition" we lefties want is just not popular enough among voters right now - we keep electing Republican-lite Dems.
if the Dems could stay in power for more than a couple of years, maybe they could start pushing the center back leftward a few degrees, and maybe make it acceptable to elect people who would actually oppose the GOP.
Apo's rep is one of the two best Democrats in Congress, if not the best, on defense contractor accountability.
2 and 3 are so obviously guaranteed that the fact that I'm pointing it out means I've already been pwned by every previous commenter.
1 I could see going either way. The Democratic cringe seems like learned behavior that began in the Clinton era. As a new generation of politicians come to power, I could see it fading.
11: I love David Price so much that I'm even willing to overlook his unfortunate association with Duke.
The problem the Democrats have is that they have notion of, or faith in, the idea of leadership. On most issues, people have inchoate notions of what they want. The Democrats have no notion that you can persuade the voters that something is a good idea. If it doesn't poll well now, the Democrats are just helpless at what to do next.
Since I moved to the western suburbs of Cleveland, my rep has been the biggest, dirtiest, flakeyist hippy in Washington. I was overjoyed to vote for him.
15 may be the first time Kucinich has been called the biggest anything.
I will have no confidence in the Democrats until they change the House and Senate rules to allow the carrying of sidearms -- for Democrats only. They should maintain the fillibuster, but allow for target practice to begin after one hour of temporization.
It's like the Republicans have been saying -- the option of coersive force has to be "on the table" for anything to get done.
The Republicans simply have much better party discipline than the Democrats, in part because the Democrats have a broader coalition.
I suppose I see things differently.
Lately the Republicans have captured the one single big voting block that is totally compliant - the authoritarian followers. They did this by courting and wooing the leaders of the authoritarian followers. They did that with a lot of money.
This 25% lead puts the Democrats at a big disadvantage. The remaining 75% of voters are not a cohesive or easily led group and have many divisions and wedge issues.
It may feel good to blame the Democratic leadership for not getting a large voting block but the Republicans have nailed down the only big set of gullible followers and it is not realistic to expect the same success with the remaining voters.
In addition, and I know people really don't like to hear this sentiment, but in my opinion we are facing a time of increasing global crisis and in general people tend to cling to traditional values and religion during a crisis time. This means it will become even harder for progressives to advance their causes.
We must try, of course, but we must also understand that humanity will be making trade-offs between environmentalism and starvation.
There will not be any easy clear decisions.
togolosh,
The Republicans simply have much better party discipline
I attribute this to their organization and especially to their base of authoritarian followers. Falling in line behind their leaders is something authoritarian followers very very much prefer to do.
The Democrats have no notion that you can persuade the voters that something is a good idea.
It will be interesting to see how Obama's head-on rebuttal of Republican talking points* plays out over the next few months. I get the sense that some elected Democrats are reacting with the attitude of "Addressing the voters as if they were intelligent adults? You can do that??"
* e.g., "If George Bush and John McCain want a have a debate about protecting the United States of America, that's a debate I'm happy to have ... and that's a debate that I will win, because George Bush and John McCain have a lot to answer for"
I think that a lot of the Republican discipline is vote-buying (in Congress) with pork and graft. Budget-busting tax cuts, tax breaks, and no-cost contracts count as pork. I'd like to see someone write something matching vote-buying to deficits.
Most people still believe that the Republicans are the party of fiscal conservativism, even though that hasn't been true for 40 years. It's really a pity the way a lot of Democrats got conned into picking up the fiscally conservative cause, because it means that we'll always be cleaning up their messes.
10 is also just false. A lot of the useless Democrats in Congress come from perfectly safe districts; a lot of the best Democrats in Congress come from less safe districts.
Take Rahm Emanuel, who represents Illinois' 5th District. Chicago & suburbs. The Democratic margin in presidential elections is 18 percentage points over the national average. But Emanuel is not a reliable liberal at all--and even on bills when he votes the right way he has a nasty habit of telling other Democrats not to.
Emanuel's district is about as heavily Democratic as Barney Frank's or Jan Schakowksy's. It is significantly more heavily Democratic than Bill Delahunt's, Bernie Sanders' former district, or apo's reps--to say nothing of the whole state of Wisconsin, which sends Russ Feingold to the Senate, or the whole state of Illinois, which sends Dick Durbin there. A much more reliable liberal than Emanuel could get elected in his district. A much more reliable liberal than Chuck Schumer could get elected in New York. Those are examples familiar to me; I'm sure there are dozens and dozens of others.
Or take Nancy Pelosi: John Kerry beat Bush 84-14% in her district; does her support for telecom immunity show that the voters won't put up with liberal democrats?
Electoral reality IS a stumbling block to "better Democrats", but the main stumbling block is not that there aren't enough liberal voters to support a more liberal Congressional caucus; it's that it's very, very, very hard to dislodge an incumbent--if a critical mass of incumbents in your caucus suck, changing that is slow & difficult.
16: at least he wasn't called the dirtiest, fuckingest hippy, though that wouldn't be entirely inaccurate.
I auto-ban myself from discussions of Kucinich (and I live in Tubbs Jones' district, anyway; she also voted the right way on FISA, just like her slightly confused staffer who answered the phone in DC thought she would).
A lot of Democrats in Congress have personal interests and associations which interfere with their liberalism. Not many salt of the earth types there, and some of the ones that there are are intent on grafting their way out of the salt-of-the-earth category.
A lot of self-made Republican leaders (e.g. Reagan) are once-humble people who are very, very grateful to the people who made them rich.
Dennis Kucinich's district, the Ohio 10th, is also significantly less liberal than Rahm Emanuel's. And I'm getting these numbers from here.
Electoral reality IS a stumbling block to "better Democrats"
It is, but. I'm unshakably convinced that stands on specific issues are (a not very close) second in importance to just not looking weak, and the Democrats seem ever reluctant to internalize this. As I've said previously, Dick Durbin (who is generally great) tearfully apologizing on the Senate floor for a giving completely reasonable and accurate description of what was going on in our secret prisons is perhaps the best example of this.
Take Rahm Emanuel, who represents Illinois' 5th District. Chicago & suburbs.
I think Democratic primary politics in Chicago proper is moved by factors much more significant than ideology. Emmanuel is invulnerable to a challenge from the left, simply because he has machine backing.
Also, if he's got an eye on statewide office in Illinois, it behooves him to act much more conservatively than his district (of which I am a constituent) may desire. His predecessor, for example, was also very DLC-oriented, and he ended up as governor, though his approval rating is now down in the single digits, again, not for being insufficiently liberal.
Durbin & Obama, the two most popular politicians in Illinois, are notably more liberal than Emmanuel; using the unbelievably unpopular gov. as a counter isn't so convincing. And "incumbent protected by a powerful political machine" is exactly the sort of factor that proves my point, which is: the fact that Democrats in Congress consistently disappoint liberals is NOT PROOF that voters "the "opposition" we lefties want is just not popular enough among voters right now."
This is also self perpetutating: I wish someone would challenge Emmanuel in a primary even if they lose, but who has the time & money to mount & support a doomed campaign?
I will have no confidence in the Democrats until they change the House and Senate rules to allow the carrying of sidearms -- for Democrats only.
I think Jim Webb would favor this.
That 1984 all-red electoral map (save MN and DC) was a shot across the bow that Democrats have yet to recover from. We have not had a self-assured Democratic party in my adulthood (triangulation is a subordinate's strategy).
This is also self perpetutating: I wish someone would challenge Emmanuel in a primary even if they lose, but who has the time & money to mount & support a doomed campaign?
Someone looking for the three hundred grand raised on Act Blue to primary FISA supporters?
As a side note -- not being sarcastic -- I'd be curious if Katherine would be up for giving a list of her least favorite and most favorite Congressmen and -women I haven't heard of. Everyone knows that Barney Frank is awesome and Steny Hoyer sucks, but I've never heard of Apo's rep.
As I've said previously, Dick Durbin (who is generally great) tearfully apologizing on the Senate floor for a giving completely reasonable and accurate description of what was going on in our secret prisons is perhaps the best example of this.
Though I was bummed that he backed off of it, the fact that he made the statement in the first place is still a huge factor in my Durbin crush.
That first time Emmanuel ran, he had a liberal oponent, a state senator, Nancy K-something. That was the opportunity, because once in a Democrat is hard to dislodge. Jan Schakowsky's surprise win in the Democratic primary the year she first ran, I think it was '96, when the machine candidate was expected to win, was all the opening she needed. Even her husband's indictment and conviction hasn't shaken her hold on the 9th.
Emmanuel's 5th was open because of the conviction of Rostenkowski, and his replacement for one term by an accidental Republican whom everyone recognised was in over his head. After he was no longer running, or perhaps after he left office, Daley and a number of other politicians of both parties held a fund raiser to help retire his campaign debt.
Whenever I get drawn into one of these "why won't the Dems stand up to the Republicans" debates, it seems one of the underlying assumptions is that there are a lot of Democrats in Congress who are just as liberal as "we" are, but they're just afraid to vote their true beliefs for whatever reason. I'm coming to believe that that's just not the case, and there really are very, very few true liberals in Congress. If the majority of the Democrats vote like Republican Lite, it often is because they are Republican Lite.
Durbin's one of the good guys, no doubt. But that was one of those episodes that embodies how the Democrats keep losing, despite holding the more popular position on just about every issue.
Everyone knows that Barney Frank is awesome
He really is (and such an antisocial nerd! He hates gladhanding so much he's actively rude in social environments! Awesome), but even he bought the consensus on Iraq sanctions and the various insidious aims of Saddam.
That was the opportunity, because once in a Democrat is hard to dislodge.
Is this becoming less true with the ability of the Internet to raise large amounts of money for at least one or two netroots-celebrity candidates a cycle? In 1998 or 1988, there's no way Donna Edwards manages to oust Wynn, but she very nearly pulled it off in 2006 (probably would have if not for shenanigans) and it wasn't even close this year. Although Mark Pera got stomped by the unlikeable, unliberal, and terribly corrupt Dan Lipinski.
At a certain point I realized that the transformation of the Democratic Party was almost complete, and that a lot of the present Democrats are actually liberal Republican retreads. There are not liberal Republicans any more, and few moderates, and people who switched parties didn't have to change their beliefs.
assumptions is that there are a lot of Democrats in Congress who are just as liberal as "we" are
But see, I don't think it's even a matter of liberal versus conservative most of the time. You don't have to be left-of-center to understand that illegal wiretapping is, you know, illegal. Just for example.
He hates gladhanding so much he's actively rude in social environments!
I thought powerful people did that to show how powerful they were.
The real proof that Frank's an anti-social nerd is that he was totally taken for a ride by a prostitute.
33: my House knowledge is weak, & confined to places I've lives and/or people involved in issues I follow closely; I hadn't heard of Apo's rep. until a couple of weeks ago even though I should've given his work on contractor stuff. The NY Times ran an editorial praising his amendment banning contract interrogators; I was all--"whoa, who is this guy?"& googled him. Schakowsky is also very good on contractor stuff. Ed Markey & Bill Delahunt, both of Massachusetts, are very good on rendition. Emanuel first pissed me off with his stance on immigration--he apparently told House members in vulnerable districts that if they voted against a godawful Tancredo bill, he wouldn't support them.
Liberal vs. authoritarian vs. gutless. Authoritarian wins every time.
Little-government Republicans are the most pitiful losers in American politics. Most of them supported Bush, and when they quit supporting Bush most of them just sat home and cried. There's been no real opposition in Congress.
Paul represented those people (with added racism) and so does Bob Barr (who I presume is also racist). But since 2001 they've been a complete null factor.
I've never heard of Apo's rep.
Apo is fantastic on the issues but very politically ineffective. He doesn't show up for many votes and grumbles and complains a lot in the cloakroom.
Electoral reality IS a stumbling block to "better Democrats", but the main stumbling block is not that there aren't enough liberal voters to support a more liberal Congressional caucus; it's that it's very, very, very hard to dislodge an incumbent--if a critical mass of incumbents in your caucus suck, changing that is slow & difficult.
so, the problem isn't that there aren't enough liberal voters who will vote for an "opposition" candidate, it's that there aren't enough liberal voters who will vote for an "opposition" candidate to overcome the advantages of incumbency. which is another way of saying that people in general like other things about their candidates more than they like "opposition".
which is what i said in the first place.
Also, Apo has been brought before the ethics committee several times for the links he has mailed to other members of the House, as well as some of the photos on his personal website.
I bring the benefits of wisdom and experience to this fine thread:Democrats gave Reagan about everything he wanted in the 80s:tax cuts, spending cuts, defense buildup. They did resist more on foreign policy and judges.
2) Thinking back to when liberals did well, but not too far back, say 1965-75, I wonder if Democrats had grabbed so many statehouses during the 50s that they got a great apportionment in 1960 & 1970.
Just one among many things to think about.
3) Okay, going back further to 1945-55, when the monster majority was created, I look at things like the GI Bill, Highway System, military Keynesian. i.e., jobs and, but secondarily, welfare state. Jobs, well paying gov't jobs.
There is more history available than the last twenty years, and I don't think changed material conditions are as important as is usually assumed.
46: I realized it could be interpreted that way, but only in the tautological & therefore useless sentence: "the fact that there aren't many liberal Congressmen proves that voters haven't voted for liberal Congressmen." Well, yes. I thought you were making a stronger claim.
46, etc,: It really helps when you think of elected officials as the parts of government in charge of talking to voters, instead of thinking of them as the representatives of the voters. Their institutional supports in government, in the party, and with contributors give them a lot of leverage against voters. It's also true that voter opinion is at best wavery and hard to mobilize.
grabbed so many statehouses during the 50s that they got a great apportionment
I think probably so, and I have been looking forward to seeing whether the 2010 census would help even further but, of course, Bush has fucked up the Census Bureau as badly as he has everything else.
Tripp at 19 does make a key point:it is always thr "Solid South" + Utah, Indiana, etc. This is to a large degree to geographical location of authoritarianism, and being authoritarian and tradtional, is very hard to change or weaken. It now belongs to Republicans.
It was a mixed blessing for Democrats for 100 years. Jim Crow was a horror to many people who weren't direct victims of it, and took what was close to a civil war to only partially eliminate.
A belligerent Apo got drunk and shoved Marty Peretz into the caterers table at a Capitol Hill reception. Red-faced and screaming obscenities, he had to be removed by the Capitol police.
In spite of all these scandals, he has continued to be re-elected by overwhelming margins.
The most solidly Republican areas have been the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states. No black voters there to make a Bill Clinton possible. For awhile N.M has been the only swing state there.
Even now, there are only a few of them that are wobbling a little.
ND is ethnically similar to MN and had a similar political history up until about 1950-1960. But it's hardcore Republican now.
Au contraire, Apo's only 16 and doesn't have a rep yet.
53: See? See? Being an überliberal is not electoral poison, as long as you're willing to shove your opponents into a cake or brain them with a steel-tipped cane.
Brain them with a steel-tipped cane: the time-honored Preston Brooks / William Zantzinger school of argumentation.
We can create "liberal voters", the way FDR and Truman & Ike etc, and of course many great Congresspersons, created a liberal supermajority.
Tripp's 25% is probably right, and they are hopeless, but I suspect the 75% are much more open than most preference polls would usually indicate. There were hedge traders and CEO's, or people like them, in the fifties accepting those 90+ percent marginal rates.
I can't easly say how it's done, but I think people can be flipped quickly, in a generation or less. Clinton obviously failed in his first term, but had done better by the time he left office, and I think if Gore had won in 2000 we would be living in a progressive United States.
There's no need to argue, Snarkouts just don't understand.
John, there are Republicans and then there are Southerners. Southerners would rather be poor than change. Westerners will follow the money. Water projects. Solar & Wind & Ethanol Projects?
I could be wrong, but I would have to look back at who the Western States were electing 50 years ago.
But I still think y'all have to realize that you live in an Empire, and a dove makes as much sense in America as it would have in Hadrian's Rome. The vast majority will always be some kind of hawkish. It's about dealing with it.
the time-honored Preston Brooks / William Zantzinger school of argumentation
If you value succinctness, it's the one for you.
60: I see nothing much to gain in that. Canada here I come.
Theoretically, because I don't have enough points to get into Canada.
58: I can't easly say how it's done, but I think people can be flipped quickly, in a generation or less.
I agree with this, and I think that the adverb "quickly" is apt in this context.
But isn't Canada headed in the wrong direction?
Theoretically, because I don't have enough points to get into Canada.
Points? That sounds like something you get for using a credit card, like airline miles - which, come to think of it, would make a great promotion for Capital One. Use your card, get points toward Canadian citizenship !
Electoral reality IS a stumbling block to "better Democrats", but the main stumbling block is not that there aren't enough liberal voters to support a more liberal Congressional caucus; it's that it's very, very, very hard to dislodge an incumbent--if a critical mass of incumbents in your caucus suck, changing that is slow & difficult.
The other reality of which people seem to forget is the candidates Schumer or Emmaneul try to recruit. They often pick the most conservative candidate possible. Look at who they tried to pick in the races Tester and Webb eventually won. Look at how they undermined Andrew Horne in Kentucky. I could go on. Schumer and Emmanuel don't want Progressives in power. They want corporate whores in place.
I'd shed the last drop of my blood, if need be, in defense of my Canadian Motherland's precious Hans Island. The pillaging Danish barbarians must be stopped.
Look at who they tried to pick in the races Tester and Webb eventually won.
I love Jim Webb, but it's not clear to me that Harris Miller is the more conservative candidate in a Miller-Webb primary (though Miller is obviously to Webb's right on many economic issues), and the national Democrats largely stayed out of it to the extent they didn't weigh in on Webb's side. (Schumer, IIRC, endorsed Webb during the primary.) Miller's support largely came from the Virginia Democratic establishment, for whom he is a long-time fundraiser.
65: It's how they work general immigration these days: points for having a job offer, points for speaking both of Canada's official language, points for being educated, etc.
That 1984 all-red electoral map (save MN and DC) was a shot across the bow that Democrats have yet to recover from. We have not had a self-assured Democratic party in my adulthood (triangulation is a subordinate's strategy).
The tipping point came when the Democrats cut loose the "Southern Democrats." The race issue drove a large group to the Republicans. Even the Churches full of Authoritarians went because of it. They say now that it was Roe v Wade which turned them but that is a lie.
Initially those churches supported Roe v Wade. No, it was civil rights that initially drove the churches to the Republicans, where they have been ever since.
What an odd coalition. Authoritarian followers in churches, racists, gullible small business owners, and the ultra rich with their corporations.
And points for being young and for having skills needed by Canada.
Matt Brown was the DSCC candidate in Rhode Island and is to the left of Whitehouse, I think, but Brown blew himself up with a stupid fundraising scandal. Sherrod Brown, now the junior senator from Ohio, is well to the left of netroots hero Paul Hackett but was the DSCC candidate; in fact, there was some hue and cry when the DSCC eased Hackett out of the race because Brown was purportedly too liberal to win statewide.
It's not that Schumer (as distinct from Emmanuel) is universally looking for the less progressive candidate; it's that he has a somewhat blinkered notion of what an effective candidate can look like.
Hey, Greenwald updated his post with a link to this one!
Apo's going to be insufferable now.
Wait, that "now" doesn't make sense.
The race issue drove a large group to the Republicans. Even the Churches full of Authoritarians went because of it. They say now that it was Roe v Wade which turned them but that is a lie. Initially those churches supported Roe v Wade. No, it was civil rights that initially drove the churches to the Republicans, where they have been ever since.
Is this analysis gleaned from a history text, or personal observation from living through the era, or what? I've never heard this characterization of these events, and I'm inclined to think it's just flatly wrong. But I'd love to read more about it if you could point me to a source.
The loss of Southern Dems may be at the root of an inability to forge a lasting coalition, but the capitulation agenda didn't start until the 80s, seems to me.
I think that 1984 was the turning point. I certainly lost hope then.
44: I'm starting to think it's actually Liberal vs Authoritarian vs gutless Authoritarian.
I think there are two intersecting problems:
1. the voters are statistically less authoritarian & sheeplike than Congress, as seen e.g. in the public's opposition to the war or telcom immunity, which are much stronger than anything Congress has been able to express.
A lot of this IMHO is economic: wealth leads to complacency leads to the Dark Side, and Congresspeeps are *much* wealthier and more economically secure than the people as a whole.
2. We need better stories. Republicans are using a Macho Sue template for leadership (and masculinity), which comes with a complete set of inspiring cultural icons and exciting movies. I think the gutless division of the Democratic Party is saying "mythic figures are unnecessary and tacky" -- but human beings don't work that way, so emotionally they're still in thrall to Macho Sue and will lick his boots reflexively.
The spine-enabled Democratic Congresspeeps (including my own, you wish you had one) *do* have cultural icons and role models -- Atticus Finch, for instance -- but not as many, and frankly they don't come with as many shiny accessories (whether Glocks or Manolos, a distinction without a difference) and explosions, which are apparently necessary if we're going to switch the allegiance of the gutless.
Brock, here's Randall Balmer with the argument. He quotes Paul Weyrich, who is really in a position to know. It's a little long to excerpt effectively, but the gist is that federal enforcement of civil rights-related laws, including the IRS's effort to strip tax-exempt status from Bob Jones University because of its segregationist policies, is what really got the religious right going as a movement. Balmer cites several of the key early figures as saying that abortion was not at first a big concern, but took center stage only after the movement was, er, moving.
I've never heard this characterization of these events, and I'm inclined to think it's just flatly wrong.
I'm trying to find a citation, but I've seen several writers characterize the Protestant -- even evangelical, culture-warrior Protestant -- position on abortion as largely disinterested until the late '70s. It was a perceived as a Catholic issue.
Pwned by Bruce! (Bruce, I only recently figured out that you were the Bruce Baugh who was involved with Atlas Games in the late '90s. You're teh awesome.)
For me the worst realization of 1984 was that Reagan's visible disorientation during the 2nd debate with Mondale wouldn't have any electoral impact at all.
Do you think Hart would have been a better candidate, John, and carried more states? In some respects the Hart/Mondale divide mirrored the one this year, with traditional working-class whites going for WM, despite questions about how they'd vote in the fall. With the other coalition being stronger then.
70:You don't get many lasting coalitions, and you don't necessarily need them. We have a coalition now that might get a pause in Imperialism.
I think I need to read Caro. I did study Dirksen, the very model of a guy creating ad hoc coalitions, every single time abandoning his core principles.
The Dixiecrats weren't exactly the most enthusiastic of New Deal Warriors. The liberal ascendancy was about juggling multiple coalitions, selling CCC to the West to build dams, TVA to the South, helping unions with the aid of urban Republicans.
I think I said over at Ezra's LBJ got Dirksen on board Civil Rights at the cost of Vietnam. LBJ didn't need to prove his manhood, he needed not necessarily the rabid anti-communists, but the more moderate parts of the Republican caucus who were terrified of facing an rabid anti-communist in the primaries.
ari or eric can refute this, I suppose. Gotta read Caro. Tho in a declining empire, I am finding the history of the Dutch Republic useful.
Hypothesis: the "Democratic party," being a party, and being composed of people who tend to follow the rules (such being the route to "success" most of the time), and who, after all, have achieved a position of relative power and influence;
tend to basically feel like the status quo is okay, and merely needs a little tinkering. And tend to look at disruptive things, like the popularly imagined 60s and 70s, and/or grassroots organizing, and/or anti-establishment ideas and organizations, as slightly threatening.
I definitely agree with Doctor Science that there's a sort of coolness gap.
While I would like to see more liberal to left Democrats, I join the folks above saying that this isn't just about that. I would be happy to see Democrats willing to defend party advantage, humiliate the opposition, and in general stand on the idea that anything appealing to the Republican machine is worth rejecting for that reason, even if their preferred policy is substantially more conservative than mine. Party unity the Republican way is a bad idea, but there's a lot of space between that and the way the Democrats operate now.
One could, for instance, mount attacks like "The junior senator from East Wasteofspace says that we must cut medical help to the poor because they're dangerous loafers. Ha! Not one person on the welfare rolls approved the importation of contaminated food that killed off people's beloved dogs and cats. Not one person on the welfare rolls helped lie us into a war with a nation of people who had no grievance with us, and made widows and orphans of my constituents and the people snared into fighting them. Not one person on the welfare rolls got a yacht and a million-dollar bonus for destroying a hundred thousand people's retirement incomes and costing the taxpayers billions of dollars in bailouts. When it comes to being good Americans, in fact, it looks to me like our poor and needy are doing a lot better job than the guys the senator likes to pal around with!" Not that anyone will, but it'd be nice, and one could do it on grounds that are far from "liberal" in any meaningful sense.
If this is all a function of "being a party," why don't the Republicans act this way? They make plenty of dramatic changes, and they dare to take policy positions that are far less popular than the Democrats' dare.
Alternate hypothesis: politicians act out of a combination of wanting to get re-elected, sucking up to the rich & powerful, & genuine conviction. Sucking up to the rich & powerful conflicts with the policy priorities of the Democratic base, whereas the GOP base doesn't really mind it so much.
Bob, if you do read Caro, I'll be interested in your thoughts. I came away feeling like I still didn't really understand how the man worked, but then you're substantially better read in the field than I am.
Snarkout: Yeah, c'est moi.
B: That does seem to be a lot of the problem, yes. The opportunity at hand is spreading costs and organizational load more widely so that candidates themselves may need to be less of the establishment. Magic Eight Ball says results unclear, alas.
I'll go, but the project is to not understand our losses, but should be to repeat our successes. If history is at all useful.
Most, but maybe not all Democratic/liberal successes are connected to various plays on militarism. Obama is asking for 100k troops. Wars can be stopped, but the Empire only paused.
Maybe not all, but early Wilson (Mexico) or early FDR (Chiang Kai Shek? I was astonished at how big a player America was in early 30s China).
The reagan revolution convinced me that democracy was doomed if the voting electorate could be so ignorant and easily manipulated. Slowly since, I've become more pragmatic, if not more more confident in my fellow americans. (I also had a hard time coming to admit that ford ever sold a car by running an ad--hey, maybe I need a car ... and maybe *that's* the car I need.) I do believe the Democrats have a better product to sell; it's long past time they started acting like it.
Thanks Bruce. The link is much more about energizing the religious right as a political movement, although I see now that's not really inconsistent with Tripp's original comment. I had mis-read it, to some extent.
Brock, it is true that churches used to be in favor of legalizing abortion; pastors and priests saw way too many desperate fucking women with too many kids and yet another on the way begging them for "help." That and the septic abortions resulting in dead women or permanent sterlizations.
To be honest, my sober appraisal is that we're well past the point of recovering anything that can seriously be called a representative government. The big turning point was 1994, and the fact that the Republican revolution in Congress was still there in 2000 just sealed the deal. But the roots of the failure run back, as both Bob and John say in their different ways, to decisions by the War Party during and after World War II.
I keep at this, supporting good efforts as I can, because I may well be wrong, and I would hate to have something fail because people like me were too cynical to go ahead and do a good thing just because it's a good thing to do. But this is my existential side at work; I'm in the position of a Camus protagonist in a story like The Plague rather than a real believer in or hoper for significant improvement.
Growing up in the Sixties, the fact of American 20th Century Imperial participation in China was brought home to you, in part as a kind of proxy, template for the then-raging Vietnam war.
The popular movie that made this clear, The Sand Pebbles with Steve MacQueen, was on tv a lot.
And Barbara Tuchman's Stillwell and the American Experience in China, with its portrait of Stillwell and his friend and patron George Marshall as young officers in the 15th Infantry, was very celebrated, discussed and read.
86: Because they're the party of "we're in power, we get to do whatever we want." They're all about consolidating power and using propaganda to appeal to the authoritarian voters (I think Tripp's idea about that is brilliant).
The Dems (and a lot of their supporters) have niggling feelings that that kind of thing is unfair; they/we are more the party of "we want to help people, but first do no harm." With all the condescension and conservatism that implies.
My personal beef with the Dems is that they seem to have decided that my district isn't worth contesting, and are willing to leave Gallegly in power. Fucking pisses me off, he's such a do-nothing Republican rubber stamp.
Well, okay, but now you're no longer explaining much. WHY does the GOP feel they can do what they want with their power (whether it's pushing bills through in the majority or filibustering in the minority), while the Democrats don't? A "first do no harm" strategy doesn't explain a thing about the failure to filibuster.
I think that the drug culture also had a lot to do with turning people right, more than abortion. Some nice kid with personal weaknesses can get involved and come back a few years later as a complete wreck. The countercultures had an air of optimism, adventuresomness, and good will at the beginning, but often enough they turned nasty, certainly in many individual cases. Felonies, criminal lifestyle and attitude, stupid occultism, addictions, disease, depression, poverty, economic incapacity.
I've know many people for whom the countercultural adventure was a big positive, though usually at a cost, but also many whom it destroyed. Families often turned around 180 degrees when this kind of thing happened, including families who began with an open-minded attitude.
Liberals have all studied Gandhi, Orwell, and Deepak Chopra, and they know that conflict is bad.
Whatever the answer is, it's not in diversity of coalitions. The right has managed to get poor ultrareligious people and amoral corporations in bed.
The story in 97 is part of the neocon's master narrative, that the upper classes were free to experiment without consequences, they could even pick up guns and play terrorist without permanently disabling legal or academic careers, but that the less-fortunate who followed their lead were not so protected.
This story appeals to me emotionally, as there was a lot of confusion in those years, but I have to confess I don't know of any actual examples in my own acquaintance, of families who turned right because of it.
Yesterday I saw a sorority girl whose shirt read, "War never solved anything. Except Nazism, fascism, communism, and slavery." I really wanted to ask her which war solved communism.
98: Gandhi was non-violent, but he certainly was willing to fight the entrenched powers.
And Orwell? How was he opposed to conflict?
I don't know anything about Deepak Chopra.
On a more personal, thoroughly un-analytical note, today is the second anniversary of the death of Lt. Harold Baugh, of the Fifth Photographic Group, later of Jet Propulsion Laboratories and the Deep Space Network of tracking stations. I miss him, and I'd give the whole damn cowardly, vile lot of those who justify their sins and crimes as having anything to do with the good Dad and a lot of other men and women just like him did throughout the century. It grieves me to think that there are people dying today, two years later, and we don't seem to be in any real way a speck closer to the kind of thing Dad and Mom worked for, and hoped for for us.
I wish I could work more on that site for Dad, but I'm gonna have to replace my scanner, and in the meantime I keep going off like this whenever I handle his pictures and effects. It's not like I think the American legacy is all pure and lightness; I know better than that. But there was a quality of...resolve, is that the word I'm looking for? Something between bloodless trimming and sociopathic callousness.
Anyway, RIP, Dad, and all your comrades.
I really wanted to ask her which war solved communism.
Vietnam, duh. Or are you some kind of pinko?
98 is pretty on target. The left used to understand that non-violence was a tactic, not an end in itself. More specifically that it was a tactic that was well-suited to certain conflicts and poorly suited to others. As the classic examples of non-violent protest have moved further into the past, that philosophy has morphed into a vague discomfort with *any* sort of vigorous confrontation as unseemly and below the dignity of high-minded people.
Vietnam, duh. Or are you some kind of pinko?
See, I was hoping she'd answer "The Cold War!" And then give me a really withering look.
Dems have all the "powder" they came into 2001 with. They even got a little more in 2006 and they've kept it every grain dry. Without having used an ounce of it. They may have loaded up once, maybe twice, but have yet to discharge their weapons They are very good powder keeper dryers.
So Democrats voted for the Iraq war because of their excessive devotion to nonviolence. Mm-kay.
So Democrats voted for the Iraq war
I don't really many Congressional Democrats part of the Left.
I also believe 109 is missing the word "consider" somewhere or other.
101: I just saw that yesterday, too, except it was a bumper-sticker. I tihnk the answer to your question is supposed to be the Soviet war in Afghanistan, but I'm not positive.
I know a family which in 1980 or so supported Jesse Jackson for President, but which over time has become conservative Christian.
Some of the local kids who went the counterculture way got fairly messed up, and in a small town you can track them over the decades. Parents here try to give kids a positive life experience even at the cost of encasing them in an unreal protective world. A lot of them do seem happier than the hip kids I knew in Portland, for whom being pissed off about something seemed to be obligatory.
By and large these are not crazy wingers who see Satan under the bed, but culturally conservative mainline, politicall moderately conservative Christians. Though there's some charismatic craziness.
If the Congressional Democrats aren't part of the left, how is their fear of conflict evidence of anything about the actual left?
"We can't control who is bombed or not, but at least we can recognize the full humanity of the Republicans rather than demonizing them."
Y'know Katherine, if you're going to insist on an internally coherent philosophy, we're going to be for some time while I formulate one.
Let alone an internally coherent sentence.
WHO KEEPS TAKING WORDS OUT OF MY SENTENCES?
Trip (in 19) gives the clearest and most accurate synopsis of my 25 years of experience as an engineer inside cabinet level Agencies -- it's all about our human relation to power ... our need for authority. Strategic decisions with huge consequences are made based on our preference to be "certain" and "wrong" -- rather than complicated and uncertain but nuanced and ultimately "right."
Even in engineering in an environment where price and "bottom line" are not considerations (you can actually afford to do the "right" thing), it's not about real-world engineering "facts" but authority and deep human resistance to Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD, trademark IBM Sales).
The right wing sells Fear easily and well, and with a corporate media "owned" by right-wing support of low taxes and de-regulation, the right has an unbeatable echo chamber for anything that won't interfere with the flow of wealth to the richest 1%.
The left sells community and fairness and cooperation, human terms which have no economic footing and no corporate sponsor; they necessarily sound soft and elitist (how did they make demonstrable knowledge a bad thing?). The average citizen believes it is a zero-sum dog-eat-dog world, and "wants" its government to embrace this model of corporate management -- unaware this is a philosophy that necessarily condemns the world to perpetual conflict.
The only reason the left has this momentary chance is because the right goofed really badly and allowed an inept and corrupt clown (Bush) to enable the public to see the machinery behind the Oz curtain.
111: Yeah, we sure lucked out teaching the Taliban how to fight so good.
I don't know which term we need to take back for our own ("liberal" or "progressive"), but the current crop of Democrats simply aren't either of these things -- and the triangulating centrist Clinton "taught" us this was the way to win elections.
In other words, the current Democratic Party isn't an opposition party to rational and competent Centrist policies, but only an opposition party to extreme incompetence and blatant disregard for the Constitution.
14,21: The fact that the black liberal intellectual who's willing to stand up for sophrosyne is ahead of the white war hero in national polls should be testament to the fact that voters can be led. Every single elected Democrat should be adopting Obama's tactics regardless of where they happen to stand on the issues.
re David Price:
He's a decent man and a decent rep but he too almost caved on the FISA bill. I called his office the morning of the vote and asked what Price's position was on the bill and they told me hadn't decided yet. Of course, I strongly urged them to tell him not to vote for it but I wasn't glad to hear it was a close call.
Wow. There's been a whole lot of good discussion here in just a couple hours time. Some new people too, or at least new to me. That's cool.
Bruce Baugh, you have an honorable legacy. More people need to see that and I thank you for sharing.
My personal take on history is that reading about events makes them seem grand and glorious in a way that present reality can never compare with. The "now" doesn't have the music and the dramatic buildup that events in books and movies have.
So we can easily treat the world like it is a movie that we are watching. We can become passive and forget that the present is a script that we are writing as we go.
But we don't have to be passive. We can act. We can fight the good fight. We know what is right. This isn't complicated. This is simple. We just need to do it. Here. Now.
We need to hold to our ideals, especially when times are hard. We need to get up after being knocked down, we need to take another step, and we need to continue pushing the massive ball of social justice as hard as we can.
What really gives force to criticisms of the Democratic Party this decade is the horrendous performance of Dick Gephardt, who enabled the Iraq War and led us to defeat in 2002 and 2004. Pelosi, however, has been worlds better.
I've felt more confident about the Party since 2005, when I saw Pelosi and Reid completely destroy Social Security Privatization right after Bush had won re-election. Pelosi enforced party unity so well that no more than one Democrat in the house defected to Bush's plan, and Democrats didn't even concede that there was a problem to be solved. At that point, I realized that we were in much better hands.
Pelosi overcame the objections from Emanuel and Hoyer and made support for withdrawal the default position of the party in 2005-2006. It served us well, and we won an enormous election victory. I really don't think she gets the credit she deserves for building a more effective party.
I'm happy to hear all the talk of a primary against Hoyer. That's a guy against whom we really have to apply some pressure.
If there is any reason to feel hopeful, it's that we now have the ability to sort through the bullshit and get organized. It will take a little while longer to fully take root, but I really believe that the Internet and related electronic gizmos are making a difference and will transform the way democracy functions.
125: If there is any reason to feel hopeful, it's that we now have the ability to sort through the bullshit and get organized
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Tripp @123
My personal take on history is that reading about events makes them seem grand and glorious in a way that present reality can never compare with. The "now" doesn't have the music and the dramatic buildup that events in books and movies have.
This is why I think we on the left need *better stories* -- works like Persepolis, for instance.
127: Dr. S:
ogged (PBUH) used to fret that the Democrats weren't ready for the next terrorist attack, and he feared the Republicans would be able to take political advantage. I find this from Obama very encouraging.
And speaking of political narratives, I'm really enjoying the Republicans' attempts to try out different anti-Obama narratives.
Here's David Brooks:
But then on the other side, there's Fast Eddie Obama, the promise-breaking, tough-minded Chicago pol who'd throw you under the truck for votes.
This guy is the whole Chicago package: an idealistic, lakefront liberal fronting a sharp-elbowed machine operator.
It is so sweet that Republicans are now whining that their opponent is just too tough.
And here's Karl Rove:
"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said, per Christianne Klein. "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
Rove is trying to evoke the traditional "elitist" theme, but he ends up making Obama sound like James Bond.
Neil: The reason that these accomplishments - Pelosi overcame the objections from Emanuel and Hoyer and made support for withdrawal the default position of the party in 2005-2006. It served us well, and we won an enormous election victory. I really don't think she gets the credit she deserves for building a more effective party. - get slighted is pretty simple. What's she done about any of that since? We are, if anything, further from withdrawal, thanks to the advancing status of permanent bases, and I'm not aware of anything significant in the way of oversight or anything like that. She hasn't, yet, caved on Social Security, but pretty much everything else that was at stake in 2006 seems to have been surrendered.
[130] couldn't agree more with Bruce: it was nice that she hit that single in the first inning, but she's 0-2 since, and we've fallen behind...
128: Speaking as a whirly-eyed Obamabot, I give that Obama response a B-. It's playing the victim card ("exactly the kind of politics that needs to change", whaaaa cry me a fucking river), and accepting the GOP premise (terrorist attack = good for McCain) instead of reversing the frame.
The response should contain a very small amount of eyeroll rather than fake outrage -- something like "McCain's campaign seems to be more concerned with what a successful attack on US soil would mean to the McCain campaign than what it would mean to the United States: a plain demonstration that 8 years of George Bush's failed policies has made us less safe."
Note that with something like that, you don't even have to explicitly assert that McCain term 1 = Bush term 3; the implication is there and becomes part of the conventional wisdom.
You also have the non-entity crappy congresspeople who mostly vote their district but help out their corporate donors to the extent they think they can get away with it, e.g. my congressman, Ed Towns NY-10 (D +41). He had a strong left wing challenge last time, unfortunately from a guy whose personal hero is Robert Mugabe and proudly proclaims he wakes up every morning wanting to beat up a white person - i.e. what the No Quarter folks think Obama is.
The left used to understand that non-violence was a tactic, not an end in itself.
I think this misunderstands non-violence as an ideal.
Classical non-violence isn't tactical, it's existential. You don't do it because it is going to work, you do it because it's right.
Gandhi was non-violent because he thought violence was morally wrong, not because he thought that non-violence was more effective than violence. Christ could convert the world by force even when he is dying on the Cross, but chooses not to, because it's wrong to do so.
I'm not sure about Parihaka, but I'm pretty sure military action was rejected on moral grounds.
Admittedly Mandela's an interesting counterexample.
Generally, I'd also say that Orwell is not somebody you should take advice about tactics from. He wasn't very good at actually getting things done -- famously, he was on the losing side of the losing of the side of the Spanish Civil War, and his political instincts were never very good. He apparently told Nye Bevan that he should quit messing around with ``housing and stuff'' at the Ministry of Health.
Brilliant author, rubbish politician.
We're not misunderstanding it. We're rejecting it.
No, the claim is that the left used to understand that non-violence was a tactic, not an end. Given that many of the people who were non-violent saw it as an end (Gandhi, King, Christ), that statement is, I think, false. Now, they weren't all on the left per se, but then, I can't think of any important left movement that was ever really committed to non-violence (the CND? but the Committe of 100?), so it's hard to discuss.
My further statement was about the notion of non-violence, and how most movements that succeeded through non-violence did so because they felt that it was right, not because they felt it was effective.
After all, how the hell was Lytton Strachey's `imposition' going to save his mother?
36: If the majority of the Democrats vote like Republican Lite, it often is because they are Republican Lite.
I think this basically correct. All the keeping-the-powder dry and fear-of-the-GOP statements are best explained not as signs that the Democrats are fearful or too prone to compromise, but rather as the most plausible argument that a party that is much more authoritarian and conservative than its voting base can give to the voters on which it depends.
The modern national security state was an invention of Democratic governmental officials and policy intellectuals like Paul Nitze. Even if the GOP has lately become even more enamored of it, we shouldn't be surprised that the leadership of the Democratic Party retains an interest in its care and growth. Despite a revolt by Democratic doves in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the hawks have been back in control of the party for about three decades.
On issues like foreign policy and domestic surveillance, it is perhaps best not to see the Democrats as Republican Lite, but rather the Republican Party as Democratic hawks on steroids (the first generation of neoconservatives were originally Scoop Jackson Democrats, after all).
You know, a primary challenge to Steny Hoyer is probably a good idea even if its odds of success are low. Hoyer really sucks, and he's next in line for speaker; the Democratic House caucus almost always promotes the majority leader when the speaker steps down. Any scare from the left would probably be helpful.
Katherine,
WHY does the GOP feel they can do what they want with their power (whether it's pushing bills through in the majority or filibustering in the minority), while the Democrats don't? A "first do no harm" strategy doesn't explain a thing about the failure to filibuster.
My amateur assessment is this.
First despite all my (tedious I suppose) talk about the authoritarian followers I have neglected their leaders. From our perspective the worst sort of leader they have is the social dominator (who is power hungry and amoral) who is also an authoritarian. This person uses everything he can, including misleading his followers, in the pursuit of personal power.
In acting if you want to properly portray a character you have to first figure out what that character wants.
Social dominators want power and will do anything to get it.
Now clearly politics at the top levels is going to be full of social dominators. Who else would put up with the BS required to get to that level?
I submit, though, that currently the Republican party has most all of the social dominator/authoritarians.
In general the Democratic party social dominators have gotten there by being "statesman" and being smart and reasonable and articulate and willing to compromise for the greater good.
To me this is blatantly obvious when you look at the "Young Republicans" and the "Young Democrats" (or the equivalent).
Young Republicans backstab and play dirty tricks and do whatever it takes to beat each other to the prize. Young Democrats squabble and explain and bicker but eventually compromise for the common good.
Put those two groups is Congress and tell me you don't see the same thing there? Isn't it obvious?
In general the Democratic leaders are reasonable and have a conscience. The Republican leaders are ruthless, even in their use of a bumbling figurehead such as Bush III.