defining terms (4.00 / 6)

Clearly, this is an argument where the terms of the debate have not been defined. Hildebrand's definition of a progressive is different from our own.

Generally speaking, my definition would be somone who, if s/he was in the House, would self-identify with the progressive caucus. Of course, that is not an authoritative definition, and there are others.

Maybe we should just start saying "leftist," in order to avoid confusion.

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by: Chris Bowers @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 13:43:37 PM CST

ummm, i'm not sure about using the term "leftist" (4.00 / 1)

not because it wouldn't play well in Washington, but because it would co-opt the space occupied by (us) socialists and whatnot....

in terms of the hildebrand interview: this was my reaction to his interview with TPM as well.  he clearly just doesn't see the political world the way many of us do...  

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by: seabrook @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 13:46:47 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Richardson is a business Democrat. (4.00 / 5)

In a debate in 2007, he accused John Edwards of tryingto start a "class war," in language eerily similar to right wing Republicans:

"You know, it seems that John wants to start a class war," Richardson said. "It seems that Barack wants to start a generational war. It seems that Senator Clinton, with all due respect on her plan on Iraq, does not have a plan to end the war.

http://southcarolina.richardso...

Every time Hildebrand speaks, he harms Barack Obama.  

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by: Tom Wells @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:22:42 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I want to revert to Chris' point. (4.00 / 1)

What is the definition of a progressive?  What is the definition of a "movement progressive"?  

Brien Jackson asks, downthread, "Is there as an agreed upon position one must take on every issue? Who gets to decide those? Do you have to take the orthodox position on every single issue that comes up? If not, what exactly is the threshold for acceptance? 95%? 75%? 50%? Do some issues get weighted more heavily than others? Which ones?"

It seems to me that the failure of Liberalism in the Johnson era came down to the fact that there WERE orthodox positions on every issue.  The liberal position on foreign affairs was that we had to oppose every Communist faction in every foreign nation by arming and "training" their military or para-military opposition, regardless of its character.  We could not tolerate a hint of sympathy with any Communist movement or any movement labeled as Communist, because McCarthy had tried to identify liberalism as a Communist front, and plenty of people still believed that was true.  Was this not what led Johnson to keep escalating in Viet Nam, which caused liberalism to collapse?

Someone in Obama's transition organization, I can't remember who, asserted that Lieberman votes with the Democrats 90% of the time, which is why he must be tolerated as a member in good standing of the Party.  Yet I and many other progressives regard Lieberman as an enemy.  So the percent thing fails in that case, and Iraq and the Bush anti-Constitutionalism are clearly issues that transcend the use of averages to classify as progressive or anti-progressive.

Self-identification with the progressive caucus might be a good rule of thumb, but what do we resort to for non-Representatives?  If Lieberman were a Congressman, and wanted to join the progressive caucus, would that make him a progressive?  I would like to see more discussion of this question.

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by: Querent @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 16:55:22 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Emanuel has a 94 percent rating (0.00 / 0)

on his votes from the League of Conservation Voters and a 100 percent rating from NARAL. Those ratings don't make me like him any better, but they certainly please a large Dem constituency. Point is, it's not some great mystery that he'd be seen as "liberal" by grassroots Dems who (like most) don't put Iraq at the top of their priorities any more. Just another case of the perception gap between political junkie lefties and a lot of self-identified liberals with "Keep abortion legal" or "Save the planet" bumper stickers on their Priuses.

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by: DaveW @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 13:47:18 PM CST

um (4.00 / 3)

Point is, it's not some great mystery that he'd be seen as "liberal" by grassroots Dems who (like most) don't put Iraq at the top of their priorities any more.

Steve Hildebrand is not a grassroots Democrat.

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by: Matt Stoller @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:16:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Right: he's a windvane. (4.00 / 3)

He just plays the numbers game. That's my point. His constituency is the vast majority of Dems who start paying a little attention every 2 or 4 years and judge political positions by how it looks for their pet cause. A Lieberman/Ferraro liberal, I guess you could call it.

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by: DaveW @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:21:22 PM CST

[ Parent ]

You whacko's keeping pushing that bull... (0.00 / 0)

.. and it still stinks because you're not concerned with the bigger picture.

Hey you want ratings - Bush has a 99% percent rating with the KKK - how about that??

A better analog to your argument in support of Emanuel would be the Bush vs 'shoes' incident.  Bush shrugs it off as no BFD - because he either doesn't want to know the meaning behind the shoes, or does and chooses to play dumb.

The shoes have a meaning much more profound than giving someone the finger. "In the Arab world, shoe flinging is a gesture of extreme disrespect. [1] A notable occurrence of this gesture happened in Baghdad, Iraq in 2003. When U.S. forces pulled down a giant statue of Saddam Hussein during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, many Iraqi detractors of Hussein threw their shoes at the fallen statue"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Emanuel's actions within the DCCC were contemptible, and is the sole reason the part was forcefully packed with scared rabbits who did what their Wall Street donors told them to do -  the exact problem Obama promised to correct.

Nationalism is not the same thing as terrorism, and an adversary is not the same thing as an enemy.

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by: worldlymother @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:28:04 PM CST

[ Parent ]

How the hell can he have a 100% rating from NARAL (4.00 / 2)

He voted for the 2003 Abortion Ban which Bush signed and now once more criminalizes abortion and abortion providers!!!!!

If that is so...then National NARAL has real ethical problems.  They are massaging the record to curry favor with the new administration.

These people at National are just...well I don't have words....Remember they endorsed Joe Lieberman and Lincoln Chafee even though Chafee voted for cloture on Alito, therby ensuring his position on the court...where he will try mightily to overturn ROE.

Let me add what do you think will happen to abortion services in a health care plan where its architect voted against using the health of the pregnant women in an abortion decision?  The last Senator in charge in 1993-94, ths "sainted", but rarely sober Daniel Patrick Moynihan, kept abortion out of the health cae plan gestating in his committee. Of course, as planned, it died a still birth in committee.

I think they are underming their own mission.

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

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by: debcoop @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:34:41 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Sorry I thought you wrote Daschle (4.00 / 2)

who has only a 50% rating from NARAL america.  I apologize for reading carelessly.

But everything I said about Daschle and the concern one should have about the place of abortion in any health care reform..is still very valid.

Daschle is not a progressive....I don't cae what signals he's sending to young health care bloggers...he's not saying what one thinks he's saying.  Some historical knowledge of how he has always expressed himself and his very artful and initial hedging around the issue makes it very clear to me that he has to watched like a hawk...instead of being given the benefit of the doubt.  The man is fundamentally accomodating...it's his DNA.  I bet he's a nice husband.  

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

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by: debcoop @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:43:52 PM CST

[ Parent ]

I think I found the root of the disconnect from reality (4.00 / 6)

Well, you know, President Clinton was, by all accounts, one of the best presidents this country has ever had.

What?

Also he seems really high on the idea that in order to make progress there has to be lots of "coming together" with the people who made the mess.  Maybe if the Italians had held hands and chatted with Mussolini instead of stringing him up in the town square, they'd be better off today.  Minor disagreements and all that.

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by: TravisDisaster @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 13:58:01 PM CST

all relative (4.00 / 2)

To many of us Barack Obama is a liberal like Rham Emmanuel. Which is to say a moderate to conservative Democrat. On the good side Obama appears to be a partisan like Rham Emmanuel, which in our political scheme means he will enact more liberal policies than I had anticipated.

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by: souvarine @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:05:25 PM CST

I Don't Get These Arguments (0.00 / 0)

"In terms of key votes, Emanuel voted for the blank check bill in 2007 to give Bush money for Iraq, which was the crushing blow against antiwar forces, and then for the FISA bill to immunize telecom companies."

This makes no sense to me. Say that for example, the Democrats do manage to cut off funding, what then? You actually think George W. Bush, famous for his petulance and self-absorbtion, is just going to admit to be beaten and pull up stakes? Of course not, he's going to draw it out and send the noise machine out to accuse the Democrats of leaving the troops out to dry. Democrats could push back, of course, but the Beltway media is going to latch onto the Republican line because it makes for better fodder, and at best you're looking at a 50-50 chance of success. On the other hand, we wound up getting incredibly large Democratic majorities in both chambers of Congress, and a President who not only opposes Iraq now, but who opposed it in 2002. Whether or not you're pleased with that outcome, it certainly seems better than even odds of driving public opinion on Iraq back in favor of Republicans, and handing them the White House and at least one chamber of Congress while the Democrats endure the label of "troop hating party" for at least a generation.

But in all seriousness, if you were looking for someone who just tried to act on all of their opinions no matter the political reality of the time, then you should have loved Dubs. Of course, that didn't really wind up working out so well for the GOP in the long run, so I'm not really sure why the Democrats are supposed to imitate it.  

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by: Brien Jackson @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:36:29 PM CST

FISA (4.00 / 1)

What you've written applies for the Iraq funding fight.  What about FISA though?  The public wasn't paying attention, it's really hard to see what made caving on this an electoral necessity.  It was just the wrong thing to do, because Rahm isn't a progressive and doesn't think Telcos should be sued for breaking the law.

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by: Daniel De Groot @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:05:15 PM CST

[ Parent ]

FISA was (0.00 / 0)

...a very good play by the Republicans. They were going to kill the FISA renewal altogether if they didn't get telecom immunity as part of it, and then they were going to accuse Democrats of not keeping Americans safe during the slowest part of a Presidential election. Now the Democrats could have foughten back, but how do you think that was going to play out in a drama starved, horse raced obsessed media?

Besides, Obama can scrap the program altogether by himself now (and that's the sort of thing progressives ought to be pushing on), and the Democratic government can set new rules going forward. No they can't change the immunity standard for past actions, but isn't having the ability to change it in the future quite a bit better than pursuing a glorified path of discovery?

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by: Brien Jackson @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:13:09 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Also (0.00 / 0)

"Hildebrand has a basic notion that any Democratic politician by definition represents progressive values.  Tom Daschle, for instance, co-sponsored the war resolution that authorized the war in Iraq, which was far worse than, say, Republican Lincoln Chafee, did at the time, or Jim Baker argued.  How can you call him progressive if the word is to have any meaning at all?"

This sounds remarkably similar to the way the talk radio right denigrates Republicans who don't agree with them on X as being "not really conservative." And frankly, I'm not really sure how you're supposed to aggregate that sort of standard. Is there as an agreed upon position one must take on every issue? Who gets to decide those? Do you have to take the orthodox position on every single issue that comes up? If not, what exactly is the threshold for acceptance? 95%? 75%? 50%? Do some issues get weighted more heavily than others? Which ones?

And in this case, what does Daschle's stance on the war from 2003 or even today, have to do with anything? He's not a member of the foreign policy team, he's in charge of healthcare. And on that issue, he certainly seems to be a progressive by most people's understanding of the term. Isn't that infinitely more important than what he thinks about something he has no formal role in, or responsibility for?

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by: Brien Jackson @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 14:42:16 PM CST

Why oh why are people not embarassed (4.00 / 4)

to spout complete nonsense about liberals and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party?  There is simply no shame about being ignorant about liberalism.

You could grab a liberal blogger at random -- hell, you could grab probably 50% of liberal blog commenters -- and they could give you an in depth discourse on the history of conservatism and the GOP from the second half of the 20th Century up to the present.  From the "paranoid style" of McCarthy and the ideological roots of Goldwater, through Rockefeller Republicans of the Northeast, the post-Dixiecrat Republicans, the evangelical Republicans, the Gingrich Movement Conservatives, the Neocons, etc.  

Now I share next to nothing, politically, with most of these GOP factions, and yet I would have no problem accurately slotting a given GOP pol into any one or several of these groups.  I would have no problem describing how a position on any given issue would rub any given GOP/conservative faction the right way or the wrong way.

And yet, here you have a guy like Steve Hildebrand, who was the Deputy National Campaign Director for the Obama Campaign and should have his finger on the pulse of the electorate as well as anybody in the country, spouting utter nonsense.  This numbskull can't tell that Rahm Freaking Emanuel is not a liberal (or at least is highly suspect among those who self-identify as liberal)?  He should be totally embarassed.  

It would be like a sportswriter claiming that Magic Johnson was a great Lakers center just because he was 6'9" and could score from the low post.

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by: space @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:08:44 PM CST

Must be talking about post-ideological classifications (4.00 / 1)

Perhaps Hildebrand is talking about post-ideological liberals and progressives.  You know...  Anyone who is left of them is probably one of those ideological types.

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by: triangunation @ Mon Dec 15, 2008 at 15:47:22 PM CST