A common charge of Republicans during the 2008 presidential campaign was at Senator Barack Obama's perceived liberalism. Republicans often stated that Mr. Obama was the most liberal senator in the United States, according to a ranking by the National Journal. The attack against Mr. Obama's liberalism has continued during his time in office.
The ranking by the National Journal, however, seems to be flawed in several ways. Take the 2004 rankings, for instance. Guess who was ranked the most liberal Senator in 2004.
Moreover, by the 1870s, British liberals had become quite aware that their previous understanding of economic freedom was a hollow joke, producing vast legions of downtrodden urban poor, and so they began seeking another way to think about freedom, closer to that which slaves have always understood-freedom as a gaining of power for those at the bottom, not to be dominated from above, but to be lifted up by collective support for one another: in short, the New Liberalism of Britain, which 60 years later arrived in America in the form of the New Deal.
I've been meaning to write about this for some time, and now I promised Paul I would, so here's a first installment on the topic. Understanding the transition liberals made from unfettered free market economics in the mid 1800s to the interventionist government model post New Deal is key to making sense of the ideological morass which humanity transitioned through in the past 400 years. I know opinions differ on this subject, and many on the left see a meaningful distinction between progressivism and liberalism, or between classic liberalism and modern social liberalism. I do not. They're all liberals, even though there can be notable policy distinctions between various groups of liberals, there is still only one liberalism, and it is the same liberalism as began (or at least took form) with John Locke in the late 1600s.
This is a daunting topic. When I first became politically aware in my late teens, and pondered what "liberal" and "conservative" meant beyond the trite caricature presented by the contemporary political parties or newspaper discourse, I discovered that no one of any academic merit had particularly good (or widely accepted) answers to this. For example, I have written of how Conservatives cannot define "conservativism." If better read and smarter people cannot reach concurrence, forgive my temerity in making a run at it too. Ideology is at the core of what drives politics and any improvement of our understanding of the topic is worthwhile. The confusion about the topic allows a lot of people who aren't liberals (like libertarians who call themselves "classic liberals") to be confused for them, and others who should be allies to create unnecessary distinctions and look at one another with distrust over what are differences not in core ethics, but technical mechanics. It is strange that we all generally able to spot liberal and conservative ideas intuitively yet seemingly no one can can agree on what these things are. We are left with too many definitions that rest on the specific policy preferences of the ideological groups at different points in history. Just as modern conservatives who love free trade are not really different from past conservatives who loved tariffs and mercantilism, today's liberals who want limitations on trade are not a different species from their Corn Law repealing bretherin of 1846.
The Progressive Platform we are building will be a sort of blueprint that we believe all progressives, especially candidates, should follow. It will be our beliefs as progressives, where we stand on various issues, and in many cases, what we believe needs to be done on those issues.
In the first post, the idea of creating a Progressive Platform was introduced. I had posted links to various political platforms, so everyone could get an idea of what we are trying to accomplish. Then you were asked to vote on what planks we should include in our platform.
This week we will briefly discuss planks for our platform.
In the past few months, there have been a lot of discussions in the media and on the blogs about what a progressive is. Many, especially in the media, are of the opinion that a progressive is the same thing as a liberal. But is that really the case? Chris Matthews considers himself a liberal. The DLC folks consider themselves liberal. Most Democrats consider themselves liberal. But are those folks progressive?
Is a progressive the exact same thing as a liberal? If not, what is a progressive? And better yet, what does a progressive, in this day and age, stand for?
These last questions are ones that we will be answering over the course of the next several months while we draft our Progressive Platform.
It has become increasingly (anecdotally) evident to me that "progressive" has supplanted "liberal" as the preferred ideological term of self identication among the US left. For quite some time it appeared as if the terms were purely interchangable, but my read on the trends now is that liberal is declining. For example, just last night I recently Anderson Cooper's program introduce Media Matters as the "progressive media watch dog group" and a WSJ article also applied the term to Netroots Nation. Both indicate the greater acceptance of the term such that established media use it without irony. In the hunt of some kind of empirical data, I tried a variety of comparative searches, and settled on the Daily Kos internal search engine, because it allows for accurate date ranges on searches, allowing me to examine the trend:
The X-axis represents the number of years back from July 2010 (when I ran the searches), so 1 = the last 12 months, 2 = the 12 months before that (Jul 2008-Jul 2009), 3 is the 2007-2008 period and so on to 6, which represents (counts fingers...) 2004-2005. The engine allows one to go back one more year, but I am omitting it because I'm not that confident about the 2003-2004 data for when the site was really just taking off. What's evident here is that at least among Daily Kos contributors, progressive passed liberal in popularity some time around early 2006. Last year, use of liberal actually declined in absolute terms.
An obvious (fair) objection is that Daily Kos is not the totality of the left. The sociological advantage of the site is the ongoing wide participation of a fairly broad audience of contemporary US left activists. I have put another chart inside which shows comparisons for some other sites I thought to search against, to provide some validation on the sample represented in Daily Kos (which I think it does since the Kos figures do not appear to be an outlier). One problem with general searches (say Google or Bing) is the difficulty of sorting out the number of non-political uses of terms like "progressive" and "conservative." Existing explicitly for politics, it's a safer bet that most uses of those terms on Daily Kos will be in their ideological context.
Update: As of 5:36 PM, $755 is in! We're almost there! Chris is continuing the updates in a thread above this one.
Update: Also, another cool metric: 48% of the 241 contributors giving an average of $41.83- or 116- are first-time contributors. That's almost half. Thanks so much!
Update: As of 3:58 PM, $345 has come in! If you've given, you can also post the ask to your friends and on Facebook/Twitter!
Update: As of 2:58 PM, $175 has come in. That's $350 with Debra's match! Every dollar you contribute will be doubled. Chip in!
As of 2:11 pm Eastern, we are at 225 contributors, with a goal of 400. Thanks to Debra for her generosity, and please chip in! -Adam
This is an adaptation of last spring's Match Appeal. This is for both Open Left and a group from my second home town, New York City known as Living Liberally which also has Drinking Liberally, Laughing Liberally, and Eating Liberally (also organically)
Actually the title should really read Make Me Match You. And just like last year when it was celebrating my daughter's marriage to a really great guy, she and he are going to be home owners soon which of course will hopefully bring me closer to fulfilling my new obsession, baby lust. I have stopped notincing good looking guys, my eyes are always dropping lower to espy whatever absolutely adorable toddler, baby, or child there is sauntering or wobbling or racing on the sidewalks of New York. Children remind us that there is a future that must be preserved, so that their gaiety and joy in every new thing can be justified.
I consider Open Left an investment in the future that I want for my daughter, her new husband and the grandchildren I (and they too, really I am not just a typical, nudgy mother!) am hoping for.
I think we all remember the 2008 Democratic primaries, that exciting and epic battle. In many ways the campaign caused more excitement than the general election, whose result was never really in doubt (especially after the financial crisis).
Both candidates drew upon distinctly different coalitions. In an influential article, Ronald Brownstein analyzes the difference this way:
Since the 1960s, Democratic nominating contests regularly have come down to a struggle between a candidate who draws support primarily from upscale, economically comfortable voters liberal on social and foreign policy issues, and a rival who relies mostly on downscale, financially strained voters drawn to populist economics and somewhat more conservative views on cultural and national security issues.
President Barack Obama assembled a coalition from the former, these "wine-track" Democrats. When most Americans think of liberals, they think of wine-track Democrats. Mr. Obama, then, was the liberal candidate; Mrs. Clinton the "beer-track," working-class representative.
So candidate won the most liberal place in America?
The answer below (or, alternatively, in the title).
Moreover, by the 1870s, British liberals had become quite aware that their previous understanding of economic freedom was a hollow joke, producing vast legions of downtrodden urban poor, and so they began seeking another way to think about freedom, closer to that which slaves have always understood-freedom as a gaining of power for those at the bottom, not to be dominated from above, but to be lifted up by collective support for one another: in short, the New Liberalism of Britain, which 60 years later arrived in America in the form of the New Deal.
I've been meaning to write about this for some time, and now I promised Paul I would, so here's a first installment on the topic. Understanding the transition liberals made from unfettered free market economics in the mid 1800s to the interventionist government model post New Deal is key to making sense of the ideological morass which humanity transitioned through in the past 400 years. I know opinions differ on this subject, and many on the left see a meaningful distinction between progressivism and liberalism, or between classic liberalism and modern social liberalism. I do not. They're all liberals, even though there can be notable policy distinctions between various groups of liberals, there is still only one liberalism, and it is the same liberalism as began (or at least took form) with John Locke in the late 1600s.
This is a daunting topic. When I first became politically aware in my late teens, and pondered what "liberal" and "conservative" meant beyond the trite caricature presented by the contemporary political parties or newspaper discourse, I discovered that no one of any academic merit had particularly good (or widely accepted) answers to this. For example, I have written of how Conservatives cannot define "conservativism." If better read and smarter people cannot reach concurrence, forgive my temerity in making a run at it too. Ideology is at the core of what drives politics and any improvement of our understanding of the topic is worthwhile. The confusion about the topic allows a lot of people who aren't liberals (like libertarians who call themselves "classic liberals") to be confused for them, and others who should be allies to create unnecessary distinctions and look at one another with distrust over what are differences not in core ethics, but technical mechanics. It is strange that we all generally able to spot liberal and conservative ideas intuitively yet seemingly no one can can agree on what these things are. We are left with too many definitions that rest on the specific policy preferences of the ideological groups at different points in history. Just as modern conservatives who love free trade are not really different from past conservatives who loved tariffs and mercantilism, today's liberals who want limitations on trade are not a different species from their Corn Law repealing bretherin of 1846.
As Chris Bowers and many others have argued, bringing real change to the lives of millions of Americans means that people on the left need to challenge incumbent Democrats in primary elections. Given that Barack Obama either fails or refuses to understand important changes in the preferences of American voters, people on the left should think about potential challengers for the 2012 Democratic nomination.
The last time an incumbent president faced a serious challenge was in 1980, when Ted Kennedy came quite close to defeating Jimmy Carter. Of course, victory is not the only goal in such campaigns; a major argument in favor of challenging Obama is forcing him to fight for a progressive agenda. Nevertheless, despite what people like Chris Matthews and Marc Ambinder say, disaffection among liberals represents the major reason for Obama's slide in the polls, and it's far from inconceivable that a credible candidate could defeat him and, by extension, someone from the far less popular field of potential Republican challengers.
No doubt, intelligent and informed observers of American presidential politics will point out that Kennedy contributed mightily to Carter's defeat in 1980. Certainly, any candidate would face massive and powerful backlash from the corporate wing of the Democratic Party and potentially rip the party as a whole apart, thereby delivering victory to what will surely be a weak Republican candidate.
Nevertheless, I tend to think of "Kennedy '80: Another Carter Layoff" as an idea that was ahead of its time. In many respects, Kennedy's campaign in 1980, like Jesse Jackson's far less successful efforts in 1984 and 1988, represented the New Deal wing of the Democratic Party reasserting itself in the wake of the party's lamentable decision to move to the right.
But unlike 1980, we are no longer waging a rearguard battle to defend a quickly disappearing status quo - we are fighting for the overwhelming majority of American people who say believe that government should play a big role in improving people's lives. The terrain upon which American elections are contested has shifted by every measurable standard. Parts of the south are no longer a lock for the GOP, and the Republican base in general is steadily diminishing and should continue to shrink for the foreseeable future. If Barack Obama is unwilling to take advantage of these structural changes, we must do it ourselves.
While the netroots is relatively small, it has helped to redefine the health care debate by forcing the president and the Democrats to argue far more vigorously on behalf a government-run plan than they would otherwise be inclined. Activists on the left can make their presence felt in ways that were unimaginable in 1980, and if Obama continues to sell out a real progressive agenda despite tremendous popular support, it will be our duty as citizens to find him a viable challenger who won't.
I would like for this to be a serious discussion (assuming this is a serious topic in 2009) and will conclude in an open-ended way by nominating Howard Dean as the most logical person for the job. I tend to think he was forced out of party leadership by the Obama-Clinton corporate neoliberal cabal, and has shown an increasing willingness to take on the administration in the health care debate.
Moreover, Dean does not have a conspicuous stake in wooing the corporate base of the party to guarantee his viability in future elections. In any event, Obama's administration has proven a major disappointment, from his team of economic advisors, his unwillingness to deliver on promises to the LGBT community, and now health care. We owe it to ourselves to fight for what we believe in using every tool available to us.
On Tuesday, President Obama announced Sonia Sotomayor as his pick to replace Supreme Court Justice David Souter. Sotomayor could be the first Latina appointed to the Supreme Court. Predictably, attacks and slurs from the Right are already flying. Regardless, Sotomayor would be an excellent choice for the Supreme Court, signaling to Latino/as that the White House is aware of our need for more representation in government.
Yesterday, Sonia Sotomayor became the first Latina and the third woman ever nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court. She is currently a federal judge on New York's 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. Born to Puerto Rican immigrant parents and raised by her mother in the housing projects of the South Bronx, Sotomayor went on to attend college at Princeton and law school at Yale. George H.W. Bush appointed her to the U.S. District Court in 1991 and Bill Clinton "promoted" her to the 2nd Circuit in 1998.
I started out fully agreeing with Rosenberg's recent posts, about inherent differences between Conservatives and Liberals.
But that agreement, and my first posts on the topic, occurred when I was half-awake last night. Today I have second thoughts, which I think we should all consider.
It is true that SOME Conservatives have a completely authoritarian mindset, and some are cynical and power-hungry predators. SOME of those may be that way, due a family tradition or culture that comes from the old landed aristocracy.
But, here is the problem. There are millions of Conservatives in America, and they have a range of traits. Some are further to the Right than others, and likewise each one will vary in the degree of authoritarian ideology, degree of cynicism, and so on.
I think that it would be "naive and dangerous" to believe that we can negotiate in good faith with men like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and others that are hopelessly far to the right. The only way of dealing with those far-right fanatics is to remove them from power (vote the politicians out of office, and bring down the approval ratings and audience size of far-right media figures).
But in the long run, we will be most successful if we can convert the Joe-the-Plumber types, and show them that our policies are best. And even if there are millions of Joe-the-Plumber types that have been brainwashed by the Right for so long that they will never see the truth, we can build a media machine to rival that of Limbaugh and Murdoch, so that the children of all the Joe-the-Plumber types will embrace Progressive politics.
If each of us begins to belive that every Republican is actually a ruthless Fascist, we will lose the ability to reach out to, and recruit, Joe-the-Plumbers. And likewise, when we talk about Republicans and Conservatives, we will speak about them in terms of stereotypes.
I will be a lifelong, die-hard opponent of Social Darwinsim and of theocracy. But even though I need to recognize that many of my opponents may be ruthless and cynical liars, I will constantly remind myself not to take a "guilty until proven innocent" view of my conservative opponents.
Over the weekend, Mark Leibovich had an interesting an entertaining piece in the Times on how "socialism" has become the Republicans' new all-purpose smear word attacking Obama in particular and Democrats generally.
Now, you can have a whole conversation about whether ramping marginal tax rates back to where they were in the go-go 1990s really constitutes socialism. But a different point occurred to me when I read the piece. I think this is probably the best evidence there is that the 'liberal' label simply doesn't have the punch that it had going back a good thirty years in American politics.
If it did, they'd still be using it, since it at least has some relationship to reality. But it doesn't, so they're not.
This is an astute observation in the form of noting Holmes' "dogs that do not bark." It appears conservatives have used up all the residual antipathy toward the liberal label. There is polling we can piece together to back up Josh's shrewd guess:
In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert -- a favorite columnist of Living Liberally -- laments:
Liberals have been so cowed by the pummeling they've taken from the right that they've tried to shed their own identity, calling themselves everything but liberal and hoping to pass conservative muster by presenting themselves as hyper-religious and lifelong lovers of rifles, handguns, whatever.
He goes on to articulate the proud liberal legacy in America: civil rights and women's rights, environmental protection and food safety, Social Security and Medicare, concluding:
Without the many great and noble deeds of liberals over the past six or seven decades, America would hardly be recognizable to today's young people.
Every Fourth of July, we liberals are tasked by the need to prove that you can be both liberal and patriotic. We argue that our dissent, our protest, our standing up for what is right when the government is wrong, makes us patriotic. They argue that if we don't subscribe to the ruling party's platform 100%, we're not patriotic.
So what's a liberal to do? March in the parade? Watch fireworks? Stay home?
Turns out that our own Idaho Falls DL chapter has the answer to this progressive puzzle.
On July 4th, a dozen Idaho Falls liberal drinkers and some of their families entered a float in the local July 4th "Spirit of Freedom" parade. Of course a Drinking Liberally would call a float in such a parade "Free Spirits of Freedom." But they add, "It's about thinking, not drinking."
Standing in front of a portable bar, the crew tossed about 40 pounds of root beer flavored candy to the crowd and mounted a "Stop War" sign to the front of their patriotic vessel.
In this way, the Idaho Falls DL expressed their liberal views loud and proud and managed to join in and celebrate with the rest of their community, some liberal, some conservative but all American.
Sounds like a great to celebrate July 4th. One that's liberal, patriotic, and most importantly: Awesome!
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