Liberals

Highway Robbery and the Progressive Future

Zach Carter — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 09:27:33 -0500

Kevin Drum gives a pretty thorough analysis of President Obama’s open assault on the mainstream Democratic Party at yesterday’s press conference, and declares that “programmatic liberalism is dead.” I think that’s more than a little exaggerated, but regardless, it’s not a fair description of the policies at stake in Obama’s lousy tax deal. The tax deal is fundamentally about whether the United States still believes it has a basic commitment to protect its most vulnerable citizens from harm. For so basic an intuition to be the subject of political negotiation should be abhorrent to anybody of any ideological stripe in today’s United States. The deal is not a signal of strength or weakness on the left or the right, it is a symbol of rank political cynicism.

Protecting the most vulnerable members of society is not a liberal idea. It is the basic moral intuition of every philosophical and religious tradition but two: cruel interpretations of Friederich Nietzsche, and a brand of libertarianism far more radical than anything in contemporary American politics. Republicans were threatening to cut off unemployment benefits and a poverty tax credit for families with children. Let me emphasize: poverty relief for children.

These policies should never, ever be the subject of political negotiation. Obama could have raised a fuss, he could have publicly shamed his adversaries for threatening a basic moral building block of a decent society. Instead, he offered absurd giveaways to the rich that have not only been the ire of “the professional left,” but of the mainstream Democratic Party for almost a decade. Nearly every Democrat in Congress is now wondering if a primary challenge will be the result of support for this deal. And Obama now has the gall to chastise “the left” for being outraged.

A decent society takes care of its poor. Committing to conservative political thinking does not require one to believe that the poor should suffer for no reason. The number of poor families in the United States has gone up dramatically during the worst recession since the Great Depression, just as the number of unemployed parents has skyrocketed. These problems are caused by major structural economic problems, not by laziness or recklessness on the part of families (and even if it were only the result of laziness or recklessness, a decent society would not take that out on the children of the lazy and reckless). Amid mass poverty, any policymaker should support poverty relief.

This is a moral intuition even more fundamental than the commitment to equality of opportunity—the root belief that a decent society does not let its members endure extreme suffering needlessly. It is not egalitarian, it is not Marxist, it is not socialist, it is not liberal. It is just something a decent society does. It can be described with economic language, but it is not fundamentally an economic problem, unless short-term poverty relief somehow results in total economic calamity. Needless to say, the United States faces no such crisis from aiding its poor.

But Obama did not make this case. He didn’t even try. He entered a room with Republican leaders, and returned to declare they had been given everything they wanted.

Shortly before the deal was announced, Gretchen Morgenson and Louise Story of The New York Times ran a numbers on how the Bush tax cuts affect Wall Street bonuses. For every $1 million in bonus payouts, they calculated, the Bush tax cuts allow Wall Streeters keep an additional $40,000 to $50,000 in income.

The price Republicans demanded for allowing the United States to participate in the basic moral foundation of every decent society the world over was $40,000 for every $1 million in Wall Street bonuses. That should be appalling to liberals and conservatives alike, and a President who does not go to the mat to shame his opponents under such circumstances is bound to lose respect among his followers.

Via a link to a prior post, Kevin defines “programmatic liberalism” as the Progressive Era of 1911 – 1919, the New Deal of the 1930s, and the 1960s. All of these involved significant restructurings of the United States government and its institutions. This is not the sort of thing under discussion in the tax debate. Not even close.

“Should the poor be sustained?” Is a much different question than, “Is it the proper jurisdiction of government to regulate X given recent events?” All kinds of ideological issues can play into regulatory questions. But for quite literally centuries, there has been a broad moral consensus about the right of the poor to live (this glosses over racism and sexism, of course). The “professional left” is not demanding new institutions or government functions. It’s demanding that our society actually be a society.

And so Obama’s assault on what he called “purist” and “sanctimonious” left cannot be viewed as anything but outrageous. MoveOn and DailyKos and FireDogLake are not actually demanding leftist positions on tax policy—their opponents are threatening outright brutality, and the President of the United States is not seriously challenging those threats. Obama’s willingness to capitulate does reveal the man’s fundamental human compassion—but it also portends serious dangers. The next major negotiation, as Matt Yglesias and Mike Konczal have emphasized, will be over raising the federal debt ceiling. If it is not raised, the United States will have no choice but to default on its debt, and the global economy will collapse. If Obama is willing to throw up the Bush tax cuts to preserve the basic moral foundation of society, then he will certainly offer anything to prevent mere economic Armageddon. With this deal, the President has signaled that whenever a difficult choice arrives, he will roll over.

Here’s a leftist tax position: restore tax rates on millionaires to Johnson-era levels of 90 percent, and use that money to guarantee free college education for the children of families earning less than $50,000 a year. Nobody on the “professional left” is demanding that right now. We’re demanding that the basic functioning of society not be ransomed away in the name of bigger bonuses, and that negotiations over economic and tax policy not allow the most vulnerable members of society to be used as bargaining chips.

So perhaps this is what Kevin means. Now that a Democratic president is willing to cave on negotiations about the moral foundation of society, liberals cannot hope for serious economic progress for several decades. I see things otherwise. Two years ago, pundits were forecasting the end of conservatism as it has been practiced for 30 years. “Liberal” thought is not dead. Our president is simply ineffective.

Progressives and Liberals, Movements and Political Parties - Part 3

Michael Kwiatkowski — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 18:22:23 -0400

Today I wrap up my series on Progressives and Liberals, Movements and Political Parties. In the first entry of the series, I explained what I think distinguishes progressives from modern American liberals, and the distinction to be made between a movement and the political party (or parties) through which it acts. In the second, I went into some detail on short and long term strategies, how we can use strategic campaigning to influence more Democratic candidates to run leftward, progressive campaigns.

(Note— I'm going to touch briefly upon the basics of bringing the Progressive Party to all fifty states. I'll keep this as short as possible, for two reasons: site rules against promoting political parties and candidates; and because there's only so much I can relate to you, the reader—beyond a certain point you simply have to seize the initiative and start putting things in motion.)

Before I begin in earnest, I must point out that when I write about bringing the Progressive Party to all fifty states I mean we establish presences at the local level. The reason for this is one of practicality: you cannot hope to achieve tangible, lasting results by trying to build from the top down; the only way to build any structure is from the bottom up. An example of why this is important is the Green Party—members have tried to go national before they had solid state-level presences and infrastructures throughout the country, and a very damaging consequences has been that it has incurred the wrath of Democrats for the 2000 electoral disaster (unfairly, to be sure, but nevertheless Greens are held responsible). Trying to win a national-level campaign without first building the local and state infrastructures required is political suicide, not to mention foolish.

So the first step is to begin at the local level. Seek out and establish contact with like-minded progressives, and start holding meetings. First figure out if this is something you really want to devote your time and energy to, because if no chapter exists in your state you'll be starting from scratch, and there is a certain level of commitment necessary to build a political party from the ground up. Once you've decided that you all are set on doing this, it's time to establish a platform on which to run (for an example, see the aforementioned first entry in this series).

After that phase has been completed, you'll need to both create a working set of party bylaws for your state or municipality and expand your network to other, like-minded progressives. As you grow in number, those bylaws are going to come in handy since no political party can function without the organizational structure. You'll also want to make clear what your short and long term objectives are. As I wrote in the second entry of this series, you'll want to focus on finding and running candidates in areas where Democrats don't run, or where the Democrat is a corporate-conservative. Your best bet, of course, is to pick the former over the latter unless circumstances dictate otherwise. Why? Because the overall goal for the time being is to decrease the numbers of the GOP in political office, and influence the Democrats to shift leftward. Use your own judgment, however, as to how best to achieve this goal.

Finally, you need to find candidates. Running for political office is not for everyone. I don't write this to knock everyone, but again, there is a certain level of commitment required and many people simply do not have the time, energy, or passion for politics. So finding someone who lives and breathes politics is vital. Once you find someone willing to take on this monumental task of running a political campaign, you need to raise money. Election laws are set up to eliminate people who can't raise a set amount of funds. Speaking for myself, I think that blows, but there is a certain pragmatism to it; if you can't convince a hundred people to donate fifty dollars, how do you expect to convince a thousand, or ten thousand?

That's about all I can tell you here—I've probably already treaded dangerously close to violating the site's guidelines as it is. If you'd like to continue this discussion, please feel free to visit my discussion forum, sign up, and then sign in as a Liberal. Once that's done, we can work together on furthering this discussion.

Progressives and Liberals, Movements and Political Parties - Part 2

Michael Kwiatkowski — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:52:56 -0400

In my previous entry I laid out the differences between liberals and progressives, movements and political parties. For those of you who haven't time to read through it, a brief recap: Liberals believe in socio-economic justice, whereas progressives believe the same thing but also in taking it to the next step—using government as a powerful tool with which to achieve it by making Big Business behave. The Progressive Movement, much like movement conservatism, has a definite set of goals, and the Progressive Party is the political force through which we can reach them.

Today I'm going to touch upon short and long term strategies. As I pointed out in my last entry, the Progressive Party exists in a handful of states including Vermont and Washington. These chapters have made noticeable headway in the last five years. In the Green Mountain State, six Progressives have been elected to the legislature, and this year the party is running what is shaping up to be a viable gubernatorial campaign in absence of a Democratic candidate (for more information, see the Wikipedia entry). Meanwhile, Washington's chapter is making headway at the local level.

Both of these chapters have formed within the last ten years—Vermont in 1999, and Washington in 2003. Given these results, it isn't so difficult to believe that the same cannot be accomplished throughout all fifty states. But why do this?

There are short and long term reasons. In the long term, of course, the purpose is to eventually give rise to a political party around which the Progressive Movement must eventually rally. With the Democrats increasingly beholden to corporate interests (having been preceded by the Republicans), disorganized at the national level, and broken as an opposition movement to conservatism, efforts to reform it from within are unlikely to succeed because of the monetary infrastructure that keeps the leadership "safely" away from heeding the voices of the progressive base.

While this does not mean we should give up trying to restore the party to its New Deal-era roots, we must alter our strategy for the short term. If Democrats insist upon running corporate-conservative candidates (I refuse to call them centrists, because I don't believe a consistent political center exists), and reneging on promises such as ending the occupation of Iraq, drastic measures must be taken. This means building up a viable third political party.

The purpose of this in the short term, I should point out, is not to try to compete with two large and very well-funded major parties. Sun Tzu admonishes the wise commander to avoid fighting multi-front wars, and it would be political suicide to attempt to compete with both of them. Instead, progressives should follow the Vermont and Washington strategies of running against Republicans and corporate-conservative Democrats (CCDs for short), and offering support to Progressive Democrats and independents.

A large enough bloc of Progressive votes may move CCDs to adopt progressive platform positions during elections, and continued pressure in between cycles can keep them there. Consider the examples of CCDs Al Wynn of Maryland, and Leonard Boswell of Iowa. Wynn had been forced to move to the political left following a 2006 primary challenge from Donna Edwards. But even then, he had not moved far enough to suit the needs of his constituents. This year Edwards soundly defeated him in the Maryland-4th primary. This put the fear of electoral ruin into Boswell, who pretends to represent Iowa's 3rd District, so much so that he signed onto impeachment efforts against Dick Cheney.

Running Progressive candidates, therefore, can serve to help bring Democrats in line as a genuine opposition party to the GOP. In states and districts such as California's 8th, where Democrat Shirley Golub is running to unseat Nancy Pelosi in the primary, efforts may be a little trickier because of the independent run of Cindy Sheehan. But it's still worth trying. The point isn't necessarily to win against Pelosi, though given her performance of the past year and four months, a victory would be nice. The point is to send a message to the incumbent that cowardice and complicity in the face of Bush-Cheney crimes will not be tolerated.

Many would argue that such a strategy would only serve to hand victory to Republicans, but this thinking is flawed for the simple reason that history does not support it; John Kerry ran a granny campaign in 2004, not daring to appear liberal, and Al Gore in 2000 ran such an indistinguishable campaign for president in 2000 that he failed to muster enough votes even to win his own state of Tennessee. Both of these Democrats ran to the political right, out of fear of offending the mythical center, only to end up in tight races in which George W. Bush was able to steal victory through electoral fraud. Similarly, as blogger David Swanson points out, Barack Obama this year appears to be making the same mistake—with the result that once again a Republican will manage to steal a victory out of a close contest.

It doesn't have to be this way. Since voting for the "lesser" of two evils hasn't achieved results, the only real solution then is to embrace the a strategy that has. And there is cause for optimism in thinking a Progressive challenge to the senator from Illinois (such as that mounted by Ralph Nader) might get him to listen and take heed. In 2003, Black Agenda Report applied pressure to Obama to restore the text of his supposedly anti-war speech from 2002 on this senatorial campaign web site. And in the recent dust-up over the apparent purge of anti-war delegates in California, pressure from outraged supporters led to their reinstatement a day later. Making Obama run to the political left would ensure a wider margin of victory, such that McCain's vote-fraud machine could not credibly claim to have won the election.

By creating a political party through which the Progressive Movement may reach its desired goals, and by running strategic campaigns against targeted politicians, elected officials from the major political parties can be brought to account. It's a matter of creating and implementing effective strategies and tactics.