Smart Liberals, Foolish Choices, Part I

Liberals are smart folks. So why do they keep making such bad political choices?

Liberals, by their own testimony, are smart folks: sometimes the most broadly educated, widely read, erudite folks in the room. And over the past two centuries the left had made a tremendous amount of political progress, much of it a source of great good for humanity.

So why is it that they can't win elections in this country anymore? Why did they just lose, even temporarily, elections in Canada? Why are they finding it so hard to bring the common man, supposedly their raison d'être, around to their point of view?

I think there are a lot of reasons, and the primary one is not the one that most prominent liberals keep pointing to: they think they aren't forceful enough. They don't think they fight conservatives and Republicans hard enough. They don't think they are tough or nasty enough when, oddly, that seems to me to be the one thing they've got in spades.
The examples are plentiful. Before the 2004 elections, a site dedicated to "tough liberalism", http://gadflyer.com/flytrap/index.php?Week=200603was founded. It's really a blog/online magazine with a different article every week, but the link I point you to above is a great example of their tough liberalism. "Anti-choice" is too "soft", the author says. So how does tough liberal Joshua Holland see conservative, right-to-lifers?

They call us baby-killers and blood-thirsty perpetrators of infanticide. They harass women trying to get a safe, legal medical procedure with horrific insults. They display disgusting photographs of mangled fetuses - the result of emergency, late-term abortions. They blow up clinics and shoot doctors in the head while they're eating breakfast with their families.

Wow, that's some great spine he's showing. Yeah, I'm definitely thinking the problem with the Democrats is that they don't spend enough time talking about how pro-life folks shoot doctors in the head.

And "emergency, late-term abortions" my ass. Unless the emergency is second-thoughts about the cost of day care, or an unexpected break-up with boyfriend or spouse, you could count the real need for emergency, late-term abortions on one hand. If honest appraisals of the issues can't go with that "tough-minded" liberalism, they are going to continue to have problem.

So, what about evangelical Christians? "It's a Christo-fascist death-cult." And what sort of change to the language does he want to make?

It's high time we get off the defensive and start getting tough with these people. So I'm not pro-choice anymore. I'm pro-sanity and anti-fucktard.

Oh, yeah. That's the ticket.

Helen Thomas covers the issue, too. Here we go:

On the domestic side, the Democrats should put on a well-lighted marquee the fact that the Republican-controlled Congress plans to save $50 billion over five years by cutting food stamps and student loans, by slapping new fees on Medicaid recipients and reducing child support enforcement.

So much for compassionate conservatism.

Ah, yes. Only one definition of compassion for the left: wealth redistribution. But, honestly: haven't the democrats touched on these issues? Haven't they come out strong against Bush? Does anyone think the Democrats support the War in Iraq, or NSA spying? Does anyone think they want conservatives on the court? I don't watch the news that much and I've heard Democratic party leaders talk about the "Republican culture of corruption" dozens of times. I've heard the Iraq is a mistake and the Bush lied hundreds, if not thousands, of times. The problem is not that the message isn't getting out: the problem is that the message is not sufficient. It either needs to be something else, or something more.

So, I think we can safely say that what the Democrats think their problem is, it is not.

So, what is it?

I think the first problem is, they are smart, and they know it. So smart that it's unthinkable that any of the positions they may embrace might be wrong, or that they might actually lose in a "fair" election. So smart that the only possible reasons that they aren't in power are because (a) the other side cheats or (b) their message isn't getting out. Such a lack of sobriety when it comes to self-appraisal is going to make future electoral victories difficult, and completely a product of how poorly their opponents perform, relative to them. When they cannot accurately assess themselves and their positions, or their opponents, they are left with no choice but to lose elections, and in the marketplace of ideas, unless those they are competing against royally screw up. And that's not a basis for lasting political and cultural success.

When you can't honestly assess the problem, you can't come up with an actual solution. While Fox News and talk radio have hurt the left, and the Democrats, tremendously, the problem is not that they somehow magically have more influence, or reach more people, than more liberal news media and opinion. Thus, attempts to reinstitute the Fairness Doctrine or otherwise curtail the New Media are wrong-headed and self-defeating. Equally, attempts to create a New New Media--with the same old stuff that's available in the old liberal media is also not an answer, but a "solution" enthusiastically pursued by the left. With obviously mixed results: as Air America's ratings might indicate (no ratings info is available, even in opinion form, for Current TV, which sounds a lot more promising and open, when it comes down to it, than Air America ever did . . . but, even if it's wildly popular, Current TV won't teach anybody anything about liberal positions and opinions we didn't already know, which was not the case with talk radio, Fox News, and conservative blogs). With such cultural saturation of the liberal viewpoint, the problem is not that people don't have an idea of what Democrats stand for or the problems and solutions as liberals see them--the problem is, they do.

Tom Cosgrove has some good ideas, but I don't expect it to filter up the Democratic leadership (or, in fact, many of the writers at AlterNet, where his missive was posted).

Among a few other nuggets of wisdom, Cosgrove writes:

Americans may know what group we stand against -- Republicans -- but they do not know what ideas we have for change or what principles and moral values we share as a party.

That's only one of their problems, but it's a big one. That's one place where "the message isn't getting out"--because they don't really have one. Complaining about tax cuts for the rich should never even come up, because most of the people they need to convince to vote for them don't see life as a zero sum game, and they don't see wealth redistribution by the government as the secret to their future success. Advocating research, education funding, government-sponsored job training, head start programs, and that sort of thing--that can really work for them. Higher pay for men and women in the military--that could be a great platform plank. Rolling back taxes on Social Security checks--wouldn't that rock?

Fighting to repeal tax cuts that have apparently improved the economy, and certainly put more money in the voters' pockets, and haven't impeded the government's ability to spend, since tax revenues are up, not down, since the tax cuts took effect. That's not really Cosgrove's take on the details, but we certainly do agree on the central point: that just being against Republicans is not a winning campaign strategy. In fact, just being against things, period, is not a winning strategy.