CONTINUED FROM PART 1!
3) Sure, Democrats suck, but the only way to change anything is to Work Within the System. I give this argument more credibility because it is trying to present an actual strategy, something lesser-evilists and apologists often don't do, and because it's frequently made by people I believe have a sincere commitment to progressive politics, i.e., not just people who want to lord their Seriousness over undergraduate hippies with their Chomsky and Zinn readers. For a good variation, see this Jacobin article just published today.
It goes like this: The Left should attempt to take over the Democratic Party by emulating the New Right takeover of the Republican Party (and the Tea Party more recently). Try to insert your own people into Democratic party organizations at a local level, win local offices and work your way up through the national party organization. Meanwhile, try to put forward more progressive candidates for national offices in primaries to knock out terrible right-wing Dems and, even if you fail, discipline the eventual nominee by reminding him/her that the base is restless. .
I see two main flaws with this approach:
A) Where does the money come from? If you want to imitate the New Right, you have to come to grips with how to match the bottomless well of money it has been able to draw on for the past thirty years. Various church organizations, the Club for Growth, Americans for Prosperity, various local chambers of commerce, all have massive organizing and/or capital resources to back religious and free-market fundamentalists at all levels of government. By definition, a grassroots movement of the left is going to be organizing people who haven't got money, and, if it has any teeth at all, it isn't going to be a favorite of people who have. And running campaigns takes money, money that can't now be used for anything else.
This is not a complex equation: Political power rests in the right of both parties because that is where the funding is. And American political parties are, first and foremost, fundraising organizations.
But what about unions, MoveOn.org, environmentalist groups, or other members of the Organizational Left? Won't they step up to back a serious Work from Within movement? Well...
...B) Work from Within is basically incompatible with Lesser-Evilism. I hate to plagiarize arguments when I don't remember the source, but I recently came across an interesting theory as to why the popular media assigns the red-blue colors to the parties the way they do, when a global-historical shorthand would suggest the alignment should be the inverse. The argument was that Republicans are red because they are the "revolutionary" party in American politics, and the Democrats are the conservatives. I don't know if the observations regarding the colors is correct, but I think the assessment of the parties' roles in the system is.
Democratic partisans in the current climate have found themselves almost exclusively on the defensive, trying to protect the gains made from 1932-68. Lesser-evilism is the tactical manifestation of this. The Republicans are simply too bad, they say, to ever allow them to win an election. Our man's record is not so important, the main purpose is to prevent the Romney Revolution from happening.
What does this mean for the work-from-within strategy? Well, if you are going to run a primary campaign against, say, a bad senator, you are running a certain risk that, while you may have sent a message to the Democrats' right wing that you aren't to be trifled with, you may lose the general election. And the core tenant of Lesser-Evil Liberalism is that you can never lose. Ever. Because the Republicans are Just That Bad. This is why Democrats obsess over "electability" in primary campaigns (with electability being a nebulous concept largely defined by "who the party establishment funders will get behind") and run headlong into the arms of bland losers like John Kerry. The first Sharron Angle-type figure to come along and beat, say, Dianne Feinstein, and lose a general election will get the full Nader treatment, and that will be the end of your precious work-from-within strategy, hippie. I bet you wanted abortion to be illegal.
During its rise the New Right and its offshoots have shown the willingness to lose elections to maintain its ideological grip on the Republican Party. Lesser-Evil Liberals reject this possibility out of hand. This is why, when Goldwater lost, we got Reagan and the Bushes; when McGovern lost, we got Carter, Clinton, and Obama.
As I've written before in this space, I'm not hard-wired against voting for a "lesser-evil" as a tactical defense against a much more dangerous alternative. But those advocating for this tactic should have a long-term strategy for political action, both inside and outside the electoral arena. To their credit, the sincere work-from-within folks attempt to do this. (There's also an insincere type of this argument which isn't serious but gets thrown out there as a way to make hippies go away.) But they are barred, perhaps even without their knowledge, by the long-term lesser-evilists who have been making the same desperate pleas/threats toward the left for every election of my adulthood, and will no doubt continue to do so in 2016 in defense of Andrew Cuomo or whatever other corporate mannequin the Democratic funders decide is "electable" against the undying Republican hordes.
05 November 2012
30 October 2012
The Left left behind and other observations
Election season is nearing crunch time, and, though Obama continues to be a solid favorite (the electoral map in particular favors him), his hold on the race has slipped slightly in the past few weeks, which means liberals are starting to fear the man haunting their nightmares. No, not Mitt Romney, Ralph Nader. No, the old man's not running again this year, but his ghost still gnaws on the minds of Democratic partisans as the race tightens, reminding them of who the real enemy is; Privileged Progressives who have the nerve to not vote for someone whose political views they don't agree with! Since this is on everyone's mind and no one cares what I think, I decided to put together some semi-scattered thoughts about left political strategy and tactics and the upcoming election (and electoral politics in general).
Before that, some caveats. First, despite the preening, it really doesn't matter who you vote for in the presidential election unless you live in Ohio or Florida. Other states are either a foregone conclusion or too small to make a difference. This is our great liberal democracy in action. I'm not going to complain one way or the other about who you do or don't vote for, because it's essentially irrelevant to anything but your own conscience.
Second, I am skeptical about third party presidential runs. Yes, it's absurd that the two-party cartel blocks access to debates and that their media mouthpieces shut any out voices not on a simple red vs. blue axis, but even in a perfect world where a third-party candidate could win, he/she could likely achieve next to nothing. The duopoly in Congress and the Washington bureaucracy would unite to make governing impossible and ensure that no such challenge could happen again. A third party would have to be built from the ground up, and I'm not bullish on that happening. Some of the reasons are the same as ones I'll elaborate on when I talk about "work within the party" types a bit later. But also the way American political institutions are set up makes it difficult to break up the duopoly. First-past-the-post elections, Congressional committee chairmanships, and so on. Remember, folks, the Constitution is a very conservative document; it is designed to protect elite power from the mood swings of the public. The last time we had a new party in American politics that had any mass impact there was a civil war a few years later. That should tell you something.
Third, as I've written before, I'm not wholly opposed to "lesser evil" voting. There are times when it might be the tactically necessary thing to do. If people really believe that they most vote for a "lesser-evil" because of their conscience, I'm not going to strenuously disagree with them. See point #1.
Fourth, unfortunately, I don't agree with some of my fellow travelers that a Romney win would buck up the left and cause them to become vigilant about things they used to think were monstrosities under Bush but now handwave away when Obama does them. Doug Henwood's article in The Nation makes a lot of sense and I agree with most everything in it. While we might wish it were otherwise, a Romney administration would just send us back to the Bush years on the left; the party rolls over and plays dead while the Republicans run through them and the rank and file pines for the next Democratic Savior. If you want a backhanded endorsement of Obama, it's that his reign has disabused many young progressives of the notion that the Democratic Party is looking out for their values.
With that very lengthy prologue out of the way, let's take a look at a couple pressing issues of electoral tactics and strategy facing the left.
1) A Romney Administration would be uniquely catastrophic. Back in 2008, the Democrats won a crushing victory. They completely dominated government in a way no party had in decades. The Republicans were so lost and defeated that some wondered whether they could continue to exist at all. What was the great result of this tremendous mandate for progressive government coming at the very moment in history when conservative foreign and domestic policy ideas had been thoroughly discredited? Half-assed financial and health insurance "reform" (the latter adopted from former Republican ideas*), a too-small stimulus bill weighed down with garbage, a continuation and actual expansion of Bush-era surveillance state and imperial intervention policy, all garnished with a repeatedly-demonstrated ability to lose negotiations to a fencepost. And I guess something about gays in the military which, in a time of worldwide political upheaval, widespread economic desolation, and looming ecological ruin, is the most pressing issue the left faces today. It ended, of course, with a huge defeat in the 2010 midterms, for which petulant hippies were to blame (but more on them later).
Now, however, many people are convinced that a Romney win would mean instant power to bring about the reactionary revolution. Why do people believe that close win with a split Congress means a massive mandate when the result of the 2008 election achieved so little for the other side, and what does this say about their opinion of their own party? Furthermore, these folks have spent much of the last four years trying to calm unruly hippies dissatisfied with the administration's lack of progress by admonishing them that the office of the presidency has little real power. How they work out that Romney will, upon ascending to the high office, cover the land in a second darkness using the dictatorial powers Obama doesn't have has not, I suspect, been completely thought out.
To buttress this argument, some claim that Romney's moderate record as governor of Massachusetts is a facade, and, now that he has been liberated from managing a liberal state, his true extreme-right self is bursting through. Maybe, or maybe not. Romney, as best I can tell, has two political goals: He really, really wants to be president, and when he gets to be president, he wants to enrich his plutocrat friends. Well, on the latter point I suspect he won't get much resistance from the Democrats. Beyond the second goal, Romney has a proven willingness to say and believe anything he needs to achieve the first. He's Nixon with better hair and less jowl. I don't see him doing much to override resistance on culture war issues. Of which...
2) Only Privileged White Males won't vote for Obama: We certainly know that anyone who can't vote for Obama endorses Romney and wants him to win. And they'll stand by ironically while Romney's goons round up America's women and put them in binders. This argument claims that the less fortunate are all loyal Obama supporters, and you'd do well to join them or you're complicit in their oppression.
Though not exclusively, this argument usually centers on the Supreme Court, and the idea that Romney will be able to appoint Supreme Court justices who will immediately overturn Roe v. Wade. I'm far from knowledgeable enough on SCOTUS procedures to know how likely it is that the court could just take a case with the established goal of inverting precedent. But, let's say we are faced with a SCOTUS nomination that would mean the end of legal abortion. What would the Democratic Party, the great champion of reproductive freedom, do? Would they meekly stand aside and watch? A further point, while contemporary SCOTUS judges are certainly partisan hacks, they aren't stupid partisan hacks. They aren't going to touch an inflammatory issue that's going to bite their party at the polls. Reproductive freedom battles will continue to be mostly contested at the state level, in Republican friendly territory, as we've seen clearly in the last year.
This accusation is usually leveled at Glenn Greenwald and the like who primarily write about surveillance state issues and the war machine. Because these apparently things that only affect White Men, except that, well, what? The surveillance state almost exclusively targets Muslims. Certainly Obama isn't bombing many white people in Asia and Africa. We know all about the drug war and prison industrial complex and its calamitous affect on African-Americans. And the effects of climate change will of course overwhelmingly fall on the poor around the world. Where is the Democratic Party on these issues? The secret of the "privilege" argument is that most people making it enjoy bourgeois-liberal class privilege themselves; they're not the ones facing down the American police state. Their notion of "privilege" is deliberately constructed to exclude anything that might include them.
Two final thoughts before I leave this section. For all their lecturing about the comfortable privileged non-voters or third-party voters who are helping Romney win, these liberals ignore the great mass of non-voters (about half the eligible voting population in any given election) among whom the poor and people of color are over-represented. I do wish that these very concerned folks would take their hectoring to said non-voters and give them the "helping Romney win" spiel, preferably as self-righteously as possible. Furthermore, if you do believe that only straight white dudes are Obama skeptics, I encourage you to check out Falguni Sheth, Black Agenda Report, or This is So Gay.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO!
*Liberals really, really hate you pointing out to them that Obamacare was a Heritage Foundation-designed alternative to a pubic healthcare system adopted by Republicans, Mitt Romney most famously, in the 1990s. They will claim it's unfair because Republicans never intended to actually pass it (again, Mitt Romney?). That may well be true, but it doesn't do much for them. The point is that, when Barack Obama moved right to co-opt them, Republicans just shifted to the status quo they always favored. At least the public conversation was once such that the right had to come up with some alternative, however insincere. Thanks to your contemporary Democratic party, that's no longer the case.
Before that, some caveats. First, despite the preening, it really doesn't matter who you vote for in the presidential election unless you live in Ohio or Florida. Other states are either a foregone conclusion or too small to make a difference. This is our great liberal democracy in action. I'm not going to complain one way or the other about who you do or don't vote for, because it's essentially irrelevant to anything but your own conscience.
Second, I am skeptical about third party presidential runs. Yes, it's absurd that the two-party cartel blocks access to debates and that their media mouthpieces shut any out voices not on a simple red vs. blue axis, but even in a perfect world where a third-party candidate could win, he/she could likely achieve next to nothing. The duopoly in Congress and the Washington bureaucracy would unite to make governing impossible and ensure that no such challenge could happen again. A third party would have to be built from the ground up, and I'm not bullish on that happening. Some of the reasons are the same as ones I'll elaborate on when I talk about "work within the party" types a bit later. But also the way American political institutions are set up makes it difficult to break up the duopoly. First-past-the-post elections, Congressional committee chairmanships, and so on. Remember, folks, the Constitution is a very conservative document; it is designed to protect elite power from the mood swings of the public. The last time we had a new party in American politics that had any mass impact there was a civil war a few years later. That should tell you something.
Third, as I've written before, I'm not wholly opposed to "lesser evil" voting. There are times when it might be the tactically necessary thing to do. If people really believe that they most vote for a "lesser-evil" because of their conscience, I'm not going to strenuously disagree with them. See point #1.
Fourth, unfortunately, I don't agree with some of my fellow travelers that a Romney win would buck up the left and cause them to become vigilant about things they used to think were monstrosities under Bush but now handwave away when Obama does them. Doug Henwood's article in The Nation makes a lot of sense and I agree with most everything in it. While we might wish it were otherwise, a Romney administration would just send us back to the Bush years on the left; the party rolls over and plays dead while the Republicans run through them and the rank and file pines for the next Democratic Savior. If you want a backhanded endorsement of Obama, it's that his reign has disabused many young progressives of the notion that the Democratic Party is looking out for their values.
With that very lengthy prologue out of the way, let's take a look at a couple pressing issues of electoral tactics and strategy facing the left.
1) A Romney Administration would be uniquely catastrophic. Back in 2008, the Democrats won a crushing victory. They completely dominated government in a way no party had in decades. The Republicans were so lost and defeated that some wondered whether they could continue to exist at all. What was the great result of this tremendous mandate for progressive government coming at the very moment in history when conservative foreign and domestic policy ideas had been thoroughly discredited? Half-assed financial and health insurance "reform" (the latter adopted from former Republican ideas*), a too-small stimulus bill weighed down with garbage, a continuation and actual expansion of Bush-era surveillance state and imperial intervention policy, all garnished with a repeatedly-demonstrated ability to lose negotiations to a fencepost. And I guess something about gays in the military which, in a time of worldwide political upheaval, widespread economic desolation, and looming ecological ruin, is the most pressing issue the left faces today. It ended, of course, with a huge defeat in the 2010 midterms, for which petulant hippies were to blame (but more on them later).
Now, however, many people are convinced that a Romney win would mean instant power to bring about the reactionary revolution. Why do people believe that close win with a split Congress means a massive mandate when the result of the 2008 election achieved so little for the other side, and what does this say about their opinion of their own party? Furthermore, these folks have spent much of the last four years trying to calm unruly hippies dissatisfied with the administration's lack of progress by admonishing them that the office of the presidency has little real power. How they work out that Romney will, upon ascending to the high office, cover the land in a second darkness using the dictatorial powers Obama doesn't have has not, I suspect, been completely thought out.
To buttress this argument, some claim that Romney's moderate record as governor of Massachusetts is a facade, and, now that he has been liberated from managing a liberal state, his true extreme-right self is bursting through. Maybe, or maybe not. Romney, as best I can tell, has two political goals: He really, really wants to be president, and when he gets to be president, he wants to enrich his plutocrat friends. Well, on the latter point I suspect he won't get much resistance from the Democrats. Beyond the second goal, Romney has a proven willingness to say and believe anything he needs to achieve the first. He's Nixon with better hair and less jowl. I don't see him doing much to override resistance on culture war issues. Of which...
2) Only Privileged White Males won't vote for Obama: We certainly know that anyone who can't vote for Obama endorses Romney and wants him to win. And they'll stand by ironically while Romney's goons round up America's women and put them in binders. This argument claims that the less fortunate are all loyal Obama supporters, and you'd do well to join them or you're complicit in their oppression.
Though not exclusively, this argument usually centers on the Supreme Court, and the idea that Romney will be able to appoint Supreme Court justices who will immediately overturn Roe v. Wade. I'm far from knowledgeable enough on SCOTUS procedures to know how likely it is that the court could just take a case with the established goal of inverting precedent. But, let's say we are faced with a SCOTUS nomination that would mean the end of legal abortion. What would the Democratic Party, the great champion of reproductive freedom, do? Would they meekly stand aside and watch? A further point, while contemporary SCOTUS judges are certainly partisan hacks, they aren't stupid partisan hacks. They aren't going to touch an inflammatory issue that's going to bite their party at the polls. Reproductive freedom battles will continue to be mostly contested at the state level, in Republican friendly territory, as we've seen clearly in the last year.
This accusation is usually leveled at Glenn Greenwald and the like who primarily write about surveillance state issues and the war machine. Because these apparently things that only affect White Men, except that, well, what? The surveillance state almost exclusively targets Muslims. Certainly Obama isn't bombing many white people in Asia and Africa. We know all about the drug war and prison industrial complex and its calamitous affect on African-Americans. And the effects of climate change will of course overwhelmingly fall on the poor around the world. Where is the Democratic Party on these issues? The secret of the "privilege" argument is that most people making it enjoy bourgeois-liberal class privilege themselves; they're not the ones facing down the American police state. Their notion of "privilege" is deliberately constructed to exclude anything that might include them.
Two final thoughts before I leave this section. For all their lecturing about the comfortable privileged non-voters or third-party voters who are helping Romney win, these liberals ignore the great mass of non-voters (about half the eligible voting population in any given election) among whom the poor and people of color are over-represented. I do wish that these very concerned folks would take their hectoring to said non-voters and give them the "helping Romney win" spiel, preferably as self-righteously as possible. Furthermore, if you do believe that only straight white dudes are Obama skeptics, I encourage you to check out Falguni Sheth, Black Agenda Report, or This is So Gay.
CONTINUED IN PART TWO!
*Liberals really, really hate you pointing out to them that Obamacare was a Heritage Foundation-designed alternative to a pubic healthcare system adopted by Republicans, Mitt Romney most famously, in the 1990s. They will claim it's unfair because Republicans never intended to actually pass it (again, Mitt Romney?). That may well be true, but it doesn't do much for them. The point is that, when Barack Obama moved right to co-opt them, Republicans just shifted to the status quo they always favored. At least the public conversation was once such that the right had to come up with some alternative, however insincere. Thanks to your contemporary Democratic party, that's no longer the case.
14 August 2012
The inexorable rightward drift, part 13,759 of a series
What do you notice about this graph of vice-presidential DW-NOMINATE scores collected by Nate Silver? Well, Paul Ryan is the most conservative VP candidate in history, which is what liberals want you to remember. But that's not everything. Ryan's just the latest in a long-line of increasingly-conservative Republican picks. The next two most conservative on the list are Dick Cheney and Dan Quayle. Only Jack Kemp is out of order. (Sarah Palin doesn't have a DW-NOMINATE score, never having been in the national legislature, otherwise she would slot in nicely.) So Republican VP choices are gradually becoming more conservative, defying the standard assumption of pundits that a running mate should be used to "balance the ticket" ideologically and geographically.
However, Democratic veep nominations are also getting more conservative. The eight most conservative Democratic choices include all five nominated since 1988. Of the five most liberal, only Walter Mondale is post-1960.
The rightward creep of American politics is fast becoming a sprint. The liberal loyalist hold-your-nose lesser-evil faction likes to emphasize the "real differences" between the two parties. Well, this is one of them. The Democratic Party is thoroughly controlled and managed by its right wing, which has steadfastly prevented actual liberals from ascending to any positions of leadership. The loyalists argue for grassroots party-building and "working within the system" but have no plan to unseat the institutional and money power of the conservatives.
However, Democratic veep nominations are also getting more conservative. The eight most conservative Democratic choices include all five nominated since 1988. Of the five most liberal, only Walter Mondale is post-1960.
The rightward creep of American politics is fast becoming a sprint. The liberal loyalist hold-your-nose lesser-evil faction likes to emphasize the "real differences" between the two parties. Well, this is one of them. The Democratic Party is thoroughly controlled and managed by its right wing, which has steadfastly prevented actual liberals from ascending to any positions of leadership. The loyalists argue for grassroots party-building and "working within the system" but have no plan to unseat the institutional and money power of the conservatives.
17 July 2012
The worst election ever?
I think it has to be in the running. I thought we were likely to see an incredibly ponderous campaign brought about by the connection of two uninspiring candidates with little to run on beyond how horrible the other guy is, and nothing I've seen so far has surprised me. It's hard to imagine any prior election that has been driven to such an extent on both sides by fear of the opposition candidate.
Observing liberal blogs during this election has been educational for how much lesser-evilism has been expanded to convince more and more skeptics where before it was pitched only for a few marginal hippies who were probably too stoned to vote anyway. Sure, there are the usual careerist "liberal" pundits at the Washington Post or New Republic who'll defend Obama's conservative record on its merits, but even the American Prospect and leftward crowd is usually left with half-hearted apologias about "the best we can hope for under the Present Situation." But of course, Mitt Romney is a real shitbag; that cannot be emphasized enough. And this is the Most Important Election in the History of the Species, or at least until 2016 anyway, because if Romney is elected, he will immediately make abortion and cute kitten pictures on the internet illegal. Plus, Obama is a real cool dude, and it would be really great to have a beer with him (oh wait, that was the meme for another guy) I mean, it would be really great to shoot some hoops with him.
Today I've read in several places odes to the cinematic greatness of the Obama team's newest attack on Romney's record as CEO of Bain Capital, and particularly how it's a pleasant departure from past Democrats' kid gloves approach. Hell, I'll say it had better be good. It isn't as if the Obama team has much else to hang its hat on. Luckily for them the Republicans are putting up ideal competition for the political environment in 2012; an empty-suit embodiment of the American plutocracy who's as dynamic as dry bacon. Oh Lord, make it stop, make it end.
Observing liberal blogs during this election has been educational for how much lesser-evilism has been expanded to convince more and more skeptics where before it was pitched only for a few marginal hippies who were probably too stoned to vote anyway. Sure, there are the usual careerist "liberal" pundits at the Washington Post or New Republic who'll defend Obama's conservative record on its merits, but even the American Prospect and leftward crowd is usually left with half-hearted apologias about "the best we can hope for under the Present Situation." But of course, Mitt Romney is a real shitbag; that cannot be emphasized enough. And this is the Most Important Election in the History of the Species, or at least until 2016 anyway, because if Romney is elected, he will immediately make abortion and cute kitten pictures on the internet illegal. Plus, Obama is a real cool dude, and it would be really great to have a beer with him (oh wait, that was the meme for another guy) I mean, it would be really great to shoot some hoops with him.
Today I've read in several places odes to the cinematic greatness of the Obama team's newest attack on Romney's record as CEO of Bain Capital, and particularly how it's a pleasant departure from past Democrats' kid gloves approach. Hell, I'll say it had better be good. It isn't as if the Obama team has much else to hang its hat on. Luckily for them the Republicans are putting up ideal competition for the political environment in 2012; an empty-suit embodiment of the American plutocracy who's as dynamic as dry bacon. Oh Lord, make it stop, make it end.
09 May 2012
The plutocracy strikes back
So, Barack Obama's stance on gay marriage has "evolved" to mirroring Dick Cheney's, namely that while he personally approves of same sex marriage, he believes it should be left to the states as a policy matter. I could point out that Obama has "evolved" into Dick Cheney before, but I suppose this would be the first time this could be said in a somewhat positive manner.
It's a bit peculiar to see this being hailed by liberals as some huge leap forward. The federalist dodge is a favorite among politicians who want to send a message to their base while declining to take a firm stand on an issue. Saying "I personally support X, but believe it should be left up to the states" is a classic political punt, and it's usually used by Republicans. I am sure if Obama had said "I personally support a woman's right to choice, but I think it should be left up to the states" there would be liberal rioting in the streets. That's a standard libertarian line. Maybe the expectations of Obama's supporters are that low, or maybe there's nothing he can say that will cause them any reaction other than euphoria. Or maybe they're all so used to his standard waffling that any whiff of political courage looks like the real deal.
If the last two months are any indication, it looks like the American political circus is headed toward another election season typified by the erstwhile social issues. The brief moment where Occupy Wall Street appeared as though it could shift the national conversation onto plutocratic rule and economic inequality has passed, and those activists have been shooed offstage (or, more accurately, pepper-sprayed and teargassed offstage) to be replaced by the old standbys of abortion and gay marriage, the only issues that truly matter to the electorate if you believe the press and activists from both parties.
The electorate doesn't really agree:
In a recent PEW poll, gay marriage polled eighteenth on a list of issues, with just 28 percent of voters saying that it is a “very important” issue. This trails obvious election setters like the economy (86 percent), jobs (84 percent), healthcare (74 percent) and other issues down the line like Iran (47 percent), gun control (47 percent) and even the GOP’s cause of the day, birth control (34 percent).
So why do we spend so much time and energy on issues the public doesn't feel are that pressing? And how much are the highly-publicized fights over birth control and gay marriage "real" and how much is fabricated? For Republicans, of course, this has been fairly decided for awhile. The Republican funders throw social issues at the religious base to keep them energized and voting reliably. Why liberals play along has been given less attention, but it's basically the same reason. The people who make up the Democratic donor base are often out of sync with the Democratic voter base, in many more profound ways on domestic and foreign issues than the Republicans are with theirs. Social issues give them a rare opportunity to bridge the gap (or at least reach an agreeable peace.)
Indeed, Obama's gay marriage "revelation" is entirely a campaign posture. It's designed to cautiously put himself in front of the liberal outrage over the success of North Carolina's Amendment 1 and re-energize his base of under-30 liberals whom he depended on in 2008 but who have been slowly decompressing over the past 3 and a half years.
Certainly, there is a faction of the right-wing base whose anti-woman and anti-gay extremism is very sincerely felt. But one has to wonder why they are allowed to monopolize the political arena with fringe issues which the public either sees as settled or as irrelevant to their lives.* It's hard to imagine issues which the plutocracy could give less of a shit about than birth control and gay marriage. All of the political energy which is absorbed by these things is energy which will never be directed at them. The yawning reaction of both the mainstream press and, in large part, the alternative liberal press to the May 1st actions of Occupy Wall Street is a clear indication; the Class War is over, the Culture War is back on, baby!
*Before someone leaps through the monitor to give me a finger-wagging lecture about how "relevant" it is to gay couples that they have equal rights, I mean that most people simply don't care much one way or another. It's interesting that most of these anti-gay amendments come through on popular referendums, I suspect if states were to legalize same-sex marriage through legislative or judicial means, most people would just shrug their shoulders and go on about their business.
It's a bit peculiar to see this being hailed by liberals as some huge leap forward. The federalist dodge is a favorite among politicians who want to send a message to their base while declining to take a firm stand on an issue. Saying "I personally support X, but believe it should be left up to the states" is a classic political punt, and it's usually used by Republicans. I am sure if Obama had said "I personally support a woman's right to choice, but I think it should be left up to the states" there would be liberal rioting in the streets. That's a standard libertarian line. Maybe the expectations of Obama's supporters are that low, or maybe there's nothing he can say that will cause them any reaction other than euphoria. Or maybe they're all so used to his standard waffling that any whiff of political courage looks like the real deal.
If the last two months are any indication, it looks like the American political circus is headed toward another election season typified by the erstwhile social issues. The brief moment where Occupy Wall Street appeared as though it could shift the national conversation onto plutocratic rule and economic inequality has passed, and those activists have been shooed offstage (or, more accurately, pepper-sprayed and teargassed offstage) to be replaced by the old standbys of abortion and gay marriage, the only issues that truly matter to the electorate if you believe the press and activists from both parties.
The electorate doesn't really agree:
In a recent PEW poll, gay marriage polled eighteenth on a list of issues, with just 28 percent of voters saying that it is a “very important” issue. This trails obvious election setters like the economy (86 percent), jobs (84 percent), healthcare (74 percent) and other issues down the line like Iran (47 percent), gun control (47 percent) and even the GOP’s cause of the day, birth control (34 percent).
So why do we spend so much time and energy on issues the public doesn't feel are that pressing? And how much are the highly-publicized fights over birth control and gay marriage "real" and how much is fabricated? For Republicans, of course, this has been fairly decided for awhile. The Republican funders throw social issues at the religious base to keep them energized and voting reliably. Why liberals play along has been given less attention, but it's basically the same reason. The people who make up the Democratic donor base are often out of sync with the Democratic voter base, in many more profound ways on domestic and foreign issues than the Republicans are with theirs. Social issues give them a rare opportunity to bridge the gap (or at least reach an agreeable peace.)
Indeed, Obama's gay marriage "revelation" is entirely a campaign posture. It's designed to cautiously put himself in front of the liberal outrage over the success of North Carolina's Amendment 1 and re-energize his base of under-30 liberals whom he depended on in 2008 but who have been slowly decompressing over the past 3 and a half years.
Certainly, there is a faction of the right-wing base whose anti-woman and anti-gay extremism is very sincerely felt. But one has to wonder why they are allowed to monopolize the political arena with fringe issues which the public either sees as settled or as irrelevant to their lives.* It's hard to imagine issues which the plutocracy could give less of a shit about than birth control and gay marriage. All of the political energy which is absorbed by these things is energy which will never be directed at them. The yawning reaction of both the mainstream press and, in large part, the alternative liberal press to the May 1st actions of Occupy Wall Street is a clear indication; the Class War is over, the Culture War is back on, baby!
*Before someone leaps through the monitor to give me a finger-wagging lecture about how "relevant" it is to gay couples that they have equal rights, I mean that most people simply don't care much one way or another. It's interesting that most of these anti-gay amendments come through on popular referendums, I suspect if states were to legalize same-sex marriage through legislative or judicial means, most people would just shrug their shoulders and go on about their business.
03 April 2012
The problem with lesser-evilism
On the off chance that a person is able to get liberals to admit that the current seemingly unstoppable rightward drift of American politics is a problem, and that the current Democratic Party represents a corporate-owned center-right party of (slightly different) war and (more creative) austerity, that person would then be faced with the inevitable appeal to the "lesser evil;" sure, Democrats are intolerably weak, but Republicans must be stopped or else they will force-impregnate every woman in America and launch our entire nuclear arsenal at imaginary Iranians on the moon. As a commenter at Lawyers, Guns and Money solemnly put it, "every time you don't vote for the lesser evil, people die."
And, I have to admit, as a short term fix this argument carries a lot of weight. No one wants to see President Santorum nuke the moon. As a long-term strategy however, it's a disaster, and we've been hearing it since at least 2000 and probably long before. The 2000 election, of course, is seen as the defining argument in favor of lesser-evilism, and liberals love to place the Bush years on the conscience of those privileged hippies who tried to make an idealistic political statement by voting for Ralph Nader. (I'll have more to say about why supporting third party candidates is an ineffective way of pressuring Democrats in a future post.)
The problem with lesser-evilism, though, is that, while you may get less evil now, you will surely get more evil later. Because your tepid, center-right New Democrats won't win every election. This is still a balanced, two-party system, and the public's preference inevitably swings back and forth from one party to the other. Talk of a permanent majority, of shutting the other party completely out of power for a generation, doesn't work. It was a fantasy when Republicans were kicking around the idea in 2004; and it was equally so in 2008 when some Democrats were crowing about the complete obliteration of the old Republican Party, and how that party would have to reinvent itself to survive. It did reinvent itself, of course, by driving even harder to the right and coming back to win the midterm elections in decisive fashion.
So while liberals mock the "heightening the contradictions" crypto-Leninist model of third-party voting (or abstention), their own embrace of essential lesser-evilism is functionally not any different. It just kicks the can down the road a few years. The long march to the right continues unabated, and they have no answers for it. This year, we have Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, two fringe nuts who would have been laughed off the stage as fringe kooks ten years ago, being serious presidential contenders who have successfully forced the "moderate" Mitt Romney to move rightward to match them. And while Romney likely won't win the 2012 election, one day another Republican will ascend to the presidency who, enabled by a wobbling Democratic Party and its steadfast supporters of lesser-evil voting, will be even more extreme than George W. Bush, just as Bush was more extreme than Reagan, and Reagan than Nixon, and Nixon than Eisenhower, and so on.
I'd be negligent not to note the final irony, which is that liberals like to pat themselves on the back for being "realists" who understand the political system, while scolding naive "emoprog" puritan idealists, when their own blind spot is a fantastical belief in a permanent Democratic coalition of sensible technocrats, which should have already been blown to bits a couple of years ago.
And, I have to admit, as a short term fix this argument carries a lot of weight. No one wants to see President Santorum nuke the moon. As a long-term strategy however, it's a disaster, and we've been hearing it since at least 2000 and probably long before. The 2000 election, of course, is seen as the defining argument in favor of lesser-evilism, and liberals love to place the Bush years on the conscience of those privileged hippies who tried to make an idealistic political statement by voting for Ralph Nader. (I'll have more to say about why supporting third party candidates is an ineffective way of pressuring Democrats in a future post.)
The problem with lesser-evilism, though, is that, while you may get less evil now, you will surely get more evil later. Because your tepid, center-right New Democrats won't win every election. This is still a balanced, two-party system, and the public's preference inevitably swings back and forth from one party to the other. Talk of a permanent majority, of shutting the other party completely out of power for a generation, doesn't work. It was a fantasy when Republicans were kicking around the idea in 2004; and it was equally so in 2008 when some Democrats were crowing about the complete obliteration of the old Republican Party, and how that party would have to reinvent itself to survive. It did reinvent itself, of course, by driving even harder to the right and coming back to win the midterm elections in decisive fashion.
So while liberals mock the "heightening the contradictions" crypto-Leninist model of third-party voting (or abstention), their own embrace of essential lesser-evilism is functionally not any different. It just kicks the can down the road a few years. The long march to the right continues unabated, and they have no answers for it. This year, we have Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, two fringe nuts who would have been laughed off the stage as fringe kooks ten years ago, being serious presidential contenders who have successfully forced the "moderate" Mitt Romney to move rightward to match them. And while Romney likely won't win the 2012 election, one day another Republican will ascend to the presidency who, enabled by a wobbling Democratic Party and its steadfast supporters of lesser-evil voting, will be even more extreme than George W. Bush, just as Bush was more extreme than Reagan, and Reagan than Nixon, and Nixon than Eisenhower, and so on.
I'd be negligent not to note the final irony, which is that liberals like to pat themselves on the back for being "realists" who understand the political system, while scolding naive "emoprog" puritan idealists, when their own blind spot is a fantastical belief in a permanent Democratic coalition of sensible technocrats, which should have already been blown to bits a couple of years ago.
28 March 2012
I, Obot
I have something of a strange relationship with liberal defenders of the Affordable Care Act. I actually think the argument that a more progressive reform that cut off for-profit health insurance at the knees would never have passed the Senate is basically correct. Any deal that was reached was going to have to ensure that the health inscos got theirs first. And this is where Obama's defenders usually leave it. Their man is off the hook, having defeated the pretending challenge of "firebaggers" and "emoprogs."
But, let's take a look at two possible statements concerning the ACA and its discontents, and the Obama presidency in general
1) Obama is a sellout who has turned out to be far less liberal than people expected/desired. (the "emoprog" position)
2) Obama's personal beliefs are irrelevant, because the political system is wholly owned by wealthy interests who can water down popular policy ideas (such as a public option or single payer HCR), making them less popular with the public but more palatable to the political class.
Which of these would present the bigger problem? The first would be an annoyance, but presumably correctable, which is, one assumes, why Obama's critics tend to focus on it. It gives them hope, if you will, that eventually an election will produce someone more in tune with their own beliefs and progressive outcomes will soon follow. Obama's defenders typically rebut this by pointing to the second, usually without much consideration of what this represents: a shambolic political system in crisis, increasingly unable to do the cursory job of "representation" on which liberal democracy so prides itself. But it's not Obama's fault so, yay, kids!
But, let's take a look at two possible statements concerning the ACA and its discontents, and the Obama presidency in general
1) Obama is a sellout who has turned out to be far less liberal than people expected/desired. (the "emoprog" position)
2) Obama's personal beliefs are irrelevant, because the political system is wholly owned by wealthy interests who can water down popular policy ideas (such as a public option or single payer HCR), making them less popular with the public but more palatable to the political class.
Which of these would present the bigger problem? The first would be an annoyance, but presumably correctable, which is, one assumes, why Obama's critics tend to focus on it. It gives them hope, if you will, that eventually an election will produce someone more in tune with their own beliefs and progressive outcomes will soon follow. Obama's defenders typically rebut this by pointing to the second, usually without much consideration of what this represents: a shambolic political system in crisis, increasingly unable to do the cursory job of "representation" on which liberal democracy so prides itself. But it's not Obama's fault so, yay, kids!
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