Some in the Reality-Based Community Have Lost Touch with Political Reality

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There's an interesting throughline making its way around Leftopia today (and most days, these days): In order to win in '06 and '08, the Democrats must run on a unified "Progressive" anti-Iraq War platform. While I agree with you on many Progressive issues, I also wonder what country you all think you're living in. Let me remind everyone that

45% of American citizens still define themselves as moderate, compared to 34% who define themselves as conservative and 21% as liberal.

Let me also remind you of all the white men who have occupied the White House since I've graced this great blue-and-green ball:

• John F. Kennedy
• Lyndon Johnson
• Richard Nixon
• Gerald Ford
• Jimmy Carter
• Ronald Reagan
• 41
• William Jefferson Clinton
• George W. Bush

Do you see one true anti-War Liberal/Progressive on that list? One might argue that the most Liberal/Progressive Presidents during my lifetime have been Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton. And most of you banging the drum for the New Progressive World Order have "issues" with those two.

It's one thing for us to sit around the virtual campfire and make our case for the way things ought to be. It's quite another matter to suggest that Democratic politicians push our complete political agenda to the other 79% of the population that won't undergo ideological conversion by the time '08 rolls around, let alone next year's mid-terms.

I know what you're thinking. "But, Roxanne! The majority of Americans are now against the Iraq War. This is our big opportunity to push the Progressive agenda!" Of course Americans now view the War unfavorably. But probably not for the reasons you and I do.

As a people, Americans like to kick ass and take names. The nightly news has now become a daily reminder that we're losing this war --and we're not good losers. If you don't believe we have trouble with losing, you can take your argument up with Jimmy Carter or the ghost of Lyndon Johnson. Americans want out because they want the "losing" to end. They perceive our problem in Iraq as one of managerial incompetence and not the predictable outcome of a cynical ideology. (I believe both problems are at work here.) And many of them will vote for the first guy or gal who comes up with a reasonable, executable plan to get the fuck out of Dodge with our metaphorical cajones still intact.

More importantly, unless they're running in San Francisco or Minnesota or Massachusetts (and a few points in between), strict anti-war Progressives don't win elections. There's no U.S. Senator Helen Gahagan Douglas listed in my World Almanac! So when Rahm Emanuel [see comments] and other pols don't talk about the Iraq boondoggle as much as you'd like --and when they do, they don't do it in the way you'd prefer [see comments]-- you now know why.

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So much for semi-retirement. I just wanted to piss-off the Deaniacs one more time!

UPDATE: Seems the WaPo has a story on a report released yesterday from the team of Galston and Kamarck:

"The groups that were supposed to constitute the new Democratic majority in 2004 simply failed to materialize in sufficient number to overcome the right-center coalition of the Republican Party."

...

But Galston and Kamarck, both of whom served in the Clinton White House, said there are simply not enough left-leaning voters to make this a workable strategy. In one of their more potentially controversial findings, the authors argue that the rising numbers and influence of well-educated, socially liberal voters in the Democratic Party are pulling the party further from most Americans.

On defense and social issues, "liberals espouse views diverging not only from those of other Democrats, but from Americans as a whole. To the extent that liberals now constitute both the largest bloc within the Democratic coalition and the public face of the party, Democratic candidates for national office will be running uphill."

You should read the whole thing.

Via Kevin Drum, who frames the issue in a way most of my detractors will appreciate (and rather oddly, for him, imho):

But it turns out that's not the whole story, because in Off Center Hacker and Pierson also provide a ton of evidence that, congressional results notwithstanding, Americans haven't become any more conservative over the past three decades. Nor has the activist base of the Democratic party become more liberal. Rather, it's the activist base of the Republican party that's gotten more extreme. The chart on the right, my favorite from the book, shows the startling story: compared to independent voters, Republican activists have gotten far more extreme since 1980, while over the same period the Democratic base has actually become more moderate.

In other words, contra Galston and Kamarck, the liberal base is not really the problem a lot of people make it out to be. It's the Republican base that's far outside the mainstream.

And yet, Republicans keep on winning anyway. But why? How is it that a party can continue to drift farther and farther from the center of American politics — the Holy Grail of most political strategists — and yet continue to be successful? Why is the center no longer holding?

Comments

[KathyF]

I'm a Deaniac, but you didn't manage to piss me off. I only have one disagreement, in fact: Richard Nixon was the most liberal president in our lifetimes.

Guess you'll have to stick around and try again!

[Roxanne]

I guess you're refering to that little matter of "wage and price controls." So Marxist!

[upyernoz]

roxanne,

you're point is well taken, but i still disagree. the fact is, the national party has rarely tried to run a real progressive as their candidate. we don't know if the fact that no recent president has been a progressive is because the people won't go for it or because the party big-wigs won't.

or maybe we do know. in recent years the republican party has regularly run candidates who are well to the right of where polls say the national electorate is. and they've had remarkable success. electing a progressive won't require 79% of the electorate to change their position any more than electing george bush required a 66% conversion. the fact is, in our two party system a large factor in any election is dislike of the other guy. widespread dislike of bush is an opportunity for the democrats to present a real progressive as an alternative, just as weariness over the clinton scandals was an opportunity for the neo-cons to take over.

besides, i have no doubt that if the dems consistently ran real progressives we would have at least a few real progressive presidents in the long run. even if the first progressive to run lost, eventually the american public will get sick of the republicans and vote the other way. so long as the dems stick to their guns and keep renominating a leftist, we will end up with a leftist in charge. and even if that meant the dems lost more times than they won, in my opinion, that is still better than the current system of mealy-mouth moderates alternating with right-wing loonies.

[Roxanne]

And then your alarm clock went off. ;-)

[Terrance]

Oh well. A guy can dream. Right?

[eli]

other than the states mentioned in this post, have any true progressive senators been elected?

[jami]

excellent post. giving peace a chance is a much likelier prospect if we manage to actually get people elected. to do so, we have listen to and respect people who are not lefty bloggers. we super-progressives are the best 19% or so of the country, but that's not enough. we have to be more inclusive.

[Mimus Pauly]

Hate to say it, Roxanne, but you're right. I was born during Nixon's reign. The closest I've seen to a progressive presidency is Bill Clinton's. And if he was a progressive, then I'm Linda Tripp.

So I'm not expecting to see a presidential candidate I can truly identify with in 2008 or any time afterward. I still like John Kerry, but perhaps he shouldn't run again in '08. He might make a fine Attorney General, tho.

My 2 cents.

[KathyF]

Someone told me Nixon was getting ready to propose a national health care system right before Watergate. If so, he beat Clinton by about 20 years. He had some other liberal* ideas, too, which just goes to show you, liberals can be assholes.

*liberal by today-in-America standards; internationally he's somewhere to the right of Maggie Thatcher.

[upyernoz]

And then your alarm clock went off. ;-)

and why, pray tell do the conservatives get to regularly elect members of their extreme wing and liberals don't? a solid plurality calls itself "moderate" as you pointed out. if your theory were right, neither side would be able to elect real ideologues. the fact is, the republics do and that's because only the republicans regularly try. plus they've managed to make "liberal" a dirty word in the process. there's no reason the dems can't do the same thing, except that it probably means some short-term losses for long term gains.

as long as there is a two-part system the other party will win sometimes--if nothing else than in the years that the public is really sick of their opponents. all the dems have to do is develop a backbone for once, take their short-term losses but stay committed to what they really believe in

[eRobin]

I'm not sure why you think that that post would piss off Deaniacs since he's been very moderate on the war. He was all about not starting it, not ending it abruptly. Dean is pissing off Deaniacs on his own.

On running on the War: Nobody is suggesting running a peacenik platform, because nobody has the courage or the faith in the American people to do that. Neither does anyone in power have the kind of charisma required to inspire that kind of trust.

They ARE suggesting that the Dems exploit public opinion against the war. There's a huge difference. You don't exploit something by ignoring it, which is where the Dems seem to be right now.

[Roxanne]

I wish you guys were right. Really, I do. But there's no real evidence to support the experiment you want to conduct. And wishing for it to be true will not make it so.

But, let's say you're right. If it takes 7-20 years, many more Americans could suffer in the meantime. And it's all well and good for people with means to make the committment to stick it out because they have less to lose in real terms.

[upyernoz]

well, i guess i just think that the status quo is pretty shitty, so there's not much to lose for trying. besides, what i'm advocating is not way out there. the centrist democrats have been arguing that the dems should emulate the republicans if they want to win elections. that's essentially all i'm advocating here. the difference is, the DLC wants the democratic party to emulate the republicans on substantive matters (i.e. steal issues from them), i'm saying they should only emulate republican tactics (i.e. running with candidates on the edge of the party, not the centrists)

[Ann Bartow]

I'm in agreement with your post. I just wanted to suggest that suburban ennui has snuck up on you, and you need to resist it. Stop the scrapbooking and bunco! Keep the blog!

[Chris Clarke]

So how's that "moving to the center" thing been working for you Dems?

[BenA]

Leading means, well, leading.

By and large, war and peace issues do not sway the electorate. Most of the time, people vote on pocketbook issues -- this is what elected Bill Clinton.

The problem from an electoral perspective is that, when elections do ride on war and peace issues, as our national security debate is currently constructed, the Democrats will always lose. The GOP will continue to be able to paint the Democrats as weak on defense.

This leads to a number of conclusions. First, in order to have any chance to win on national security issues, the Democrats have to fundamentally change the debate. Running yet another militaristic Vietnam War hero in the vain hope that he won't be tagged as a cheese-eating-surrender-monkey-in-disguise won't cut it. In short, Roxanne's (and many other progressives') first inclination, which is to follow public opinion rather than lead, won't work in this case.

Second, progressives need to negotiate from a position of strength. All the likely Democratic presidential candidates are committed militarists, not pragmatic progressives. What this country needs is someone like Ron Dellums, who was deeply progressive on war and peace issues, but who was also a responsible chair of the House Armed Services Committee, because he understood that politics is the art of compromise. Sensible compromises do not begin by voting for people whose values are fundamentally different from one's own.

Finally, I think the denizens of Leftopia have deeply understimated the Democratic Party's commitment to this war, to the military-industrial complex, and to, for lack of a better word, imperialism. We may think this is a debate about political strategy. It shouldn't be. It should be a debate about values. And to the extent that one has anti-war values, the Democratic leadership simply does not share them.

[Roxanne]

I'm not necessarily suggesting Dems run to the middle. Although, that's what got Clinton elected. By today's standards, Carter and Kennedy would be moderates (and now we're getting into the "what if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly" territory).

What I AM suggesting is that in order to win, Dems need to become ...more ...populist (with a little "p").

[BenA]

Both Carter (at least in 1976) and Kennedy essentially tried to run to their opponent's right on foreign policy. It's easy to forget how many of the Scoop Jackson Democrats (who went on to become neocons) were solidly in Carter's camp during that first campaign. Carter's "human rights policy" was, in many ways, a critique of Kissinger and detente.

As for the small-p word, there's a powerful anti-interventionist strain in populism that can be appealed to by those opposed to the Iraq war. I'm sure you know antiwar.com, the largely conservative anti-war website. A lot of the stuff on there is populist in tone.

What got Clinton elected, for what it's worth, was enormous personal charisma, a bad economy, an unpopular president, and a willingness to focus on issues like healthcare that mattered to people (one could also add Ross Perot, but from what I've seen he took as many votes away from Clinton as from Bush).

[buermann]

Self-identification on that line has very little do with policy preference.

[Ellen Dana Nagler]

Wow. I didn't know anyone alive knew who Helen Gahagan Douglas was. Or at least anyone younger than me.

Mrs. Douglas went to my high school, and came to speak to us when I was in, oh, I think 9th grade. Anyway, afterwards I scored a private interview with her, and wrote my first long feature piece ever, for my high school newspaper. That was the first of many. I eventually owned the full width of the paper above the fold on the back page. Not until blogging have I had such journalistic joy since.

I've always been grateful to Rep. Douglas for "giving me my start" in newspapering, and I have never ceased to admire her guts. Thank you for mentioning her, and introducing her profile in courage to your audience. (By the way, the bio you link to doesn't mention that another smear was the anti-Semitic one — Melvyn Douglas was Jewish). In those very very bad old days, to the minds of many Jew equalled Commie. It was an easy jump to make for her detractors and her scurrilous opponent.

[KathyF]

The left-center-right construct is simply that, a construct, and the sooner we chuck it out the door the sooner we can start understanding the electorate (who could care less where they exist on such a line anyway, as long as it's not the left) and winning elections.

"We" being those who live in my Venn Diagram circles, I mean, not those of us on the imaginary left.

[upyernoz]

What I AM suggesting is that in order to win, Dems need to become ...more ...populist (with a little "p").

now i'm confused. considering that most americans think the iraq war was a mistake and want to get the troops home, why isn't that populist?

and wasn't howard dean a populist? my impression of his candidacy is that it was driven by a populist groundswell that spooked the powers that be in the democratic party and caused them to turn against him in force. maybe you think dean stood for something else. but i was interested in his candidacy (although i wasn't really a deaniac) precisely because i thought he was a populist

[Roxanne]

Yes. If you read my post you'll see that I wrote:

know what you're thinking. "But, Roxanne! The majority of Americans are now against the Iraq War. This is our big opportunity to push the Progressive agenda!" Of course Americans now view the War unfavorably. But probably not for the reasons you and I do.

They think it's a mistake because we're losing because BushCo didn't manage it well. Not because they agree the war was a bad idea. I don't even think they really care about the WMD lies. They just want it to be over with so that they don't have to hear about girls and boys dying anymore, so that taxes don't increase, so that the economy improves, etc.

So, I think the best message --and one that doesn't alienate voters who may have chosen Bush last November but now have regrets-- is "we're better managers"and "we won't lie to you." Period. Kind of Al Gore "good government" stuff. Once you gain their trust, then you try to sell them on health care. Hook 'em on that, then you do something else.

I'm not in the mood for Dean-lash today, so I won't go into my Dean speech.

[Allah]

Not sure if I qualify as a "moderate" Republican or not. I supported Gore in 2000 and frequently referred to Bush at the time as "Doofus the puppet." I'm against the Miers nomination, against his insane spending, against his general cronyism, and if he signs off on the bill for native Hawaiian self-governance, I'll be against him. Period.

Now, to answer your question about what the Democrats can do to (re)claim my vote: in light of the past few years, absolutely, positively nothing. Never, ever again.

[Roxanne]

I don't think you'll have to worry about Hawaiian self-governance.