The conservatives are trying to spin this year as the year of the conservative Democrat. However, other than Casey in Pennsylvania, this simply isn't the case. The people running for the pick up districts in the Northeast and upper-Midwest aren't conservative Democrats. In fact, the conservative Democrat in a progressive seat has peaked. It is true that conservative Democrats are running in Missouri, Tennessee and Virginia - but there is less here than meets the eye. The southern liberal is a species that has been endangered since the 1960's, and was gone by the 1970's. It has been half a generation since the South sent a progressive to the Senate.

Instead what is going on is the collapse of the political conversation of the last 30 years - where moderates and conservatives argued how far to the right to run, or perhaps to merely hold momentarily what seemed to be an inexorable march to plutocracy and theocracy.

The real news is that the conversation has shifted.

While the conservative Democrats are trumpetting being in "key races", the reality is that races like ID-01 weren't open to progressives to begin with. Every party needs to pad its majority with moderates, the question is where the center of gravity of American politics is. And the center has shifted from Fox News arguing with CNN about how many more billionaires to mint and how many more cities to bomb, to a different conversation, one which the top down media has been spending the last few years trying to throttle, but which is now full throttle to taking the House of Representatives.

This shift from broadcast political conversation has been emerging for some time. Even nichecasting is still one to many communication. Instead, the new political era is focused on "many to many" communication - where individuals communicate with many ther people, and form their world view by combining many different sources - including other ordinary people.

This report from Corrente on an presentation in DC on the possibility of military action against Iran is a microcosm of the larger process. Note how there is confusion, within the reactionary ranks, as well as infighting over how to go forward dealing with Iran. Contrast this with the run up to Iraq, where about 70% of the country was in favor of doing "something" and since Bush and the Republicans in charge "something" was whatever Bush wanted to do - Congress handed him not one, but a string of blank checks. Everything was to be conducted according to his "sole discretion". As long as the reactionaries were the majority of the majority - which mean merely the largest plurality - they were treated as if they were the overwhelming consensus.

The question wasn't whether to go into Iraq, but whether we could strap a rocket to an M-1 tank. The same was true with Bush's tax packages - which slashed federal revenues by 5% of GDP. The question was not whether to cut taxes on the rich, but whether to make the rich tax exempt for ever, or merely indefinitely with perpetual extensions.

The reason for the old state of affairs is that the right wing was seen as the source of ideas and solutions, and as well the home of the determined, decisive people - the cool considerate men - of whose like we would not see again. In command, the future planned - the music of fife and drum caused moderates, lemming like, to fall into line.

Iraq, the housing bust and the poor job market have broken this. Compare Bush's two elections with Eisenhower's two, Nixon's second, Reagan's two and Bush pére - a series of landslide elections which the Republicans won by a combined electoral count of 2860 to 353. The coalition for the Republicans was rooted in the suburban vote - the people who wanted constancy over growth, because that allowed them to borrow long and wait for the rising timed of home prices to carry them forward. This plus social security, pensions and a few investments meant that they had affluence in the present, and a prospect for "golden years" of retirement.

This suburban vote saw coming down on a problem with hobnail boots as the right thing to do - it is how they dealt with, or wished they could deal with, their teenagers. It was how they were dealt with at work. The liberal solution of "give more to people, and you will get more back from them" seemed to break down in dealing with crime, inflation and youth rebellion. More importantly, it threatened to upset the apple cart of housing. Low inflation wasn't just something they wanted in itself - but because low inflation means low interest rates, and that monetizes more of the value of a house for the owner.

Hence, permissiveness, spending, growth - were all out. It was a zero sum game, and everyone thought they were going to be above average.

The triumvirate of failures - war, stagnation and housing bust - hammer each component of the memology of the right wing.

Iraq disproves the theory that ultra violence solves all problems. We have torture, prison camps and war crimes in Iraq. We have the most fearsome invasion military in the history of the world. We have precision munitions, the greatest battlefield superiority tank ever. The Bush executive was given unlimited power, no oversight, exemption from accountability, sole discretion and complete authority.

And all we got was the Disintegration of Yugoslavia, Version 2.0. Bigger, louder and with about two to five times as many civilian dead - and thousands more service men dead than the UN and NATO military actions there.

Stagnation disproves the Republican contention that the money the rich have doesn't matter. This is a key right wing meme and talking point - inflation is about you competing with other people. Since you don't compete with rich people for anything, how rich they are doesn't matter. What brought home the falsity of this assertion was the oil spike - prices went up fast, and stayed up long, only to come down with a thump weeks after they normally would have. Americans saw Exxon and other oil giants report massive profits. Clearly giving corporations more money does not encourage them to sink it into more "supply".

This falls on top of a generation long stagnation in wages. If the median hourly worker in 1975 had gotten raises equal to inflation and productivity - he'd be making $32/hr now. Instead of just over $16. In otherwords, you could make the median hourly worker tax exempt - including sales and gas taxes - and he would still be behind where he would be if he'd gotten the raises from productivity. People are starting to realize that tax cutting your way to prosperity, is like drinking your way to sobriety.

This leads to the last crumbling pillar of Republican memology - ownership over stakeholdership. In the right wing view of the world, ownership is the most important pillar of society. People are owners first. That which you own, is yours. Your Money. Your House. Your Stocks. Your Private Account. Yours.

In the liberal view of the world, one is a stakeholder in society first - because all property, all wealth, all contracts, all promises, exist in the context of a functioning society. It is "Your Money" so long as your society is around to accept it. It is your house and your home - but the equity in it is based more on whether there is a growing economy to support it.

This is why the right wing hated, and many of them still hate, macroëconomics - because macroëconomics shows that the whole system has to work, or everyone suffers.

The owner versus stakeholder debate went to the Republicans when it seemed to Americans that the Democratic Party could not manage society. The Republicans admitted only one form of stakeholdership - military service. Other than that what they knew was Texas, and out there "you on yo own".

This lead to the localization of taxes - instead of money going to the federal government, or even the state government - it went down to property taxes. In Republican memology - you take your money and pay it as taxes to your town to improve your school, which becomes home equity in your house. The total tax burden of the median American family hasn't gone down, it has merely shifted from the Federal Government to the states. The size of state government as a percentage of GDP has doubled, even as the size of the Federal government as a share of GDP has stayed the same.

With the housing bust - while yet incoahate - there is a sense that there is some missing component. More over, the loss of American competitiveness points to the failure of localization of education - with or without rapturization of the Federal education budget. That's "No Child Left Behind" for the pre-millennairian dispensationally challenged. This is compounded by the titanic de-insuring of Americans in health care - from retirees losing health benefits, to people working who get "health plans" through their employers that amount to getting about half of the discount that the corporation gets for providing health care.

These three pillars of the Republican memology have gone from being resolute, entrepreneurial and bourgeois - to being violent, greedy and stupid.

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In the old environment, there weren't many liberals any more, merely bleeding heart Reaganites. Even hard core progressives came up with ways of "Reaganizing" their proposals. Not all of these proposals were bad - some where back door ways of raising wages in a stagnationary environment. EPI even put out a primer on how to recognize a progressive tax cut.

In the new environment, the realization of stakeholdership is permeating the right wing, as it has long been a fundamental assertion of the left. One can see this in the international arena, as trade negotiations over the "Doha Round" have collapsed because developing nations that are left out of the cheap labor and costly oil boom no longer feel a reason to sacrifice to keep the world trade order going. Ben Bernanke - who dreams of a reconstructed conservatism - has admitted that "the benefits of globalization" must be spread more widely. Suddenly the concept of stakeholder is becoming important. Perhaps because Bolivia's President Morales, among others, are willing to take back what was sold off at fire sale prices before.

In the old environment, prison, invasion and coercion were the tools of the trade to break rejection of social norms, international law - or even just corporate expansion plans. Iraq shows that one can't bomb people into Democracy. There is a reverse correlation between US military activity, and progress towards self-government in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Bush and company were given a blank slate with 40 million souls, and managed only to drop it on the floor.

In the new environment, there is an open admission that problems such as North Korea and Iran are going to be resolved by means other than invasion. Consider that when China made it clear to North Korea that more tests were not going to be tolerated, plans for a second test were scraped, and preparations for that test were halted. In essence China told North Korea that sanctions would not be enforced - unless further trouble was made. South Korea sent the same message to North Korea, essentially "cut it out, or we will open the border and let your people flee." North Korea, faced with the combination of a trade tourniquet and a population bleed out, slowed their progress substantially. Iran, faced with no similar threats, put a new cascade on line. Lesson learned? Perhaps not yet, but another brick in the wall.

The third pillar of right wing memology to collapse is the idea of what Jules Pfeiffer called, presciently, "The New Feudalism", riffing off of Reagan's "New Federalism". The argument is that "the more local, the better". Even as recently as 6 years ago, court decisions forcing states to equally fund schools were seen as intolerable burdens and usurpations of power. However, the localization of education is a trendline that has reached its pinnacle and is retreating backwards - because it was always a way of taking from the public good for private profit. When the United States easily lead the world in quality of workforce and in pay, it seemed a free rider action that could be taken - arbitrage, since however well or badly educated American workers were, corporations would have to train them up, and pushing other people down merely meant less competition for the same number of jobs.

This created a temporary labor shortage in fields such as engineering and computer programming - well off kids who learned to program at home or at school came into the work force with 5 to 10 years of experience in a field that old companies knew almost nothing about. It was one of the few areas of growing wages in a stagnant pool. However, this period of labor shortage is ending rapidly, as I-9's and off shoring strip programming jobs from the United States. Suddenly, having an under-educated labor force doesn't look like it is such a winning move.

These three points - stakeholdership over ownership, cooperation over violence and broadening rather than narrowing - fit together. The narrowing of education reduces the growth of the economy, which is contributing to stagnation of home values and wages, and the every man for himself attitude leads to a downward prisoner's dilemma spiral of opportunities and potential.

- - -

Many people on the left have looked with narrowed eyes at Obama's declarations of faith based politics, and the Emmanuel-Shrum led push to put conservatives in control of Congress after having engineered the longest congressional losing streak since the 1920's.

The above article starts by spewing conspiracy theory nonsense about "those who control the Democratic Party" (It's Anne Kornblut, who couldn't be unbiased for two sentences if she tried). But then it includes this choice nugget from the head of the DCCC, that is, one of the people who controls the Democratic Party:

That was especially true in suburban areas and some rural districts, said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “As a group, they are moderate in temperament and reformers in spirit,” Mr. Emanuel said.

Or look at how Joe Lieberman, in his fight to stay in the Senate, is now running as being anti-Iraq War.

Even as the conservative Democrats claw and attack the liberal and progressive base:

Representative Ellen O. Tauscher of California, a co-chairwoman of the 47-member New Democrat Coalition, said that 27 of the top 40 contested House seats were being pursued by Democrats who have pledged to become members of the group, which says its chief issues are national security and fiscal responsibility.

“I think there’s tremendous agreement and awareness that getting the majority and running over the left cliff is what our Republican opponents would dearly love,” Ms. Tauscher said, adding that this was something “we’ve got to fight.”

The numbers look different. While "27 of 40" have pledged to join the "New Democratic" coalition, many of these 27 are among the least likely to be elected.

Even in the grotesquely biased Dewan Kornblutt article - quoting not a single liberal, of any stripe - it becomes clear that the conservatives aren't in control as they were in the Clinton Administration and with the hey day of the DLC - but are virtually pleading the party base not to go too far. This isn't the language of people in charge, but of people who realize that their destiny is tied to left, and not to the right. Clinton could pass NAFTA with Republican votes - but he needed progressives to pass the tax package that raised the revenue to put the budget back on the course to balance. Any "fiscally responsible Democrat" is going to have to look at the votes that are on the floor, and realize that there isn't one Republican vote to reinstate the estate tax, raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy, cut corporate tax breaks, or any of the other necessary steps to ending the era of borrow and squander.

In short, for all of the bias, dissembling and carrying on from two of the New York Times' most biased and dishonest reporters - despite the bold language from conservative Democrats - the words here aren't fighting words - but the opening in a negotiation. And that opening isn't "we have a conservative agenda that we are going to move" but "we don't want to go too far to the left too fast, and we want national security and fiscal responsibility". Since the leaders of the progressive movement nationally - people like Howard Dean - are fiscal responsibility and national security hawks - this isn't really much of a demand. Is there any leading Democrat saying "we need less national security and bigger deficits?" Any where?

For an almost catagorical example of how close the convergence is towards progressivism, consider Bruce Reed's recent Slate piece. Reed, DLC maven who was one of the core architects of "Third Way" - before it led into Iraq - says bluntly "conservative ideas haven't worked". And he debunks three theories of why the Republicans are losing - which are not just Republican theories, but the theories held by various conservative Democrats as well.

For example, consider the theory that Bush and company are the wrong people doing the right things - which Reed labels the "Hack of a Job" theory. What other theory can a pro-war Democrat like Lieberman have except that the war was right and Bush was wrong. Or take the example of the "misuse of power" theory - what other theory is a big defense budget Democrat going to have except "they just didn't spend enough in my district". Finally, look at the "big budget" theory - it wasn't just the Republican Congress that was slashing spending to the bone under Clinton, it was Clinton himself. If "compassionate conservatism" was the only way past Gingrich, it was also able to defeat Clinton's heir to the Presidency. In short, Reed repudiates the entire idea that the road to Democratic victory, is to be Republican-lite. It's almost breath taking in the scope of his abnegation of the very idea that Clinton is most associated with: "triangulation".

Many progressives, burned by kick the base tactics and outright betrayals, are going to have to stop and blink to realize that the frame of the debate has changed - this is no longer a debate about how far right we are to go, how fast, but how far left we are to go, and how best to proceed. It is going to take time for conservative Democrats to stop running to Reaganisms, and it is going to take time for progressives to realize that while there are many battles ahead, one of the most fundamental battles has been won.

Part of this is because the top down media still wants, for its own economic reasons, a restoration of the "to the right, ever to the right, never to the left" dialog of the past. And therefore they have been doing their best not to report on what has happened in the country. But the polls tell the story - independents now poll like Democrats, the country is now 60-40 against the reactionary movement.

In order to govern then, the progressives and the conservatives are going to have to start burying some hatchets. The "war over the future of the party" has, in fact, been fought - and the future of the party is in progressivism. At that point progressives need to realize that their own ideology demands bringing people in, rather than pushing them out. It is reactionaries that have rumpified the government, and we have seen how well that worked.

The perils of consensus government and conversation are, in many respects, more terrifying than certainties. The problems are, in many respects, more frustrating, because in negotiations, you often don't get a sense of euphoria, even when you win, where as in a bar room brawl, you can often feel good as you fume.

Government is always from the center - and the governing coalition accepts that it is going to have bold moments where its solutions are adopted, and long balancing compromises which merely nudge the direction of the country. Since the conservatives have admitted that the wind is blowing out into left field, the time is at hand for Democrats to swing away at the ball, and not at each other.

In the arsenal however, is a powerful weapon - namely that the people in the middle of the country want results and not recriminations. If the moderates start left bashing - then the solution isn't to bash back, but to turn to the moderate voters and say "does this look like reason to you?" Lieberman is running as a petitioning candidate because he looked nasty going after his own party base. He's down 5 points in the last week because his ads focus on nastiness and ambiguous statements. Ned, looks like he's back from the dead, precisely because the voters don't want nasty.

And that is a key sign - back when reactionary politics were ascendant, one couldn't be too rich, or too nasty. Atwater's law "make them remember three things, all negative and all about your opponent" is breaking down. Republican attempts to Horton a black candidate in Tennessee and Massachusetts have backfired. Republican smear ads and hysteria have gotten no traction. Even "gay marriage" hasn't moved the needle in New Jersey.

Whether the conservative Democrats can learn to negotiate left, rather than run right, is an open question. They have their entire political lives to overcome. However, if they don't they will rapidly find themselves replaced by moderates who understand moderation. Because there isn't a bull market in Bush, and Bush-lite is last election's hip beverage for the kool-aid drinking crowd.

One of the first steps that the moderates could take is to change their negotiating tactics. It's just not smart to tick off the people you are talking to without good reason. The "kick the base" tactics don't work, and while Lieberman is going to be allowed to buy an election with "walking around money" - don't expect this to be a growth strategy going forward.

Just an idea.