Ed Kilgore's Blog

The Anatomy of Conservative Self-Deception

2008-11-13T14:15:11Z

Note: this item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

For those Democrats who were settling down with a bag of popcorn to watch an orgy of ideological strife among Republicans, it's beginning to become apparent that the war may be over before it began. Sure, there's plenty of finger-pointing and personal recriminations over tactics and strategy, some of it focused on the McCain-Palin campaign, and some looking back to the errors of the Bush administration. There's clearly no consensus on who might lead Republicans in 2010 or 2012. But on the ideological front, for all the talk about "movement conservatives" or "traditionalists" at odds with "reformers," it's a pretty one-sided fight. And one prominent "reformer," the columnist David Brooks, pretty much declared defeat yesterday:

The debate between the camps is heating up. Only one thing is for sure: In the near term, the Traditionalists are going to win the fight for supremacy in the G.O.P.
]]> They are going to win, first, because Congressional Republicans are predominantly Traditionalists. Republicans from the coasts and the upper Midwest are largely gone. Among the remaining members, the popular view is that Republicans have been losing because they haven't been conservative enough.

Second, Traditionalists have the institutions. Over the past 40 years, the Conservative Old Guard has built up a movement of activist groups, donor networks, think tanks and publicity arms. The reformists, on the other hand, have no institutions.....

Finally, Traditionalists own the conservative mythology. Members of the conservative Old Guard see themselves as members of a small, heroic movement marching bravely from the Heartland into belly of the liberal elite. In this narrative, anybody who deviates toward the center, who departs from established doctrine, is a coward, and a sellout.

Now there's nothing particularly new about this dynamic. It's exactly the way conservatives reacted to the 2006 debacle, and in fact, to virtually every Republican defeat since about 1940 (with the exception, of course, of 1964). They've never been shy about saying that "moderate" or "liberal" Republicans are not only wrong, immoral and gutless, but are in fact losers. And there's nothing new as well about their take on George W. Bush; it's pretty similar to their ex post facto take on Richard M. Nixon: a potentially great leader surrounded by venal hacks who sacrificed principle in an illusory search for short-term political gain and personal riches and power.

There are, however, two aspects of contemporary conservative self-justification that strike me as somewhat new.

The first is the iron conviction that there is a popular majority for core conservative policies at the very moment when they have been repudiated. Sure, conservatives have long postulated "hidden majorities" that can only be tapped by a more rigorously ideological approach, but only in the context of long periods of Democratic ascendancy. There was nothing self-deceptive about the conservative belief in the 1970s and 1980s, up through 1994, that large numbers of conservative Democrats, particularly in the South, could be picked off in an atmosphere of ideological polarization. But that realignment has clearly run its course. Just as importantly, the big conservative victories of 1980 and 1994 were pretty self-evidently based on a popular desire to restrain or reform the governing Democrats, rather than representing a referendum on conservative ideas. I say that's "self-evident" because both Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich got into immediate trouble when they promoted a truly conservative vision of what government ought to do and not do.

Maybe Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress will quickly overreach and produce an opportunity for this sort of negative victory in the near future (though there simply is not the kind of low-hanging demographic fruit to pick that benefitted past conservatives). But it's hardly the moment for loud-and-proud conservative governance. After all, many of the scandals and failures of the regime of George W. Bush (like Nixon before him) flowed from the natural corruption and misgovernment that so often befalls conservatives who are forced to operate public-sector programs and agencies that they don't actually believe in.

Furthermore, Karl Rove's famous strategy for building a permanent Republican majority, which relied on strategic public-sector activism deisgned to attract Latinos (immigration reform); seniors (Medicare Rx drug benefit); and married women with kids (No Child Left Behind), was based on the recognition that there simply wasn't a majority for hard-core small government conservatism. That all these initiatives became major grievances for conservatives is a sign of political self-deception. Conversely, conservatives don't seem to have internalized the fact that every major conservative assault on the heart of the New Deal/Great Society legacy (Ronald Reagan's and George W. Bush's efforts to "reform" Social Security, and Newt Gingrich's drive to "contain costs" in Medicare) has failed dismally in the court of public opinion.

In a parallel development, during both the Reagan and Bush years, public support for conservative efforts to make the tax system more regressive has declined steadily once the free-lunch assumptions of supply-side economics proved to be a fraud. And there has never, for a moment, been anything like a popular majority supporting the sort of broad-scale reductions in government services that could eliminate the fiscal problems associated with the conservative tax-cutting agenda. There's a reason John McCain's campaign based his fiscal-discipline message on the small but symbolic issue of appropriations earmarks, rather than the big-ticket "entitlement reform" that virtually all movement conservatives support. And for that matter, George W. Bush's "Big Government Conservatism," like its Reaganite predecessor, was an accomodation to public opinion rather than a gratuitous betrayal of conservative principle.

If today's conservatives succeed in convincing each other to embrace a more forthright message assaulting entitlements, progressive taxation, public education, regulation of corporations and Wall Street, just to cite a few domestic policy examples, they are almost certainly cruising for more electoral bruising.

Aside from self-deception about the popularity of their core ideology, today's conservatives seem to be deceiving themselves as well about how to deal with Democrats in a way that maintains some credibility. Compare how they talk and think about Barack Obama to how they talked and thought about Bill Clinton. Throughout the Clinton administration, conservatives constantly alternated between attacking Clinton as a liberal disguising his true intentions, and as an unprincipled trimmer who was "stealing conservative ideas." The latter impulse largely prevailed. Throughout the impeachment crisis, Republicans trying to drive Clinton from office were cooperating with him on a considerable array of domestic and international initiatives, and begging him to lead the country into such perilous waters as Social Security "reform."

It seems to me that conservatives today have almost completely internalized their own rhetoric about Obama's "radicalism," "socialism," "anti-Americanism," and so forth. If you have read or listened to movement conservative pundits recently, it's hard to avoid the impression that they truly think this temperate man pursuing Clinton-style centrist policies is determined to enact "socialized medicine," create vast new "welfare" programs, legalize infanticide, surrender to terrorists, and use the power of the state to censor or perhaps even jail his opponents.

Perhaps both these phenomena are at least partially attributable to the rise of conservative ideological media networks that enable their consumers and producers alike to live in a parallel universe that is largely impervious to adverse information. That's a problem for some people on the Left (e.g., those who are convinced that Bush and Cheney will stage an "emergency" and launch a military coup to thwart Obama's inauguration) as well as the Right. But there's a reason that so many folk on the Left like to call themselves "the reality-based community," just as there is a reason that leftbent Democrats cut Barack Obama a lot of slack during the presidential campaign while movement conservatives hobbled John McCain with an endless series of demands and complaints that arguably guaranteed his defeat.

If I'm right, or even half-right, about this, Barack Obama, Democrats, and progressives may have a large window of opportunity to build a majority against an opposition party that's drunk on the locusts and wild honey of the political wilderness they inhabit.

Caution and Superstition

2008-10-14T16:57:25Z

Todd Gitlin is right, of course, in suggesting to progressives currently giddy about polling trends in the presidential campaign that overconfidence is a bad idea in politics, as in any other competitive endeavor. And every Democrat of a certain age remembers past elections where we managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

But though Todd doesn't come right out and say it, I suspect much of his fear is from the most immediate bad memory: Election Night 2004, when many of us were half-convinced we'd already won a week or so out, and then, on reading those first exit polls, threw caution to the win and declared victory.

]]> It's important, though, to remember why those expectations turned out to be unrealistic, and distinguish caution from superstition.

In the home stretch of the 2004 campaign, expectations of victory among progessives were partly attributable to a projection of our own belief that George W. Bush was a failed president pursuing failed policies which no reasonable person could support. We rationalized the terrible midterm election results of 2002 as an aberration attributable to the proximity of 9/11, and whatever we thought of John Kerry (I happened to like him a lot), figured he was a sufficiently acceptable candidate to harvest the inevitable backlash against Bush.

On a more analytical level, the factor many of us fixated on was the political science truism that undecided voters in the late stages of a campaign tend to break decisively against incumbents, particularly if they are sour about the condition of the country. With undecideds exhibiting very high levels of "wrong track" sentiment at this point four years ago, the thinking was that Kerry would win if he could keep the contest close in the polls, which he did. And that's why those flawed early exit polls had many of us calling friends and relatives and fatuously urging them to ignore the red tide on their television screens, because we had actually won. We were predisposed to ignore adverse evidence, even in the face of actual returns.

Sure, there are three weeks to go in the current campaign, and weird stuff can still happen. But unless you believe in the Bradley Effect (which as Todd notes, is mostly a myth or an anachronism), or really do think the GOP can contrive a terrorist attack or get away with voter suppression or vote-stealing on a vast scale, the situation for Democrats is undoubtedly better than it was in 2004. Polls aside, the "fundamentals"-- including the issue landscape, party ID and registration trends, the unprecedented levels of unhappiness with the incumbent, and the political impact of the economic crisis--are decisively better. And even if you don't drink every drop of koolaid about Obama's "ground game," I don't know a single person in politics who thinks McCain's operation is superior to Obama's. That's totally aside, of course, from the dynamics of the campaign itself, wherein the central contradiction of the McCain candidacy--his effort to simultaneously pose as a supra-party "maverick" while bending to the conservative "base" on every major subject--is blowing up spectacularly almost every day.

Does that mean Democrats can or will start "coasting" and giving the GOP an outside chance to catch up? I don't think so.

We should focus relentlessly on the fact that there's all the difference in the world between a narrow Obama win and mixed "downballot" results, and a big Obama win with House and Senate gains that give Democrats an actual working majority in the former chamber, and a filibuster-proof majority in the latter. It could well be the difference between a successful and unsuccessful Obama administration, and its ability to reverse some of the more toxic Bush-Cheney policies. If you want to dwell on bad memories of elections past, save some mental space for 1994, when the Clinton administration''s early struggles contributed to a disaster that we are only now beginning to overcome.

Avoding irrational optimism is essential right now, but so, too, is avoiding a superstitious pessimism that could obscure the big challenges just ahead.

Technical Difficulties

2008-09-05T19:55:23Z

(Note: this item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist)

This issue isn't important in the larger scheme of things, but as a longtime Democratic convention worker, I did want to comment on the strange technical difficulties that seem to have bedevilled some of the biggest speeches at the Republican Convention.

]]> Yesterday we were informed that Sarah Palin had to fight a runaway teleprompter that didn't pause for applause during her speech. The article on the subject cited "new equipment" as a problem (can't imagine why they'd want to debut it during this particular speech), so maybe the GOPers were using some novel automated 'prompter. The kind of teleprompters used in Denver, and so far as I know, everywhere in the past, are scrolled mechanically by an operator who closely follows the pace of the speaker. Moreover, in Denver a staffer was always on the podium with a hard copy of every speech, ready to run it to the lecturn if there are 'prompter issues (that's what happened briefly with Gov. Ted Strickland). Palin apparently had to rely on an older version of her speech that a campaign staffer happened to have in his coat pocket.

It's to Palin's credit that these problems didn't affect her delivery; indeed, one of her signature lines, about hockey moms being pit bulls with lipstick, was reportedly ad libbed when some sign blocked her sight lines to the 'prompter.

John McCain also appeared to have struggled with his teleprompter, though it's not clear whether he had the same issues as Palin, or just hasn't overcome his longstanding aversion to the technology. As I can tell you from countless rehearsals, some speakers simply can't master the use of side-prompters, those transparent plates at the podium that many viewers mistake for bullet-proof glass shields. In shorter speeches, we always advise them to stick to the center 'prompter, the giant screen at the back of the hall, and not worry about turning from side to side. But that gets pretty tedious-looking in a long speech like McCain's.

'Prompters aside, a lot of bloggers are having great sport today discussing some of the weird backdrops during McCain's speech: first of all, a field of grass that in a narrow-frame shot looked just like the infamous "green screen" that drew so much mockery in an earlier Big Speech by McCain; and then, a photo of a North Hollywood middle school that appeared for no obvious reason, and that was apparently used in a West Wing episode.

Beyond production values and podium mechanics, I wondered several times during the Republican Convention about its speechwriting/vetting/rehearsal system. While some speeches were very good (Palin's, Giuliani's, and Huckabee's, by most accounts), and others erratic but at some points effective (arguably McCain's) there were an unusual number of poorly written and delivered speeches, not just in the bipartisan convention tradition of endless "message" redundancy, but in terms of grammer, coherence, and minimal oratorical competence. Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle's Wednesday speech, just before Rudy Giuliani's successful attack-fest, was one of the worst written and delivered convention addresses I've ever watched or heard. She paused for applause after virtually every line, and often had to wait a while for it. Democratic speakers are always advised to forget about applause unless it's thunderous, since television understates ovations. It really did look like Lingle hadn't rehearsed at all, and that no one with much of an ear had reviewed her text.

There's a lot of talk today that McCain's acceptance speech showed signs of massive overworking, with the emotional power of the Mark Salter ending vitiated by the long, boring policy iteration that preceded it. But in addition, I noticed one very simple speechwriting error: in a relatively long and key passage comparing his views to those of Barack Obama, McCain began with his talking point and then rushed into his construction of Obama's position, eliciting, predictably, a "boo" from the audience. Had he reversed the order, each graph would have elicited a cheer. And that's what you want when you're trying to sound like a post-partisan "maverick" who's fighting "politics as usual."

Again, none of this stuff matters much in the long run. But it's worth noting for Democrats who chronically fear that bad as Republicans are at governing, they're flawless at politics.

UPDATE: It occurred to me after accepting Josh's invitation to cross-post this item that some readers may think I'm breezily commenting on the substance or ideology of the GOP convention rather than its production qualities. Au contraire. My views of what Sarah Palin represents are here. My take on the speeches delivered Wednesday night by Palin and Giuliani is here. And my reaction to McCain's speech, and the fundamental deception it involves, is here.

The Right Fights

2008-05-20T20:43:32Z

Eric has penned a complex book, precisely because it is so comprehensive an analysis of liberalism, its proud past and accomplishments, and its discontents. I agree with Joan that the most controversial of Eric's arguments is that we must rehabilitate and fight for liberalism, while "admitting our mistakes." She calls this a contradiction; I would call it a necessary tension.

Joan's right that some liberal "mistakes" (politically speaking) flow from liberalism's proudest accomplishments. There'd be no backlash without civil rights; no anti-abortion movement without Roe v. Wade; and for that matter, no vast undertow of hostility to government and taxes without liberal policies that helped lift many millions of Americans into the middle (and increasingly upper-middle) class. Some of the recent political weakness of liberalism is largely cyclical, just as the political power of conservatism may not survive an extended period of conservative misgovernment.

]]> But Joan's (and on occasion, Eric's) conviction that liberalism's worst recent trait has defensiveness and an unwillingness to fight is, IMO, an overreaction to a real but hardly dispositive bad habit. Yes, Democrats have learned that there is significant electoral value in articulating and promoting a consistent, principled point of view. But much of that value isn't a matter of "frames" or "dominating the narrative," as we've heard so often in the last few years; its larger importance is in reassuring Americans that we Democrats stand for something larger than the pursuit of power, and can be held accountable for fidelity to our own principles and their distinguished pedigree.

For the same reason, however, there are limits to the political power of coherent ideology, self-confidence, and "fighting" rhetoric. In a representative democracy, liberals also need to be roughly in alignment with a majority of citizens in their values, principles, goals and policies (accepting, of course, that there are times when refusing to bend to the popular will is morally essential, and will be vindicated by history). Indeed, one of contemporary liberalism's great advantages over conservatism, as Jonathan Chait has argued, is its willingness to temper ideology with empirical data. That's why we are proud to call ourselves "the reality-based community."

And that leads to another small but significant disagreement I have with Eric's line of reasoning. He's convinced that the "L-word" must be rehabilitated, in no small part because it cannot be evaded without cowardly, evasive, and politically damaging behavior. His exhibit A is John Kerry's inability to deal with the 2004 claim (largely based on a poorly developed National Journal rating system) that he was "the most liberal Senator."

This is of more than historical interest, since Barack Obama is getting hammered with the same claim based on the same shoddy "evidence."

So should Obama "embrace" and "redefine" the liberal label, in the course of a relatively brief general election campaign? Perhaps. If any politician has the rhetorical skills to do that, he does. But before reaching that conclusion, it's worth noting that in the phrase "most liberal Senator," the first adjective is probably more important than the second. Many Americans are nervous about anyone running for president who is the "most" according to any ideological measurement, regardless of its nature. By world standards, we are a relatively non-ideological people who want leaders willing to "get things done" and occasionally accept less than ideal outcomes.

Therein lies the tension I think Eric's book demonstrates: liberals must be sufficiently ideological--and proud of it--to represent a coherent and compelling point of view, but we must also show that, unlike George W. Bush, we can admit mistakes as they occur, and also accept we don't, as Eric puts it, "know everything."

In the extended intra-Democratic debate on what we can learn from the successes and failures of the conservative movement, in which Eric's book represents something of a watershed, I hope we are learning that ideological rigor and strict partisanship--the "fighting liberal" approach to politics--is necessary but not of itself sufficient for victory or for good government. Where possible, we need to engage in the right fights, where our values, the aspirations of the American people, and historical opportunity, all converge.

Obama and McGovern

2008-04-23T22:30:05Z

At the risk of developing a reputation for using The Coffee House as a means for commenting on intramural discussions at The New Republic, I do think there's a lot of value in today's exchange between John Judis and Jon Chait on the former's use of George McGovern's campaign as an appropriate metaphor for fears about Barack Obama's electoral strengths and weaknesses, if only because it nicely crystallizes a lot of issues that have been floating around for many months.

I agree with Chait's two main objections to Judis' use of the McGovern analogy: (1) the "McGovern coalition" of younger voters, minorities, and upscale professionals is arguably a whole lot bigger than it was in 1972; and (2) Obama's voter base in primaries isn't necessarily going to be his voter base in a general election campaign. But I'd add a few other objections of my own.

]]> (3) It's sometimes forgotten that George McGovern didn't actually perform that well among "McGovern Coalition" voters. He lost the "youth vote" decisively, and showed some weakness as compared to past Democratic nominees among minority voters. There's nothing about Obama's primary election performance to suggest that he's going to have problems with either category.

(4) McGovern's campaign made a variety of big strategic and tactical mistakes that Obama's unlikely to replicate. Barack Obama is not going to deliver his nomination acceptance speech at 2:45 a.m. EST (even if he did, it would be viewed by many millions the next day on cable and YouTube). Nor is he likely to choose as his running-mate an unvetted politician who turns out to have a string of drunk-driving citations, or has repeatedly undergone electro-shock therapy. (If Obama's running-mate did prove to be weak, I doubt he'd say he's behind him or her "1000 percent" before unceremoniously dumping the poor sap, and then choosing a substitute, after repeated public rebuffs from others, whose media nickname was "Bozo."). I cite these mistakes not out of any disrespect for Sen. McGovern, for whom I was a loyal precinct captain in 1972. But his campaign did suffer from a notable plague-of-frogs series of misfortunes, some self-generated, some simply unique.

(5) The 1972 campaign was waged against an incumbent president whose approval ratings rose steadily throughout the year, and who manipulated both the economy and the Vietnam War ruthlessly and successfully to make himself virtually unbeatable. Obama's running against a Republican struggling to both identify with and separate himself from an incumbent president whose approval ratings will never significantly recover; who's already tried and failed to stimulate the economy; and who has zero chance of credibly declaring before Election Day that "peace is at hand."

(6) The 1972 campaign also occurred at the worst possible phase (for Democrats) of a long realignment of the presidential vote, exacerbated by the shooting of George Wallace, whose otherwise likely third-party candidacy would have depressed Nixon's vote totals in the South and elsewhere. Today, even a precise recapitulation of every mistake by the McGovern campaign would produce far fewer Democratic defections.

None of this should suggest that Judis isn't making some valid points about Obama's potential general-election vulnerabilities; he is, and I hope Obama's campaign is paying attention. But associating Obama with a forty-nine-state blowout thirty-six years ago creates more confusion than enlightenment in meeting the general election challenge.

The Line You May Not Cross

2008-04-18T19:20:16Z

I'm doing this post in no small part because I've never been a Lieberman-hater, a New Republic-hater, a Marty Peretz-hater, or a Jamie Kirchick-hater. Indeed, I've defended Lieberman against some of the sillier attacks on his past (if not his recent past), such as the idea that he lost Florida for his own ticket in 2000. And I continue to read and appreciate The New Republic, despite the occasional expression of views with which I don't agree.

But Kirchick's current argument at The Plank, in an exchange with Jonathan Chait and with (most recently) Isaac Chotiner, defending the proposition that Joe Lieberman can be a "loyal Democrat" and also endorse John McCain for president, is just bizarre.

]]> Here's the coda of Kirchick's apologia for Lieberman:

Obama talks about bipartisanship. And so I find it ironic that his supporters -- who tout this talk and his ability to "transcend" this, that, and the other -- would denigrate the one guy who's actually endorsed someone from the other party. Maybe bipartisanship only works in one direction. Agree or disagree with Lieberman, you have to give him points for following his convictions. Should Lieberman really have endorsed the candidate that he considers lesser? Is reflexive partisanship something to applaud?

This argument conflates "bipartisanship" with abandonment of party. It's one thing to cross party lines to support this or that policy initiative or legislation. It's another thing altogether to oppose your supposed party in the contest that more than anything else, defines "party" to begin with. And it has ever been thus.

Back when Lieberman first endorsed McCain, Ken Rudin of NPR did a useful analysis of precedents. The last example he could find of a Member of Congress endorsing the opposing party's presidential candidate without retribution was in 1956, when Adam Clayton Powell, at that point the only African-American Member of Congress, endorsed Eisenhower. You can understand why Democrats might have refrained from punishing him. But since then, three congressional Democrats endorsed other candidates (John Bell Williams of Mississippi and Albert Watson of SC in 1964, and John Rarick in 1968), and all were stripped of their seniority in the House. Unlike Lieberman, all three were, if nothing else, faithfully reflecting the views of their constituents.

Since 1968, there have been, quite literally, hundreds if not thousands of Democratic and Republican officeholders who in one election or the other, privately preferred the other party's presidential candidate. A huge number of Republicans didn't endorse or campaign for Barry Goldwater in 1964, but nor did they endorse or campaign for Lyndon Johnson. And despite the incredible weakness of the national Democratic Party in the South and West during the 1984 and 1988 presidential cycles, you didn't see any public defections from the then-robust ranks of elected Democrats, either.

This is, in sum, the Line You May Not Cross if you choose to identify yourself as a Republican or as a Democrat. John McCain surely understands that; had he followed the entreaties of some of his own staff in 2004 by endorsing--much less joining the ticket of--John Kerry, he would have been stripped of his party prerogatives instantly and eternally.

The fact that Joe Lieberman hasn't just endorsed McCain, but has actively campaigned with him from New Hampshire to Florida to Iraq, and has also made it clear he'd be happy to speak at the Republican National Convention on his behalf, is an indisputable self-expulsion from the Democratic ranks, certainly made no less definitive by his semi-self-expulsion in 2006, when he chose to run as an independent against the winner of the Democratic primary in Connecticut, Ned Lamont. And no measure of "friendship" for McCain can possibly justify his recent remarks entertaining the possibility that Barack Obama, who endorsed him in that same primary, may be a Marxist.

We can all understand why Harry Reid, whose Majority Leadership depends on Lieberman's current cooperation, hasn't already indicated Joe would lose his seniority and committee chairmanship if, as appears almost certain, Democrats pick up at least a few Senate seats in November. And I for one don't doubt that Lieberman does indeed vote with Democrats on most issues in the Senate. But sorry, no degree of "independence" or "bipartisanship" or "personal friendship" can justify what he's done in supporting the Republican candidate for president. He's picked sides in the one choice that most defines party, and those who continue to admire him should accept the consequences. I for one would respect Joe Lieberman as a Republican with enlightened views on a variety of issues more than Joe Lieberman as someone claiming to represent a fictional group of "loyal Democrats" supporting John McCain.

Debating Electability

2008-04-17T23:18:32Z

George Stephanopoulos has addressed criticism of his and Charles Gibson's conduct as moderators in last night's ABC-sponsored Democratic candidate debate, in the form of an interview with TalkingPointsMemo's Greg Sargent. And George went straight to the "electability" defense:

Stephanopoulos strongly defended his handling of the debate. He dismissed criticism that it had focused too heavily on "gotcha" questions, arguing that they had gone to the heart of the "electability" that, he said, is forefront in the minds of voters evaluating the two Dems.

Ah yes, "electability," which makes discussion of any criticism of a candidate, frivolous or serious, instantly relevant, on the theory that the opposition will hit the nominee with all this crap, so we might as well see how they handle its endless repetition today.

]]> There are several problems with this line of "reasoning" that arrogates to journalists (not to mention the candidates themselves) the right--nay, the responsibility--to ape the nastiest hit tactics they can imagine emanating from conservatives later this year.

First of all, why is Stephanopoulos all that sure that "electability" is in the "forefront in the minds of voters evaluating" Obama and Clinton? Maybe he thinks that's the only significant difference between the two candidates, and maybe he's tired of hearing their substantive pitches, but that's not necessarily true of actual voters who have heard far less of their policy ideas lately than any manner of gotcha stuff or "symbolism."

Second of all, "electability" is a highly speculative concept at this stage of the presidential election cycle. Who knows how "electable" Obama, Clinton or McCain is going to look in October? I don't; you don't; George Stephanopoulos doesn't; and grilling the candidates on their alleged "vulnerabilities" doesn't cast much real light on that question, either.

Third of all, to the extent that we can measure "electability," there's a form of evidence that's a lot more persuasive than how Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton answer nasty, contrived questions. It's called general election trial polling. And so far, both candidates remain highly competitive, in roughly equal measure, with John McCain, even though McCain is benefitting from (a) an early nomination win, (b) years of positive media attention, (c) a heavy media focus on Democratic infighting, and (d) relatively low levels of scrutiny of the relationship between his current platform and his record. Unless the entire general election is going to be fought out over Barack Obama's attitude towards flag pins or Hillary Clinton's experience one day in Kosovo, then it's hard to understand why such matters are the key to measuring "electability" for the Democratic voters of Pennslyvania.

And last of all, if "electability" was indeed the focus of ABC's moderators last night, did it occur to them that asking the candidates how, exactly, they'd criticize McCain and his platform and record on this or that issue might be relevant to the topic? After all, the general election isn't going to be merely an extended interview of the two candidates by the news media over their personal "stories." What do they think of McCain's new tax plan? How about his difficult-to-reconcile position on torture by the military and torture by the CIA? How will they handle his profession of being simultaneously a "maverick" and a rigorous foot-solider of the conservative movement? What if anything will they say about his foreign policy advisors? And on and on.

The more you look at it, the "electability" defense for endlessly superficial debates--and media "coverage" of campaigns in general--doesn't make much sense. If George just came right out and said his network needed "fireworks" to boost ratings, it would sound more plausible.

Cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist

Obama and His Church

2008-03-19T00:19:18Z

In dealing with the firestorm of criticism over the views of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama had a choice of approaches. He was probably smart to focus on race; the subject has hung over his campaign in positive and negative ways from the beginning, and he's now made it clear that the legacy of racism--not just Democratic and Republican gridlock or the narcissistic baby boomer conflicts of the 1990s--is part and parcel of the "past" he is promising to help transcend through acts of reconciliation.

But the Wright controversy also touches on religion, and in a few brief references in his speech, Obama hinted at an alternative approach he probably considered, and might even return to in the future.

]]> Here's what Obama had to say about Trinity UCC Church and its pastor:

The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God’s work here on Earth – by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS....
Like other predominantly black churches across the country, Trinity embodies the black community in its entirety – the doctor and the welfare mom, the model student and the former gang-banger. Like other black churches, Trinity’s services are full of raucous laughter and sometimes bawdy humor. They are full of dancing, clapping, screaming and shouting that may seem jarring to the untrained ear. The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and yes, the bitterness and bias that make up the black experience in America.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children...I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community.

On one level, this is a statement of racial solidarity. But on another, it's an argument that the church is the embodiment of the community it serves, with all its imperfections, which Obama bluntly describes. This is a very old, very "Catholic" idea of the church as an organic expression of "the people" as they happen to exist. It is likely to be baffling to those white Protestant Americans who think of church membership as more of a matter of consumer preference, doctrinal agreement or family heritage (none of which seem to have been major factors in Obama's original "conversion" at Trinity UCC) and who also probably don't understand why Obama didn't just choose a different congregation the first time he heard something objectionable from Wright's pulpit.

The difference in perspective, which Obama indirectly alludes to, is the unique community leadership role played in this country by the African-American church. In Jim Crow society, the church was often the only strong institution in many African-American communities. It had to play a social and even political role, and it's no accident that it supplied most of the leaders of the early civil rights movement, along with its anthems and martyrs.

The sense of community responsibility is sometimes felt with special poignance by the African-Americans of the UCC (successors of the Congregationalists), long identified with the highest levels of the black bourgeiosie. That seems to have been true of Trinity. Jack and Jill Politics blogger Rikyrah said this about the church in a post at OpenLeft yesterday:

Trinity UCC is about empowerment. It is not full of 'radicals'. It's full of 'Strivers' like Barack and Michelle Obama. It is full of what has to be called ' The Talented Tenth'. These folks are not radicals; they are the most connected to 'The System' within the Black community....
Wright demanded of his congregation that they have an active part in the world in which they live. Trinity is one of the most affluent congregations, regardless of race, in the entire state. That they show some self-respect; that Dr. Wright, and now Rev. Moss challenge them to give back - how is that a bad thing?

When they were building their new multi-million sanctuary, they could have gone anywhere in the city or suburbs - they would have been welcome. THEY CHOSE to locate, literally across the railroad tracks, from a housing project. This was a display of their commitment to the community.

But there's another important thing to say about Rev. Wright that's as much about religion as about race. In his offensive comments about America, he wasn't just making an inflammatory political statement. He was overtly adopting a prophetic stance. "God Damn America" isn't just a profane and angry set of three words; it is quite literally an invocation for God to chastise what Wright considered a wicked society, much as his namesake, the Jewish Prophet Jeremiah, called on God to bring his own people back into obedience by subjecting them to the wrath of the Babylonians.

The prophetic stance has a very old history in Protestantism, and in fact, is the implicit and sometimes explicit foundation for the current political radicalism of the Christian Right. While conservative evangelical pastors have so far as I know avoided calling on God to "Damn America" (though Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson came very close to it when initially blaming 9/11 on the country's sinful ways), the phrase may well be in the back of their minds as they describe America as a depraved country that casually kills its children by the millions, persecutes Christians, and seeks to destroy the family. Those conservative commentators who have expressed so much shock and outrage at Wright's words need to look around at their comrades on the cultural barricades.

So while the saga of Barack Obama, his church and his pastor is most definitely about race, it's also about the inherently uneasy relationship of Christian believers to "this world." As a politician who has shown a remarkable degree of depth in weighing into the usually shallow waters of debate on the subject of religion and politics, Obama might want to address this subject more directly at some point. I don't know anyone better equipped to, say, compare and contrast Wright's prophetic stance to that of Martin Luther King, Jr., who moved and changed America instead of damning it--precisely what Barack Obama says he intends to do as president of the United States.

Convention Chaos Theory

2008-02-05T21:17:09Z

Now that an extended Democratic nomination contest appears almost certain, there's been an explosion of renewed interest in the "brokered convention" scenario, which really just means a nomination that's in doubt after the primaries and caucuses are over. The big topics (explored especially well at OpenLeft.com) have been the battle over the 796 superdelegates, who are not bound by election results, and the possibility of a pre-convention or convention credentials fight over the Michigan and Florida delegations, who currently have no seats (or even hotel rooms) in Denver.

There's a more mundane but still significant problem with the situation: who will plan and execute the convention itself in the absence of a putative nominee?

]]> National political conventions, despite the increasingly meagre live network television exposure they secure, are large, complex operations. Much of the initial preparation--fundraising, logistics, and site development--are done many months in advance, by local committees working with national party committees. But when it comes to the really crucial functions of a convention, such as who will speak when, what they will say, and how the whole show is presented to television viewers and to a massive international news media presence: every decision, major or minor, has in recent years been made with totalitarian authority by the putative nominee's staff.

As it happens, I've been a small cog in the machine during the last five Democratic Conventions, working in the script and speechwriting shops. To a large extent, convention operations are run by a floating circus of people, most of whom have been doing this as long as or longer than I have, who have regular day jobs and report for convention duty every four years. While the nominee's staff don't necessarily involve themselves in every minute detail, they have total veto power over everything that happens at a convention, and usually do micromanage the schedule, the speakers' list, and most of all the message. In 2004, for example, the Kerry-Edwards campaign set up a two-tiered vetting system for every speech (the second tier, where I worked, controlled what went on the teleprompter), and imposed strict message discipline on even the least important afternoon two-minute address (Al Sharpton was the one speaker who defied both the schedule and the message rules, with electrifying effect). All media communications were coordinated by the nominee's staff as well. And while much of this "controlling" activity happened at the convention itself, or in the week before it, the systems obviously had to be set up much earlier.

So: who's going to make all these decisions, and set up these systems, if the nominee isn't known until right before the convention, or until the convention itself? In theory, the DNC would step in, but keep in mind that every single DNC member is also a super-delegate and thus an actual or potential candidate partisan. And it's not as though there's any sort of generic schedule or message that can be planned that might not compromise one candidate or another, or the party as a whole

It gets worse: the last really serious platform fight at a Democratic Convention was in 1968. Indeed, the platform committee presentation is typically made to an empty convention hall in the middle of the day, and begins with a motion to dispense reading of the document, perhaps fluffed up by a short thematic speech. If the nomination contest is still in any doubt, platform fights might very well serve as maneuvers by one or both of the candidates to pry lose delegates, none of whom, BTW, will be bound by convention rules to stay with their pledged candidate (most of the non-superdelegates will have been chosen carefully by campaigns, and some may be bound by state laws and party rules). Who even remembers how to manage a platform fight? Who will plan the timing and structure? Nobody knows.

Moreover, in an open convention, every single speaker could represent a time bomb. In the recent past, speakers methodically echoed the convention message set by the putative nominee, and concluded every speech with a ritualistic invocation of the names on the ticket. What if many or most of the speeches tout one candidate over another? Will there be fights over the candidate preference of every politician seeking to get on the schedule? Will delegates and guests get into cheering contests after every speech? Nobody knows that, either.

Maybe, perhaps even probably, none of this chaos will ensue; with only two viable candidates for president, the odds of an open or "brokered" convention remain quite low, and really depend on so close a race that superdelegates or disputed delegations hold the balance of power. And perhaps the excitement associated with a truly deliberative convention outweighs all the concerns I've mentioned.

But it is time for Democrats to start thinking about these decisions, lest the convention devolve from excitement to a big, confusing, and divisive waste of precious time.

The Left's Obama Problem

2007-11-15T18:58:21Z

With another Democratic candidate debate on tap in Nevada later today, you can bet Barack Obama is going to get questions about his proposal for modifying the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes. But it's important to understand why this is such a big deal for a lot of progressive Democrats. His proposal isn't the controversial thing (though it certainly would be in a general election campaign, where it would be hammered by Republicans as a tax increase); it's his decision to raise the subject at all, and particularly his use of the word "crisis" to describe the status of the Social Security system.

The immediate reason for this reaction is obvious enough; by the well-earned end of Bush's 2005 drive to divert payroll tax funds to create private retirement accounts, Democratic critics of his plan were devoting just as much time denying there was a Social Security solvency problem as they were attacking the plan's baleful consequences. So ironically, a proposal by Obama that's "Left" in terms of its specifics (avoiding any benefit changes while making the payroll tax burden more progressive) is drawing fire from the Left itself as a heretical concession to the rationale for Bush's proposal, and to those much-derided "Centrist" media types who like to talk about entitlement reform. And for that reason, the reaction among left-bent Democrats to Obama's Social Security rap provides a microcosm of the exquisite ambivalence they are experiencing over the Obama candidacy in its entirety.

]]> For an idea of the significance invested in this issue by many progressive netroots activists, check out this person-to-person grilling that Obama received from MyDD's Jonathan Singer:

Barack Obama: I think the point you're making is why talk about it right now. Is that right?
Jonathan Singer: Yeah. And why use the term "crisis"?

Obama: It is a long-term problem. I know that people, including you, are very sensitive to the concern that we repeat anything that sounds like George Bush. But I have been very clear in fighting privatization. I have been adamant about the fact that I am opposed to it. What I believe is that it is a long-term problem that we should deal with now. And the sooner the deal with it then the better off it's going to be.

So the notion that somehow because George Bush was trying to drum up fear in order to execute [his] agenda means that Democrats shouldn't talk about it at all I think is a mistake. This is part of what I meant when I said we're constantly reacting to the other side instead of setting our own terms for the debate, but also making sure we are honest and straight forward about the issues that we're concerned about.

Singer's take on this conversation?

In all it's not everything that I wanted to hear. But perhaps more importantly, Obama had the opportunity to hear that folks don't want him talking about a non-existent "crisis" in Social Security. And hopefully, he will pay heed to that sentiment.

There, in a nutshell, is the lingering concern a lot of folks on the Left have with Barack Obama: his policies are suitably progressive, but his framing of those policies, from his constant invocation of bipartisanship to his occasional violation of progressive taboos (e.g., lecturing teachers about their opposition to merit pay, and bloggers about their "incivility", and consorting with anti-gay gospel singers), makes them suspect he's really talking past them in order to appeal to the David Broders of the political world.

The recent buzz surrounding the possibility that Obama's on course to provide a real challenge to Hillary Clinton has brought these conflicted feelings about Obama on the Left to a head once again. And the "crisis" over Obama is heightened by the fact that John Edwards is simultaneously offering, not just the progressive "steak" but all the netroots-style "sizzle" any Broder-hating blogger could ever ask for, line for line and word for word.

As we get closer to actual voting, the Left's "Obama Problem" is becoming acute. At one site alone, OpenLeft, and on one day, you have Matt Stoller citing the candidate's new package of technology proposals as the reason he's now leaning towards support for Obama, and Chris Bowers hoping against hope that Obama, despite himself, could marshal the creative class/minority working class coalition that Chris considers the future of progressive politics. Both these gents have strongly criticized and (in Chris' case) written off Obama in the very recent past, mainly for the heresies cited above.

I'm discussing this phenomenon mainly to crystallize the subtext of much of the netroots debate on Obama, Edwards, and the entire Democratic nominating contest. Does it really matter in terms of actual voters? You'd have to guess John Edwards thinks so, given his ever-more-faithful channeling of netroots-approved rhetoric these days. And to the extent that everyone agrees media coverage of the campaign does move votes, it's not so strange that New Media coverage would have an impact as well.

But votes will move media, too. If Edwards wins in Iowa, it will inevitably be viewed as an ideological as well as organizational triumph, and even if Obama survives to fight again, his support on the Left will rapidly dissipate. If Obama wins Iowa, and gets the desired one-on-one with HRC, the Left's Obama Problem may be resolved in the opposite direction, though the agony inflicted by Obama's "centrist" rhetorical tendencies could grow with the realization that the Left has nowhere else to go.

In the meantime, this "primary within the primary" will continue. And so, too, will the quieter but still very interesting internal debate among Democratic "centrists" about Obama and his rivals, a topic I'll write about in the near future.

Originally posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Let the Terrorists Pick Our Next President

2007-10-29T22:05:53Z

One of the most infuriating habits of latter-day conservative "analysts" of national security issues is the "emboldening our enemies" theme. You know: Anyone who disagrees with a policy of Maximum Violence in dealing with Iraq, Iran, Terrorism, Islamic radicalism, or presumably, Original Sin, is "emboldening our enemies" and is objectively a traitor.

Numbed as we all are by this sort of rhetoric, it takes a lot to stir fresh outrage. But like an electric cattle prod plunged into my morning bathwater, Deroy Murdock's syndicated column today did the trick. It was entitled "Terrorists Prefer Hillary," and subtitled "And They'd Rather See Rudy Dead Than President." And it led me to wonder: Why don't we just hold a referendum of Islamic terrorists, and let them choose our next president?

]]> To be sure, Murdock is a professional shill for Rudy Giuliani, and to be certain sure, his column is based on the recent book, Schmoozing With Terrorists, by the hard-right WorldNetDaily's Jerusalem bureau chief, Aaron Klein (over to you, M.J. Rosenberg!).

Klein's shtick is conducting interviews with Palestinian guerilla leaders and reporting their pithy thoughts to horror-stricken Israelis and Americans. When asked about the U.S. presidential contest, they obligingly tell Klein they love Hillary Clinton and really hate Rudy Giuliani. Indeed, in Murdock's account, they play their roles so well that you have to suspect parody. Islamic Jihad's Abu Ayman tells Klein he feels "emboldened" by HRC's talk about withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Better yet, Jihad Jaara of the Al Aqsa Martyr's Brigade (the commander, we are helpfully informed, of the seige of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002) decrees: "All Americans must vote Democrat." Who knew Islamic terrorists had adopted the favored conservative slur for the Democratic Party of the United States?

There's lots more in Murdock's piece about the fear and hatred Palestinian fighters express towards his hero, Rudy. But let's get down to the lick-log. Since the views of "Islamofascists" are supposed to determine U.S. policy towards the Middle East, and the Middle East is all that matters, then why not cut out Middle America and let Klein's interviewees make the pick for the presidency? Anyone they like must be defeated; anyone they hate must be elected. Sacrificing sovereignty and democracy is a small price to pay for a bold stroke against our enemies. Call it the Right's "global test" for U.S. elections.

Conservatives like Murdock probably wouldn't want to take this line of reasoning too far. Hillary Clinton's views on abortion, gay and lesbian rights, freedom of expression, and church-state (or mosque-state) separation probably wouldn't poll that well among Islamic extremists. Nor would her gender, for that matter, or her unflinching support for the legitimacy of Israel and its security needs, or her hostile attitudes towards Iran.

But hey, why sweat the details? Next time you hear a conservative pundit or politician talk about Democrats "emboldening the enemy," just say: "Okay, let's put it to a vote! Terrorists rule!"

The Case For Deferring Some "Arguments"

2007-09-27T20:58:39Z

With the partial exception of Joan McCarter's excellent post, it appears the discussion over Matt Bai's book has drifted away from the internal party "argument" I first posted about, and towards the external "argument" Matt urges Democrats to take more seriously. I will probably have my Centrist Wonk credentials revoked for saying this, but I pretty much agree with Mark and Garance that Democrats have a perfectly adequate "take on the world" (give or take some important foreign policy details) to offer in 2008 unless Republicans begin to offer something different. But I'd also suggest that it makes a lot of sense to defer some parts of the internal argument over the external argument until we've run Republicans out of power.

]]> On the first point, Matt's implicit fear seems to be that Democrats could lose the argument with post-Bush Republicans if we can't shake off our focus on simply opposing Bush. As expressed in his book, that fear probably reflected a reasonable and widespread assumption that the GOP might succeed in nominating a presidential candidate who could distance himself from Bush, and cynically offer a "fresh start" after the trauma of the Bush years.

But that's not how it seems to be playing out, is it? At the moment, the entire viable Republican presidential field is competing to embrace a more-competent-and-more-right-wing version of Bushism. Their only "argument" is that the country needs less compassion and more conservatism, and maybe a war with Iran to redeem the failed war in Iraq. And more tax cuts, of course, and perhaps a revamped tax system that exempts wealth, personal and corporate, from taxation altogether. On social issues, the intra-Republican argument is between those who want to recriminalize abortions and demonize gays and lesbians via legislation, and those who prefer to do it by judicial appointments.

As a hard, cold, political reality, how much innovation do Democrats actually need to rebut that "argument?" And how much time and energy should we devote to internal fights over the details of our own argument? Not a lot, I'd suggest.

But to get to the second point, my main worry about the netroots and other unhappy Democratic outsiders with respect to "ideas" isn't that they don't have them or care about them (as Joan argued, and Matt conceded, they have lots of them if you look outside the purely political sites). It's that Bush and company have so contaminated the ground of policy discussion that Democrats might make bad choices if forced to thrash out the external argument in every detail.

I've long felt that Democratic centrists are the donkeys who should hate Bush more than anyone, since he's managed to slime a vast variety of potentially positive policy ideas with his toxic touch. Social Security reform? Forget it after Bush's reactionary 2005 proposal. Accountability-based education reform? Heavily discredited by Bush's implementation of NCLB. Charter public schools? Conflated by Bush with unconditional subsidies for private schools. A technology-based Revolution in Military Affairs? Totally discredited by Rumsfeld's clammy embrace in Iraq. Tort reform? Also totally discredited through its misuse by Republicans as a substitute for real health care reform. The very idea of "bipartisanship" on policy issues has been destroyed by Bush and company, who have done everything possible to validate Grover Norquist's contemptuous definition of bipartisanship as "date-rape."

I could go on and on, but you get the point. To the extent that completely rational and justifiable Bush-hatred has constrained progressive positions on policy issues, we can't have the argument we need internally until we reclaim the White House and expand our grip on Congress.

Then we must indeed renew our various arguments, and thrash them out, and it may not look pretty, and many of us may be at each other's throats. But I'd personally be much happier with having that argument in the context of a Democratic administration, and in a Congress when Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid don't look so futile on so many issues. And the kind of policy discussions that Matt Bai--and I--consider essential in the long run would most definitely thrive in that far less polluted air.

Insurgencies and Establishments

2007-09-26T18:29:55Z

The Ted Nordhaus/Michael Schellenberger post casts a different, and interesting light on Matt Bai's excellent book, and his exposition on the various elements of the Democratic insurgency that's gained steam over the last few years.

The Reapers (as they are affectionately known in environmental circles) seize on Matt's concerns about the inability of insurgents to develop a coherent external "argument" for Democrats, and implicitly characterize said insurgents as reflecting the let's-all-link-arms-and-protect-our-programs interest-group liberalism that has dominated the party in the past.

I don't really agree with that characterization if we're talking about the netroots, but it does raise some important questions about the netroots' own characterization of the "D.C. Democratic Establishment."

]]> To the extent that key elements of the netroots, the Democracy Alliance, MoveOn, and the Howard Dean-era DNC, think of themselves as fighting a failed "D.C. Democratic Establishment," it is reasonably important to understand whose gates are being crashed.

It's worth mentioning that in the best-known manifesto of the netroots, two of the major characters in Matt's book, Markos Moulitsas and Jerome Armstrong, spend a chapter excoriating interest-group liberalism, with extensive positive citation of the Reapers' work.

Indeed, in a later chapter that focuses on the hated DLC, Moulitsas and Armstrong concede that this particular bastion of the "D.C. Democratic Establishment" used to do useful work opposing interest-group liberalism as well, before joining and even exemplifying the Establishment. But did the Clintonian "centrist" element of the party really join or displace the pre-Clinton interest-group-liberal Establishment in the party? Or do the two strands of Establishment thinking persist? And if the latter is true, are the "insurgents" all fighting the same "Establishment?"

That question is germane today given the widespread netroots anger over the handling of the Iraq issue in Congress by leaders who (particularly if we're talking about Nancy Pelosi) can't rationally be accused of being Clintonistas, DLCers, or even "centrists." If anything, they represent the "interest-group liberalism" that predated Clinton, and whose most consistent feature is the (usually unsuccessful) effort to find some way to neutralize difficult issues like national security and win elections on the domestic priorities that tend to unite a coalition of progressive interest groups around a programmatic agenda.

In his book, Matt Bai often comments (unfairly, I think) on the lack of interest of Democratic insurgents in political history prior to the Clinton impeachment saga. Of greater importance is the typical insurgent take on very recent political history that ignores or conflates the two major strands of the "D.C. Democratic Establishment."

I can't count the number of times I've read blogs or comments on blogs that suggest that "Clintonians," having lost Congress and a majority of the states in 1994, proceeded to screw up the elections of 2000, 2002 and 2004. The 2000 and 2004 Democratic presidential campaigns were dominated by a strategist, Bob Shrum, whose most remarkable accomplishment in a long career was his complete lack of involvement in the two successful Clinton campaigns (he was, indeed, an avator of the "D.C. Democratic Establishment" resistance to Clinton during the 1990s). The 2002 Democratic midterm campaign was the ultimate reflection of the change-the-subject strategy of interest-group liberals who thought agreeing with Bush on national security, or just refusing to talk about it, would make the elections revolve around prescription drug coverage, the obsessive Democratic theme of that election.

This rather important detail about the "D.C. Democratic Establishment" emerges in The Argument mainly through the eyes of Bill Clinton, who seems frustrated to the point of fury by the refusal of insurgents to see him as a fellow reformer whose accomplishments have been obscured by later Democratic failures for which he doesn't accept blame.

If a more nuanced view of the Establishment is helpful, it also helps promote a more nuanced view of the insurgency. I don't know about other readers, but Matt Bai's extensive coverage of the Democracy Alliance led me to think that the "billionaires" of his narrative have little in common with the netroots other than opposition to the war in Iraq and cultural liberalism. Many of the heavily privileged donors Bai talks to and about seem to embrace the interest-group-liberalism wing of the Establishment, and share its distinctive belief that there's nothing wrong with progressivism that some shiny new marketing can't fix.

And even within the netroots, some of those who favor a more ideological approach to netroots advocacy are actually arguing for a tacit alliance with interest-group liberals against the Clintonistas.

Aside from Bai's and my own efforts to slice-and-dice insurgents and establishmentarians, I'll conclude by suggesting that there are some pretty important parties to the intra-Democratic "argument" that don't get much attention in these sorts of accounts. There are the thousands of state and local Democratic elected officials who aren't part of the Beltway crowd, but who also haven't in large numbers identified with the netroots or other insurgents. And there are, more importantly, millions of Democratic rank-and-file voters whose main concern about elite "arguments" is the hope that we'll get over them in time to actually win the next elections.

Bulldozers and Barriers

2007-09-07T14:14:13Z

There’s another important reason for Democrats to maintain a “big tent” party beyond those already discussed in this conversation about Todd’s book: if we want to prevent conservative “bulldozers” in the future, we need to embrace traditions and institutions that empower diverse points of view, sometimes at the expense of quick or thorough progressive policy achievements.

It was no accident that Bush-era conservatives steadily descended into thuggish, scofflaw behavior at home and abroad. Building their “ bulldozer” required them to brush aside a vast array of traditional limitations on the exercise of raw power, ranging from international agreements and alliances to the U.S. Constitution itself, along with basic respect for facts and reasoned debate.

Reviving these barriers to “bulldozing” is a task for progressives as urgent as the pursuit of any specific policy goal, however worthy. But we can’t limit the other side without in some respects limiting ourselves

]]> In his post, Matt Yglesias expressed a widely-held sense of frustration that a “big tent” party may have to tolerate people who don’t share his priorities, or maybe even his values, and who enjoy disproportionate power in Congress. Barring a constitutional reformation of how the various branches of the federal government operate, that will often be the case, no matter how energetically progressives “whip” Democratic elected officials or seek to draw a sharper definition of what it means to be a good Democrat.

And in her post, Digby eloquently explains the reflexive hostility of many netroots activists to “big tent” rhetoric, particularly when deployed by self-appointed “gatekeeper” elites with a poor record of effective opposition to the “bulldozer.” But when the final gate is crashed, and the last Beltway pundit has shuffled off to self-absorbed retirement, there will remain legitimate differences of opinion among Democrats on subjects large and small that can’t be dismissed as representing cowardice or corruption.

Indeed, you hear those differences of opinion every day in the progressive blogosphere, which, despite all the talk about movement-building and Noise Machines, is itself a “big tent.” The only “compromise” really required of netroots activists in the maintenance of a “big tent” Democratic Party is to extend their own community’s implicit code of open debate in which no one, whether it’s a U.S. Senator or Markos Moulitsas, gets to pull rank and squelch diverse points of view.

Every time I get into one of these “who’s a real Democrat” arguments, I think of an apocryphal tale many years ago of a sociologist whose research into the “Protestant work ethic” led her to Wrigley Field on a summer afternoon, curious about the 30,000 or so fans who didn’t appear to have a day job. She asked one grizzled Bleacher Bum about his apparent defiance of the “Protestant work ethic,” and he replied: “Look, lady, I’m a bad Catholic. Sometimes I’m even an atheist Catholic. But I’m no goddamned Protestant.”

There will always be a few self-identified but self-exiled Democrats who have to be ejected from the flock, but by and large, those who are clear that they are “no goddamned Republican” should be embraced. And a big part of being “no goddamned Republican” is to eschew the “bulldozer” tactics of the latter-day GOP, and its assault on principles and institutions necessary to restrain raw power and give democracy a fighting chance.

Impeachment Questions

2007-07-26T15:35:14Z

Citing the Clinton precedent, M.J. Rosenberg writes:

"[I]mpeachment is no longer the political nuclear bomb it once was, especially if one knows in advance that conviction and removal from office is unlikely to occur. Accordingly, impeachment proceedings are essentially the best means of getting information to the public which is otherwise unavailable."

I'm glad M.J. is beginning with the premise that actual impeachment and removal of Bush ain't happening, at least based on the current dynamics. I do not share his optimism about impeachment proceedings serving as a "lever" to bring Bush to heel, given everything we know about the man. Nor do I really understand Josh's suggestion that initiating a pre-doomed impeachment effort will somehow serve as a legal precedent reducing the impact of Bush's scofflaw behavior.

So the fundamental question remains whether Democrats want to take up the "I-word" as a political exercise. And other questions quickly follow.

]]> From the Clinton experience, we know that public opinion turned decisively against the impeachment effort once it became obvious the Senate wasn't going to convict him (which wasn't entirely obvious at the beginning of the saga), for the simple reason that the whole thing looked like a waste of time. So what will happen to the current, surprisingly strong public support for impeachment if the extreme unlikelihood of a successful outcome is conceded from the get-go?

A second question, which everyone understands, is what to do about Dick Cheney. A dual or sequential impeachment effort is entirely without precedent, and every single problem with a late-term impeachment would get vastly more complicated.

A third question is the scope of impeachment articles. Josh seems to assume that Bush's defiance of Congress and his quasi-imperial notions of executive privilege are the trigger. But many Democrats would be outraged if the administration's behavior before and after the invasion of Iraq were not included; others might well argue that the abandonment of New Orleans was an impeachable offense. With a presidency this bad, where do you draw the line?

And a fourth question is how to impose party discipline during an impeachment fight. Like it or not, it's a certainty that a sizable number of Democrats in both Houses of Congress will be reluctant to "go there," some simply because of the Clinton experience.

And that brings me to the issue that most troubles me about this debate: its effect on Democratic unity going into 2008. Anyone familiar with netroots discussion of this issue knows there are already significant numbers of Democrats who are disposed to think of this as a basic test of courage and principle. Do we really want this to be the dominant issue in the Democratic presidential nominating contest, which it would instantly become? Remembering the premise is that impeachment would be a completely political exercise, are we ready for the possibility that Democratic credibility would be "impeached?"

All these questions are based on current political conditions, which could change. If, for example, the administration launched an unauthorized preemptive military strike on Iran, then impeachment would truly be unavoidable, and a Senate conviction could conceivably succeed.

M.J.'s right that impeachment cannot truly be "taken off the table," and shouldn't be. But that's not the issue; it's whether Democrats should encourage their congressional leaders to begin taking practical steps towards impeachment, in the limited window of time available for it. If the real crisis is over Bush's executive-privilege claims, other options are available, such as contempt of Congress citations designed to produce a court test. Some have also raised the possibility of defunding the offices of the president and vice president.

But the questions about the "I-word" need to be honestly addressed, without the presumption that anything less is craven, before Democrats move in that fateful direction.