Democracy for Utah - Liberalism

Interview with Kos: Sarah Palin, street protests, and online activism

Fri, 05 Sep 2008 09:46:25 -0600

Interview with Kos at Salon:

How do you see McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential nominee affecting the race going forward? There was so much discussion when the pick was first announced that McCain was deliberately going for the disenchanted Hillary Clinton voters, but do you think this pick is going to end up hurting McCain or giving him a boost?

Obviously, I'm not a woman, so it's tough for me to sort of understand the mind-set of many Clinton supporters. But I think it's telling that Gallup just released a poll today that showed Obama has done a fantastic job of solidifying his support among Hillary supporters. And my wife is a blogger, and at her site, she has definitely seen hardcore Hillary supporters so offended at the notion that McCain thought that putting a pair of breasts on the ticket was going to be enough to win their support, especially when Sarah Palin is so far removed ideologically from Hillary Clinton. Not just on choice, but she's a book burner. We just found out today, she was banning books at the Wasilla Public Library. She's virulently anti-choice. Go down the list, it's pretty crazy stuff. Clearly, if that was a ploy to lure Hillary supporters, it's not working. The data doesn't bear it out nor does the anecdotal evidence. [...]

You don't think that there's anything to the argument

The return of government

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:46:53 -0600

Columnist Robyn Blumner:

If you want to give a name to the coming era in American politics, you could call it the Return of Government.

I think of the years between the time that John F. Kennedy told us to ask what we can do for our country and the aftermath of 9/11 when President Bush told us all to go shopping as modern historical bookends of sorts. Kennedy arrived at about the apex of people's faith in the power of the state to make lives better. Bush arrived at its nadir. [...]

There was a time when government was expected to act in furtherance of the common good and was given the benefit of the doubt when sacrifice was called for. That time is coming back. It's the only viable option there is.

The Left's approach to fighting al Qaeda

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 11:28:19 -0600

Ezra Klein:

A few months back, Mitt Romney, who's now on John McCain's short list for the vice presidency, said, "I don't want to buy into the Democratic pitch, that this is all about one person, Osama bin Laden. Because after we get him, there's going to be another and another. This is about Shi'a and Sunni. This is about Hezbollah and Hamas and al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. This is the worldwide jihadist effort to try and cause the collapse of all moderate Islamic governments and replace them with a caliphate."

The Egyptian Brotherhood isn't a terrorist group. Al Qaeda, a Sunni terrorist group, hates Iran and is rivals with Hezbollah, a Shi'ite extremist sect. This statement, in other words, made no sense. [...]

As Obama says, one of the clear distinctions between the Left's approach to terrorism and the Right's approach to terrorism is that the Left wants to limit the scope of the conflict, while the Right wants to expand it. [...] Rather than this being an effort to hunt down al Qaeda, it becomes a war to hunt down al Qaeda, destroy Hezbollah, eradicate Hamas, overthrow Saddam Hussein, change the regime in Tehran, crush the Muslim Brotherhood, confront Syria, and whatever else Bill Kristol thought of while eating his Cheerios that week. It is an incredibly dangerous and incoherent approach. And it marks a genuine difference between Obama and McCain.

Liberty can strengthen our national security

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:18:23 -0600

Scott Lemieux on the recent Boumediene v. Bush decision that restored habeas corpus (The American Prospect):

The first section of Justice Scalia's dissent contains a screed that seems more likely to have come from an O'Reilly Factor transcript than from a Supreme Court opinion in a landmark case. "The game of bait-and-switch that today's opinion plays upon the Nation's Commander in Chief," Scalia asserts, "will make the war harder on us. It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed." [...]

[I]t is important for progressives not to approach arguments like Scalia's from a defensive crouch. In particular, there is no reason for progressives to accept the argument that there is a zero-sum tradeoff between reasonable protections of civil liberties and national security. Especially when one considers opportunity costs, there is, in fact, little security value in arbitrarily detaining people against whom the government lacks evidence. As Stephen Holmes has argued in his book The Matador's Cape: America's Reckless Response to Terror, the Bush administration's aggrandizements of executive power (and Congress' unwillingness to properly exercise its restraining and oversight functions) have undermined national security rather than preserved it. Long-term arbitrary detentions are bad for both civil liberties and the security of the American public, and it's crucial for liberals not to concede the latter half of the equation.

Toward a progressive foreign policy

Tue, 20 May 2008 11:04:33 -0600

From Rand Beers, U.S. counterterrorism adviser and current president of the National Security Network. Beers quit the NSC in protest in March 2003 five days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Progressives have a tremendous opportunity — and a real challenge — on national security this cycle. The public has decisively rejected the Bush administration's national security framework. But nothing in the public discourse gives non-expert Americans a clear understanding of what the alternatives might look like. [...]

One way to fill that gap is for progressives to begin setting out the core ideas that underlie our theory of national security — and then share specific policy positions and critiques that show what those core ideas would mean, and how they would produce results different from what we have seen in recent years. The thinking behind this two-part approach is simple: there's a crying need for sophisticated, pragmatic, deep policy thinking that returns serious, non-hyped discussions of security issues to the public eye.

The challenges we face — Afghanistan, Pakistan, energy, to name just three — have no magic solutions and will be with us for years to come. Yet there's also a need for clear-sighted, unadorned talk about why we make the choices we do and what kind of nation we want to be. That is a debate that is much less technical, but no less important, than the details of our policy in Pakistan's borderlands or how many gallons of alternative fuels we can produce by 2015. Everybody, however much or little time their lives give them to think about national security, can join a debate about what kind of country we want to be.

Democrats want to turn the U.S. into France

Tue, 13 May 2008 14:26:07 -0600

I can't stop giggling about this comment from Sen. Mitch McConnell (DailyKos):

"It's pretty clear to me that the Democratic agenda is to turn us into France," the Kentucky Republican told The Washington Times in an unusually blunt interview at his office in the Capitol. "Americans may want change, but the question is, what kind of change?"

Well, let's see. France's healthcare system has been rated the best in the world (the U.S. ranked 37th). They have the 11th-highest life expectancy (the U.S. is 45th) and the 6th-lowest infant mortality rate (the U.S. is 43rd). French employees get 5 guaranteed weeks of vacation every year. (In the U.S., that number is zero.) And yet, despite having all that vacation and the burden of "socialized medicine" and only one-fifth the population of the U.S., France is the world's 6th-largest economy.

So, yeah, Democrats want to make the U.S. more like France. It wouldn't exactly be a bad thing.

Your summer reading list of progressive books

Mon, 05 May 2008 11:04:50 -0600

So once you've finished the reading list of anti-conservative books, you can get started on these:

Why We're Liberals: A Political Handbook for Post-Bush America, Eric Alterman
The Conscience of a Liberal, Paul Krugman
Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America, Robert Reich
Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success, Paul Waldman
Thinking Points: Communicating Our American Values and Vision, George Lakoff
Framing the Debate: Famous Presidential Speeches and How Progressives Can Use Them to Change the Conversation, Jeffrey Feldman

What will Clinton or Obama do to advance progressive ideology?

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 12:33:25 -0700

Paul Waldman:

When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama had their recent squabble over Ronald Reagan – Obama noting that Reagan successfully altered the country's political trajectory, Clinton focusing attention on the disastrous effects of Reagan's policies – neither one mentioned one of the most important pieces of Reagan's legacy: the impact he had on conservatism and liberalism as ideologies and movements. But the question of where each of these candidates might leave the country ideologically could ultimately be the most lasting determinant of the success of the next Democratic presidency. Unfortunately, neither Clinton nor Obama has addressed the question directly. But there are hints in both campaigns about where they might take their own followers, and where political activists on both sides will be eight years from now.

This is in some ways a more important question than the "theory of change" argument that Clinton, Obama, and John Edwards had for many months. It isn't just about how you move legislation or what kinds of coalitions you build, but about the ideological flavor your presidency carries, and what kind of shape your party and your movement is in once you're done.

Politics and the human moral sense

Sun, 13 Jan 2008 15:17:50 -0700

From one of my favorite authors, Steven Pinker, writing in the New York Times Magazine:

When anthropologists like Richard Shweder and Alan Fiske survey moral concerns across the globe, they find that a few themes keep popping up from amid the diversity. People everywhere, at least in some circumstances and with certain other folks in mind, think it's bad to harm others and good to help them. They have a sense of fairness: that one should reciprocate favors, reward benefactors and punish cheaters. They value loyalty to a group, sharing and solidarity among its members and conformity to its norms. They believe that it is right to defer to legitimate authorities and to respect people with high status. And they exalt purity, cleanliness and sanctity while loathing defilement, contamination and carnality.

The exact number of themes depends on whether you're a lumper or a splitter, but Haidt counts five — harm, fairness, community (or group loyalty), authority and purity — and suggests that they are the primary colors of our moral sense. Not only do they keep reappearing in cross-cultural surveys, but each one tugs on the moral intuitions of people in our own culture. [...]

All this brings us to a theory of how the moral sense can be universal and variable at the same time.

Krugman: Not ready to make nice

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 13:48:48 -0700

Paul Krugman in Slate:

[A] word about terms — specifically, liberal vs. progressive. Everyone seems to have their own definitions; mine involves the distinction between values and action. If you think every American should be guaranteed health insurance, you're a liberal; if you're trying to make universal health care happen, you're a progressive.

And here's the thing: Progressives have an opportunity, because American public opinion has become a lot more liberal. [...]

But any attempt to change America's direction, to implement a real progressive agenda, will necessarily be highly polarizing. Proposals for universal health care, in particular, are sure to face a firestorm of partisan opposition. And fundamental change can't be accomplished by a politician who shuns partisanship.

I like to remind people who long for bipartisanship that FDR's drive to create Social Security was as divisive as Bush's attempt to dismantle it. And we got Social Security because FDR wasn't afraid of division. In his great Madison Square Garden speech, he declared of the forces of "organized money": "Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred."

Progressive org starts new ad campaign: 'Progressive and proud of it'

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 10:00:12 -0700

The Center for American Progress has created four new ads that explain the progressive movement and what progressives stand for (see all four ads at thinkprogress.org).

In particular, the first two ads are very good and essentially follow Paul Waldman's advice to create a "progressive master narrative":

The conservative master narrative tells a story that begins in the 1960s, but this progressive master narrative crosses the scope of American history, seeing it as a continuous progression to realize the noble ideas on which the country was founded. It posits government as a force that, when it works properly, creates justice, security, and opportunity. The abolishment of slavery, the enfranchisement of women, the G.I. Bill, the creation of Social Security and Medicare, and the civil rights and environmental movements are all events driven by progressives that fit within this narrative.

Given these ads and Kos's recent comment in Newsweek that "Democrats believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good," I think Democrats and progressives are finally getting their act together and figuring out a coherent way to explain what we believe.

Kos in Newsweek: Dems should draw a strong contrast in 2008

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 09:57:11 -0700

Kos of Daily Kos is now a regular contributor to Newsweek. His most recent column argues that Democrats will do fine in 2008 as long as we draw a clear contrast between what we believe and what Republicans believe:

Democrats [...] believe government can be a resource for promoting the common good and thus are invested from the beginning in governing competently, efficiently and fairly. Their ideology demands it. And what better way for Democratic candidates to illustrate this contrast than by running against the Republican trifecta — the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court — that governed throughout most of Bush's eight years in office?

Democrats should and will use Bush and his destructive policies on the campaign trail as the primary example of what happens when people who hate government are elected to run it. The message will be that Bush isn't a historical anomaly: he's the embodiment of modern conservatism.

If Americans want willfully ineffective government, they'll have a Republican Party desperate for their votes. But with 70 percent of the American people thinking the nation is on the wrong track, it's clear they expect the opposite. As long as Democrats make that contrast clear — and Bush's record will be integral to that argument — they should be headed for victory in 2008.

Unlike liberals, conservatives will accept a partial victory now

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 11:35:37 -0600

There's been a lot of debate going on at AMERICAblog over whether transsexuals should be included in the Employee Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) along with gays and lesbians (the votes are there to pass an LGB bill, but not an LGBT bill). And while that subject itself is somewhat off-topic for this blog, John Aravosis at AMERICAblog has some interesting things to say about how liberals and conservatives approach the challenge of getting difficult legislation passed (Salon.com):

Conservatives understand that cultural change is a long, gradual process of small but cumulatively deadly victories. Liberals want it all now. And that's why, in the culture wars, conservatives often win and we often lose. While conservatives spend years, if not decades, trying to convince Americans that certain judges are "activists," that gays "recruit" children, and that Democrats never saw an abortion they didn't like, we often come up with last-minute ideas and expect everyone to vote for them simply because we're right. Conservatives are happy with piecemeal victory, liberals with noble failure. We rarely make the necessary investment in convincing people that we're right because we consider it offensive to have to explain an obvious truth. [...]

Civil rights legislation — hell, all legislation — is a series of compromises. You rarely get everything you want, nor do you get it all at once. Blacks, for example, won the right to vote in 1870. Women didn't get that same right until 1920. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 provided a large umbrella of rights based on race, religion, sex and national origin, but failed to mention gays or people with disabilities. People with disabilities were finally given specific rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, but gays as a class have still to be granted a single civil right at the federal level. If we waited until society was ready to accept each and every member of the civil rights community before passing any civil rights legislation, we'd have no civil rights laws at all. Someone is always left behind, at least temporarily. It stinks, but it's the way it's always worked, and it's the way you win.

America's progressive majority

Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:09:32 -0600

The Campaign for America's Future, which organized this week's Take Back America conference (see next post), released a review of public-opinion research showing that conservatives are simply lying when they say the U.S. is a conservative country (tompaine.com):

Polling by the Pew Research Center shows 84 percent support to increase the minimum wage. Gallup shows that more Americans sympathize with unions than with companies in labor disputes (52 to 34 percent). NBC News and the Wall Street Journal polls indicate that nearly twice as many people think the U.S. is more hurt than helped by the global economy (48 to 25 percent). [...]

[R]esearch by the University of Michigan National Election Studies reveals that 69 percent of Americans believe government should care for those who can't care for themselves. Twice as many people want "government to provide many more services even if it means an increase in spending" (43 percent) as want government to provide fewer services "in order to reduce spending" (20 percent). Majorities say we need a bigger government "because the country's problems are bigger" (59 percent) and a "strong government to handle complex problems" (67 percent). [...]

On health care, Gallup's latest poll reveals that 69 percent of Americans think it's the government's responsibility to make sure all Americans have health coverage. Only 28 percent disagreed. Polls by CBS/New York Times in February 2007 reveal that 76 percent of Americans would give up the Bush tax cuts to make sure all Americans have access to health care.

The article also reveals the majority positions on abortion, sex education, energy policy, and global terrorism.

Paul Waldman: Liberalism means believing we're all in it together

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 12:43:43 -0600

Welcome to the new readers from DFA's Training Academy over the weekend! At the training I mentioned the book Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success by Paul Waldman. Here are some goodies to encourage you to read Waldman's book:

Elections aren't about issues (they're about identity)
Conservatism is a failed ideology
The progressive identity complex
Interview with Paul Waldman at Buzzflash

What do you think the essence of your political beliefs are? What does it all come down to for you? I got a lot of different answers, but most of them contained some version of the idea of common responsibility, and the fact that our fates are tied together. The way that I decided to articulate that is to say that "we're all in it together."

One of the important elements of that is that it implies its opposite. Conservatives have always been very good at building contrasts, and that's another thing that progressives have to start doing. We need to say that we're all in it together — that's what progressives believe. And what do conservatives believe? Well, they believe that we're all on our own, and we're all out for ourselves.

Then I take this fundamental idea and I say, okay — where do we go from this basic idea that we're all in it together? I build out five fundamental principles — government that works for everyone, opportunity, security, individual freedom, and progress. From those five ideas that grow out of the idea that we're all in it together, you can go on to discuss almost any policy issue. Why do we believe in Social Security? Well, it's because we believe in security. Why do progressives support education? Because they believe in opportunity. This whole pyramid that I construct is not going to be a bumper sticker, but it provides a way of thinking and talking about progressive ideas that people can use and repeat, and use to contrast. That's critically important.