Delaware’s Liberal Democrats – Playing Our Role
If you haven’t read this excellent diary at dkos about why liberals are not the base of the Democratic Party, do yourself a favor and go read it. It covers a lot of stuff that we already know, such as…
The Democrats want and need our donations and organizing, but know that’s really all they want. Liberals need to provide their vital services and bucks but acquiesce as the Party turns more and more rightward in its search for the fickle fluctuating moderate center.
Seriously read the whole thing and come on back.
Good. It concludes….
….it is clear that the Democrats take their 28 million Liberal voters for granted and do seat us at the Kiddie Table where we eat chicken fingers and drink Kool-Aid while the adults drink wine and eat pheasant under glass and laugh at the funny voters who still care about social justice, living wages, safety nets and the like.
The DLC is laid bare. Hoisted by their own petards and their own policy documents. But that is all national level stuff that got me wondering if Delaware’s liberal Democrats have the same relationship with our local Democratic establishment. Having blogged here for nigh on 8 years, I have to conclude that, in fact – we do.
Delaware’s liberal Democrats are just as used and abused by the local party establishment as we are by the national Democratic brain trust. While we live in closer quarters, so the abuse must naturally be a little more subtle, we are still seated at the kids table. We still have to endure Democratic politicians currying favor with the right wing nut jobs by parroting their wholly discredited taxation policies and budget priorities. We are still “represented ” in the Senate by Tom Carper – who goes out of his way to punch hippies to keep his DLC curriculum vitae in shape. We still have a congressional delegation that feels that it needs to constantly lean to the right. We are still courted around election time for our vitality, and dollars, then dismissed once the votes are all counted.
Now we are at the beginning of another election cycle in which liberals will be rediscovered by Democratic politicians in search of volunteers. Over the next 440 or so days, our stock will rise and our meetings will be attended. Then the day after the election our stock will crash again. We’ll be lectured about being pragmatic and mocked for jabbering on about our sacred ponies; social justice, living wages, safety nets.
Cinderella had the good sense to rush out of the ball when the clock struck twelve. I’m resigned to the fact that we’ll be bewildered anew when we revert to being the aids monkey in the room.
Assuming the very clear national party trend of the past twenty years continues — one in which the self-identified “Liberal” wing of the party surged from about a quarter to over 40% of the party, while the “Moderate” faction fell to below 50% — it won’t be long before the two factions pull even, and it will become increasingly hard for the Moderates to retain establishment control and keep tossing aside Liberal interests so easily. Maybe a while ago they could make the argument that the Liberals represented a small faction of the party and small segment of the overall electorate. But it’s already getting pretty hard to shut the Liberals up when they’re up to 41% to the Moderates’ 47%, and all the Southern Conservatives finally bailed in the 1990s to join the GOP. It’ll be really hard when it’s an even split. Plus, with a crazy ever-rightward-drifting Republican Party, the moderate/”centrist” talk of compromise (as an end not means) will sound more and more ridiculous, and the Liberal argument that the Democratic Party lacks a clear worldview and unified policy manifesto, which has resulted in deep confusion or resentment among Independent voters, will be more and more compelling. Theoretically, I am therefore somewhat optimistic on this particular front in the long-term. If we survive the next few years of Dem centrism and GOP craziness, of course!
Citation on the numbers can be found in one of the graphs here: http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/why-the-g-o-p-cannot-compromise/?hp
If you take away the labels and look at policy positions, liberal policy goals consistently have very high support in polling. However, implementation of these policies would upset the moneyed aristocracy that pays for elections, and therefore these policies don’t get implemented, despite overwhelming public support.
It isn’t about labels like conservative, moderate, or liberal. Those are basically marketing terms used by corporate media to control, label, and spin the discussion.
It is about money and who pays the bills. Politicians of both parties will say whatever it takes to get votes, but will then do whatever it takes to get big bribes to finance their campaigns. Which is why what they say and what they do are often so different.
It is about the money.
It’s about the money, but it is also about the successful operation by Republicans to feed economic nonsense to voters. So in that way, Democratic officials might really believe they are responding to voters. Look at the curmudgeonly right-wing cranks who show up to events and write LTEs and call in to radio shows. That is how Carper Coons Carney see us all. We have done little to change their minds.
I didn’t buy the diary’s contention that Democrats are chasing the center. They are chasing the right, and daring Democrats to vote against them.
If liberals want a seat at the table, there are two arguments they need to start using: the primary, and the No vote in Congress.
I really like what Thom Hartmann suggests here: http://youtu.be/FnHvrmjGnaU
6:48 min of video
How liberals should learn from the Teabaggies and take over the Democratic party.
We need to get active!
And notice how the diary marginalizes traditional Democrats by calling them “liberals.” This is a meme that needs to be fought, not accommodated.
Self-identification is the least accurate way to count liberals. A more accurate way is to use polls on specific positions.
Most Americans want tax increases for the rich, and no cuts to Medicare. By any modern definition, these are liberals. Or “traditional Democrats” – I even get confused myself sometimes. Why isn’t Congress chasing those votes?
To qualify as a “liberal” now, all you have to do is support the traditional Democratic platform. And to be a “centrist Democrat” means you support the traditional Republican moderate platform.
The rightward-drifting Dems in Congress aren’t “seeking the center” – they are simply apolitical. I’m talking to you, Carper Coons Carney.
I also don’t think liberals are disrespected in Delaware nearly as much as nationally. In Delaware we enjoy a strong defense of the prevailing wage law, good social services (and budgetary defense of social services), a tax increase on the upper brackets, and recently a parade of social liberal ponies. Delaware liberals are actually overperforming, considering the national political climate that leans right toward austerity.
If we went much further left we would risk overreaching,crashing, and burning.
Somebody please explain to me why it is so awful to be moderate.
— Heads explode —
It seems to be the place where most Americans are most comfortable. At least that’s what they claim in exit polls and other polls, and yes polls can be deliberately misleading. But we live in a pretty stable society and I, for one, can understand why people don’t want to rock the boat too far right or too far left. Ideology is for the wonks who come here, but most people want to just sit safely in the center — or right of center, granted. This is a democracy and if that’s where people feel secure then that’s who they are going to elect. Fact. Crusaders are for blogs. Not for winning elections.
“But we live in a pretty stable society”
Oh my. What kind of bubble do you live in?
It is “moderation” with the ever-more-extreme right that shrank the middle class, shrank incomes, shrank labor, expanded child poverty, shrank home ownership. Society has changed dramatically for the worse due to accommodation and moderating toward the right. That is what is so awful about moderation.
Sorry, Rebecca:
1) We don’t live in a stable society. Are you watching the economic trends and the environmental trends?
2) We don’t live in a Democracy. We live in an ostensible republic, but if you’re paying attention, you know that isn’t even true (see Bush v Gore, for starters)
3) Most people don’t even try to vote most of the time, and most people don’t care to learn for themselves but would rather have their positions spoon-fed to them by corporate marketers and media, who serve only their own profit interests. These are the people who call themselves moderates.
Why is it so awful to be a moderate? Think Joe Lieberman and you’ll have your answer.
anonone:
Joe Lieberman is no moderate. Other than that you are probably right.
Except the vast number of voters believe the society is stable, it suits their needs, they don’t get real riled up over the sort of things we do.
As to most people, the higher up the economic scale the more likely you are to vote which is another reason the game is rigged against liberals. But you are still right, the voters prefer to take their politics in sound-bites.
Other than Joe I’ve got no big disagreement here. We both perceive reality the same way.
So why do you think Democrats should field liberal candidates who will not appeal to voters? I mean, other than us?
Why is the burden of compromise always on Democrats? How come Republicans are never expected to moderate to the left?
People vote mostly liberal on issue polls, yet half of them vote for people who oppose their issues.
This is not a question of honest political preference. There is stupidity, lies, and corruption at work here.
puck,
That isn’t moderation, that’s class warfare.
And you can see people waking up to the fact by the number of voters who are changing their registration from R to I — or in DE, R to D because of Jack Markell.
As they leave the Republican party they add to the number of moderates that we have to win to elect a D. Heck, as I say, a bunch of them are now members of our party. We can’t treat them like the enemy. They are now us.
I used Joe Lieberman as the example of what the media puts forward as a “moderate.” I think that Democrats field candidates who say the things that liberals and, yes, moderates, want to hear to get elected but then do the things that corporations want (pay) them to do.
The political structure in America is rigged by moneyed interests to work against the welfare of the vast majority of its citizens. If we had public campaign financing and federal election reform, there would be many more liberals elected and many more liberal policies enacted.
Rebecca, moderation doesn’t mean always following two steps behind Republicans down the wingnut rabbit hole.
Class warfare is only a dirty word if you are one of the beneficiaries of class warfare.
I have to imagine that you have not yet felt the loss of income security spawned by your right-moderate policies. But many others have. The American Dream is dying.
Crossover voters were perfectly happy to vote for Markell, who then signed a progressive tax increase and several socially liberal bills. Obama could do the same.
If the economically disadvantaged voted it would sure help.
Of course, they’d have to vote in their own best interest. Another challenge.
puck, Rebecca isn’t “moderate-right.” She is one of the more progressive activists in Delaware, and I personally have a tremendous amount of respect for what she has accomplished. She is more pragmatic than I am and she works through the Dems, but she has done her work at the grassroots with patience and class, and I salute her for that.
puck,
You’d be wrong about my income security. And about me being right-moderate.
But I can’t get in a lather over moderates. The enemy is the Republicans and their greed. The moderates will be with us always. And, increasingly, we need to find a way to live with that.
Okay… thanks for the explanation then. That is one of the problems with using partial names and pseudonyms I suppose. I have to go by the text of the comment, not by reputation. Which I prefer anyway.
I guess I have to accept the counter-intuitive rhetoric about moderation then. Progressive activists are getting much better results in Delaware than nationally, so I can’t argue with results.
I do fail to see “moderates” as a cohesive demographic with a Moderate agenda that can be pursued. I see moderates as low-information voters without real principles who will follow whatever politician appeals to them at the time.
Probably the worst of the modern constructs is the dismissal of the public policy debate as “partisan bickering.” It is not partisan bickering, it is deadly serious fact-based debate that is almost scientific (however clouded by misdirection). There IS a right answer that can be found.
Both parties have lined up behind policies that are mutually exclusive and do not lend themselves to compromise; in fact by definition neither set of policies works if it is compromised. If you try to meet in the middle, you are just splitting the baby.
There are only two possibilities. Either:
One side is right and the other is wrong, or
Both sides are wrong.
In the middle is nothin’ but yellow paint and dead armadilloes.
To clarify:
Both parties have lined up behind policies that are mutually exclusive and do not lend themselves to compromise; in fact by definition neither set of policies works if it is compromised. If you try to meet in the middle, you are just splitting the baby.
That is why Democratic policies are not creating prosperity right now: because we compromised with the right in the name of moderation. In large part because we failed to plug the tax-cut hole, so all the stimulus just ran out that hole.
“As to most people, the higher up the economic scale the more likely you are to vote which is another reason the game is rigged against liberals.”
Rebecca, the logic of this statement suggests that liberals are the poor and perhaps the lower middle class: those who are the less likely to vote have the game rigged against them–the poor, the lower middle class. Is there any real evidence for this demographic claim? I’m just asking.