Category Archives: revitalizing the left

negative campaigning is a mistake in ’04

Several factors have conspired to make many Democrats believe that the key to the ’04 election is attacking the president:

  • Progressives sincerely believe that the mainstream press favors Bush, so denouncing him would improve the “balance.”
  • Howard Dean generated enthusiasm in the primary by aggressively criticizing Republicans.
  • Bush is genuinely vulnerable on several important issues.
  • Above all, progressives loathe the president and want their fellow Americans to share their view.

    This approach dismays me because it cannot create a mandate for positive change. I also think it’s bad partisan politics. Liberal northeasterners use a set of heuristics (“prejudices” would be another word) that move them from disagreeing with the president to despising him. Since he’s a born-again Christian, he must be intolerant. Since he hangs around with oilmen, he must be a predatory polluter. And since he speaks with a Texas drawl, he must be a redneck. Like all arguments from stereotypes, these are fallacies. One has to prove that the administration is intolerant, predatory, and stupid; and it isn’t always so. Furthermore, many Americans draw the opposite conclusions from the very same “heuristics” that drive leftists to loathing. Since GWB is devout, his motives must be OK. Since he comes out of a corporate background, he must know how to get business done. And since he’s from Texas, he must be unpretentious. In ABC News/Washington Post polls, between 52 percent and 71 percent of those surveyed have always said that Bush is “honest and trustworthy.”

    The lowest rating (52 percent) is also the most recent. So perhaps one can chip away at Bush’s reputation by showing that he wasn’t much of an entrepreneur–he was bailed out by his political friends and relatives. If the administration is ever caught in some literal corruption, this might shake people’s faith in the president’s good character. Yet liberals consistently overestimate how bad they can make Bush look, because they have detested him from the first time they heard him speak.

    But I’m really worried about something else. Maybe liberals lack a positive message because they don’t have anything compelling and positive to say. For anyone who is deeply dissatisfied with the status quo, the lack of alternatives would be the worst news of all. Then it would hardly matter who won in November. So instead of trying the “get the message out” that George W. Bush is a horrible man, why don’t we put some energy into developing new solutions for America? John Kerry could sure use our help.

    (See Brad Rourke’s latest piece for a similar argument, referring to the new liberal broadcast shows and think tanks.)

    • what’s wrong with the left, and what we can do about it

    I’ve reorganized and expanded my previous comments about how to revitalize the Left and have turned them into a single continuous essay, which begins below. I argue that the left suffers from a lack of positive vision that will probably cost the Democrats the 2004 election–and will certainly deny them a mandate, even if they manage to win. I then propose some alternatives for progressives to consider.

    Continue reading →

    new ideas on the left?

    (written in Syracuse, NY:) I think that the left desperately needs new policy ideas and new philosophical foundations–and so far both are notably absent in the 2004 campaign. For a long time, I have been worried that the Democratic nominee (whoever he might be) would run an essentially “conservative” campaign, promising to be a better steward of old Democratic institutions: Social Security, Medicare, labor unions, “progressive” public schools, and the United Nations. Unfortunately, these institutions don’t just need increased funding; they also need to be fundamentally rethought. So far, we have heard no serious proposals for such change from anyone on the Democratic side. Three months ago, it looked as if Bush was a prohibitive favorite to win, so Democrats had the incentive to develop new visions and new directions. They failed to do so. Now it appears that John Kerry can win the presidency if the economy continues to sputter and if he plays conventional hardball politics better than the incumbent. That kind of campaign may win the White House, but it will not generate new policies or broad new ideas; and if Kerry wins, he will have no mandate other than to preserve what is left of FDR’s welfare state and the multinational organizations that were founded in the same era.

    Political candidates are not the only ones who develop new political visions. In 2004, the most exciting new participants in the political debate have been independent bloggers. But the major bloggers on the left–people like Josh Marshall, Calpundit’s Kevin Drum, and Markos Moulitsas Z?niga of the Daily Kos–strike me as strictly tactical thinkers. That is, they assume that the goal is to defeat George W. Bush, and they look for ways to score points against him. He is hypocritical one day, misguided the next. I thoroughly agree, yet I don’t see any basis for a new direction in American politics. Their strategy is to make the president look bad, elect a replacement, and hope that he comes up with new ideas. If there are more creative leftish thinkers in the “blogosphere,” I don’t know who they are. This void suggests to me that the left is weak today because of a lack of tough and creative thinking, not because good “progressive” ideas are being suppressed by the mass media.

    Ralph Nader, 1934-2000

    Ralph Nader was a major figure. Along with John Gardner, the founder of Common Cause, he was one of the leaders in a reform movement that reached its apogee around 1974. It was in many ways a revival of the Progressive movement exemplified by Louis Brandeis and Robert M. La Follette a half century earlier. All of the many groups that Nader founded and inspired had the following features:

  • They fought for general or public interests. It is absolutely fine for groups of Americans to advocate in their own interests. In fact, we will never achieve justice unless the poor and marginal defend themselves effectively. However, there is also an important category of issues that affect everyone, although they are not at the top of anyone’s list of priorities. Consequently, people don’t mobilize on these issues, and small special interests often have their way. Around 1912 and again around 1974, there was a groundswell of concern about those general-interest questions. Nader is associated with three issue areas above all: the environment, consumer protection, and good government. Everyone lives in the natural environment, everyone buys consumer goods, and everyone benefits from a responsive, efficient, transparent government. These were perfect topics for public-interest politics.
  • They were independent of parties, governments, and funders. Although they were not deeply hostile to the political system, they were relentlessly non-partisan and kept all official institutions at an equal distance.
  • They believed in the power of information. Brandeis had said that there is no better disenfectant than sunlight, but it was Nader’s generation that won the Freedom of Information Act, open meeting laws, campaign finance disclosure, and public hearings for congressional committees. Nader and his allies collected previously private information and put it before the public, hoping and expecting that citizens would demand changes.
  • Their core constituents were highly educated, older, White Americans, most often from mainline Protestant and Jewish denominations. However, Nader and his allies brought these constituents into coalitions with poor people, immigrants, and people of color.

    • The progressive revival spurred by Nixon’s malfeasance faltered by the later Carter years. It turned out that information was not enough; politics also requires motivation and organization. Far from motivating masses of people, the reforms of the 70s tended to undermine institutions (such as parties) that have the capacity to mobilize large numbers of people. Public Citizen and Common Cause pioneered a type of organization that provided relatively little for ordinary members to do beyond writing checks. Their heavy use of scientific studies and lawsuits helped to professionalize citizenship and reduce the role of ordinary people.

    The reformers’ incessant attacks on regulators for being “captured” by special interests may have fed the anti-regulatory movement of Ronald Reagan. Finally, business lobbies learned to use the new political methods pioneered by Nader and Gardner in their own interests. They too could issue expert studies, organize petition drives, raise money via direct mail, and ask candidates to complete questionnaires. The public-interest style of politics increasingly served Nader’s enemies better than his friends.

    Ralph Nader himself had entered the history books by 2000, but by then he had changed American politics more than many presidents. Some of his reforms were counter-productive or soon outlived their usefulness; but all were well-intentioned and many strengthened our democracy.