4 Responses to Why The Left Always Loses

1. freesociety December 28th, 2010 at 5:00 pm 1

   The years 2008-2010 have been wasted years with far too much energy spent on venting about “Sarah Palin” and “Tea-Partiers” and “Birthers”, and far too little time focused on policy goals for our Country (while the Democrats had the control of the Congress).

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2. diosnomeama December 28th, 2010 at 5:31 pm 2

   Tribalism goes a hell of a lot farther than principles these days. What was awful under Bush is OK under Obama. Or it’s swept under the rug and never, ever talked about.

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3. Michael Kwiatkowski December 28th, 2010 at 6:15 pm 3

   David Sirota made a very clear distinction between progressives and liberals in October 2005:

   http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-sirota/whats-the-difference-betw_b_9140.html

   In march 2010, he reiterated his explanation of the difference:

   http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_14766709

   In both versions of this argument, Sirota made it plain that progressives — real progressives — believe in direct government action to force corporations behave by a set of rules that respects the rights of the citizenry. Liberals, by contrast, might be content to throw money at a situation but otherwise shy away from directly challenging corporate power.

   From the 2005 piece:

   “The answer, in my opinion, is no – there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional “liberals” in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A “progressive” are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules.

   To put it in more concrete terms – a liberal solution to some of our current problems with high energy costs would be to increase funding for programs like the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). A more “progressive” solution would be to increase LIHEAP but also crack down on price gouging and pass laws better-regulating the oil industry’s profiteering and market manipulation tactics. A liberal policy towards prescription drugs is one that would throw a lot of taxpayer cash at the pharmaceutical industry to get them to provide medicine to the poor; A progressive prescription drug policy would be one that centered around price regulations and bulk purchasing in order to force down the actual cost of medicine in America (much of which was originally developed with taxpayer R&D money).”

   Sirota’s second column, from 2010, illustrates how liberalism and progressivism have diverged.

   “Liberalism and progressivism once operated in tandem. But three of the recent epoch’s most far-reaching initiatives make clear the former now dominates both parties.

   It started in 2003 with Republicans’ Medicare drug benefit. Rather than go the progressive route — imposing price controls, permitting government to negotiate lower bulk prices or letting wholesalers buy drugs at cheaper foreign prices — the bill hinged on taxpayer money. Essentially, the government gave $1.2 trillion to the pharmaceutical industry in exchange for the industry providing medicines to seniors.

   This became the bank bailout’s model. Instead of first responding to the Wall Street crisis with progressive, New Deal-style regulations, presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama opted for liberal bribe theory: Specifically, they bet that giving banks trillions in loans, subsidies and guarantees would convince financial institutions to halt their riskiest behavior and start lending to small businesses again.

   Now, it’s health care. The Democratic bill began as a hybrid. On the liberal side, it proposed growing Medicaid and trading subsidies to insurance companies for expanded coverage. On the progressive side, the original legislation included measures like premium regulation and a government-run insurer to compete with private firms. But save for a few fairly weak consumer protections, the final bill was stripped of most major progressive provisions. Ultimately, the celebrated “reform” is based primarily on a liberal wager that Medicaid plus subsidies will equal universal health care.”

   Of course, we all know that Obamacare, modeled as it is on the failed Romneycare, will never deliver universal health care. So this is the progressive ideology distinguished from wishy-washy liberalism, which today is so conflict-averse as to have rendered modern liberals nothing more than craven surrender-monkeys to the far right. If we as progressives define ourselves in terms of forcing large business interests to obey a set of rules by which the rights of the citizenry are respected, then we can begin to take back control of the dialog.

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4. freesociety December 28th, 2010 at 7:22 pm 4

   In response to Michael Kwiatkowski @ 3

   That particular definition of “liberal” and “progressive” seem valid enough, at least as a working strawman, but I don’t know that most people have any connection to a specific set of defined polices when they hear those labels.

   The word “liberal” has also been made into a “four-letter” word, because modern politicans refused to defend it (against right-wing smears). John Kennedy was the last President to defend the word “liberal”, and to identify himself as a “liberal”. Consequently few people in the political arena now classify themselves this way.

   But the real problem here is not the labels. It is the lack of grassroots activism focused on articulation of specific policy goals, and ideology of major importance.

   There is no FDR-like “Four Freedoms” narrative.
   There is no 1960s-1970s era “Stop the War Now” narrative.
   There is no repetition of important pocketbook and Economic fairness themes.

   If we did have a coordinated narrative like this, working its way along every day through MSNBC, Left-Radio (where it exists), and the Internet Blogs, then we could capitalize on a situation like 2008 — when the Democrats won control of all three branches of government by strong margins.

   I fear that we may never have that chance again.

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