The Republican reaction to the President’s Afghanistan speech was predictable enough, centering their negative spin on Obama’s setting an 18-month time frame for beginning de-escalation. A key challenge for Democrats, however, is to allow room for the skepticism of many anti-interventionist Dems, while tweaking the policy as needed to build a broader consensus. As The Washington Post‘s editorial on the President’s speech said, “he is embarking on a difficult and costly mission that is opposed by a large part of his own party.”
The skepticism was well-presented by Senator Barbara Boxer, who is quoted in Carl Hulse’s New York Times reaction round-up: “I support the president’s mission and exit strategy for Afghanistan, but I do not support adding more troops because there are now 200,000 American, NATO and Afghan forces fighting roughly 20,000 Taliban and less than 100 al Qaeda.”
In WaPo‘s ‘Topic A’ wrap-up of the views of selected foreign affairs scholars, opinion analysts and leaders, Rep. Dennis Kucinich voiced the left-progressive critique:

Why are we still in Afghanistan? Al-Qaeda has been routed. Our occupation fuels a Taliban insurgency. The more troops we send, the more resistance we meet. The people of Afghanistan don’t want to be saved by us; they want to be saved from us. Our presence and our Predator drones kill countless innocents and destabilize Pakistan. The U.S.-created Karzai government is hopelessly corrupt and despised by the Afghan people…We’ve played all sides in Afghanistan, and all the sides want us out. They do not want our presence, our control, our troops, our drones, our way of life

Even some moderate Dems have reservations, including Sen. Arlen Specter, who asks,“If Al Qaeda can operate out of Yemen or Somalia, why fight in Afghanistan where no one has succeeded?”
Maria Newman reports in her blog at ‘The Caucus’ in The New York Times that MyDD‘s Jerome Armstrong predicted that Obama’s Af-Pak policy is “going to drive a deep division into the Democratic Party” that will make “the current healthcare reform debate look like patty-cake play.”
Harold Meyerson observes from his post “The Right Anthem for this War” at WaPo’s ‘Post-Partisan’ WaPo blog,

Every American war has its distinctive anthems, and on due consideration, the one that seems most appropriate for our almost simultaneous escalation and withdrawal in Afghanistan is Groucho Marx’s entrance song in Animal Crackers: “Hello, I Must Be Going.”…In a sense, “Hello, I Must Be Going” is the appropriate song for an empire in decline. Like imperial Rome and Churchillian Britain, the United States can no longer afford to fight the wars it once took on with reckless abandon, even when it concludes it can’t quite abandon the battlefield, either.

Some influential Democratic leaders were more cautious in their assessment. Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued a noncommittal statement on the speech, saying “the American people and the Congress will now have an opportunity to fully examine this strategy.” Senator Durbin said “I am going to take some time to think through the proposal he presented tonight.”
Others were more supportive. Bill Nelson said the President had “a sensible plan.” Evan Bayh argued We must do what it takes to prevent Afghanistan from once again becoming a platform for attacks on the United States.” Majority Leader Harry Reid said President Obama made a “convincing case” that the deployment serves our national security.
As I go to press there are no reports of polls or focus group reaction to the President’s speech. A USA Today/Gallup Poll conducted before the speech, from 11/20-22, found that 35 percent of adult respondents approved of “the way Barack Obama is handling the situation in Afghanistan,” with 55 percent disapproving. Asked if they would support an increase of 40K troops sent to Afghanistan, 37 percent supported the increase, with 39 percent prefering to “reduce the number” of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and 10 percent wanting to increase troop strength by less than 40K. The poll also found that “a slim majority of Obama’s fellow Democrats approve of his handling of the issue.” Given President Obama’s formidable powers of oratorical persuasion, so ably demonstrated in his speech, I expect this percentage to increase shortly.
But many Democratic doves (myself included) will continue to view large-scale military occupation of Afghanistan with skepticism regarding its prospects for creating lasting security, even while recognizing that we have legitimate security concerns in that nation. If the President can figure out how to begin withdrawing troops even sooner than his suggested timetable, he — along with other Democratic candidates — should benefit substantially in 2012.

It appears that Democrat Kasim Reed has won a narrow victory over ‘Independent’ Mary Norwood in the Atlanta mayoral race. Reed holds a 750 vote lead with all the votes in, except for about 645 provisional ballots that remain uncounted.
Much of the vote was along racial lines, with some crossover votes favoring Norwood, who is white. She hired numerous African American campaign workers and had offices in the Black community. But AJC columnist Jay Bookman attributes Reed’s margin to his record of ‘competence’ as a state senator and assemblyman, in comparison to Norwood’s somewhat lackluster record as a city council member.
(UPDATE 12/3: Cameron McWhirter reports in The Atlanta Constitution that “More than 56 percent of Reed’s votes came from predominantly black districts. About 15.6 percent of his votes came from predominantly white districts. The rest came from mixed districts. The reverse was true for Norwood. Sixty-two percent of her vote came from white districts and 14.5 percent of her vote came from black districts. These percentages roughly mirror the November general election, but Norwood’s turnout dropped slightly in black districts.”)
There will be a recount, since Reed’s margin of victory was less than one percent, and Norwood has said she will request it. It is possible that Norwood could emerge with more votes, but not likely.
Norwood’s party affiliation has been a topic of much speculation during the campaign. The head of the GA Democratic Party called her a “duplicitous Republican.” Apparently it’s not quite that simple, according to CBS’s Atlanta affiliate:

CBS Atlanta checked Norwood’s voting record at the Secretary of State’s office. In Georgia, voters do not register with any party at the polls. Since 1990, Norwood has chosen the Republican ballot in primaries 12 times. She’s chosen the Democratic ballot just six times, mostly in recent years.

In one of her ads, Norwood states “I voted for Barack Obama, John Kerry, Al Gore, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot, the Independent.” Norwood also stated that “I did go to a Republican convention once, and I disliked it so much, I have never been to another one for either party.” But when asked in a press conference if she had ever voted for George W. Bush, she reportedly responded that she couldn’t remember. Had she been more forthcoming in answering that question either way, might the outcome have been different?
Some credit the “unexpectedly heavy turnout” for Reed’s win, which has to be a disappointment for Republicans. If Norwood had won, they would have trumpeted it as a loss for Dems, if not quite a win for the GOP. Those looking for a clear trend may have to wait for Houston’s Dec. 12 mayoral election, which features some of the same dynamics as the Atlanta race.

Two of my favorite online writers, Chris Bowers of OpenLeft and Nate Silver of 538.com, had an interesting exchange that touches on a perennial issue of concern to Democrats: should self-conscious progressives (using the Progressive Caucus definition of that term) care if a bunch of “centrist” or conservative Democrats in the U.S. House lose in 2010?
Chris says, basically, no. His reasoning is that there is already a “non-progressive majority” in the House, and that non-progressive Democratic losses might well strengthen the hand of the Progressive Caucus in the Democratic Caucus at large. He also suggests that some of the seats lost by the kind of Democrats he doesn’t like might be picked up by the kind of Democrats he likes down the road.
Nate offers a rejoinder that looks closely at the 39 most vulnerable House Democrats and argues that Chris’ generalization of them as non-progressive is quite questionable. Choosing the three most difficult (and significant) House votes as a measure, he notes that 18 voted with the leadership and the administration on all three; 27 voted “right” on two out of three; and only two went the wrong way on all three. Since Speaker Pelosi undoubtedly gave some of these Members a “pass” on one or more of these key votes, they seem less than monolithically rebellious, and the idea that replacing them en masse with (typically) right-wing Republicans as a matter of indifference is a dubious proposition.
Neither Chris nor Nate directly addresses the obvious issue that it matters to Democrats if they actually control the House or not, and neither really gets into the question of whether at least some of the endangered Democrats accurately represent the views not only their districts, but of Democrats in their districts. Chris is clearly focused on the relative power of the Progressive Caucus vis a vis the Blue Dogs, but as Nate points out, 39 of the 53 Blue Dogs aren’t endangered at all.
I understand that OpenLeft was founded with the explicit goal of moving the congressional Democratic Caucus to the left, and is determined to get progressives to place a higher premium on ideology (and real-life policy results) than on blind partisanship. But Nate’s right to question the sort of one-step-back, two-step-forward logic that is indifferent to gains by a rabidly conservative GOP so long as it damages ideologically “unsound” Democrats. It’s not clear we as a party or a country can afford that sort of “long view.”

Jonathan Singer takes a skeptical look at a pair of Politico posts by Josh Kraushaar (one via Dave Wasserman at the Cook Political Report) concluding that Democratic prospects for the midterms are looking bleak based on some questionable indicators. Here’s Singer, after quoting Kraushaar:

Three potential Democratic candidates in long-held GOP districts that lean as many as 13 points more Republican than the nation as a whole decide not to run for Congress in 2010 and it’s “a telling indicator that the political environment in 2010 is shaping up to be favorable for Republicans,” yet news that the Democrats have gotten a stellar candidate to change his mind in favor of running against a potentially vulnerable Republican incumbent and it’s an entirely separate story that doesn’t weigh in on the meme. Interesting.

Singer’s skepticism is warranted, and he makes three salient points Dems should keep in mind, looking toward the midterms:

Don’t get me wrong, the 2010 cycle isn’t looking like the 2006 and 2008 cycles. It’s not a cornucopia of Democratic successes, with the Democrats playing offense everywhere. That said, the hastiness with which the campaign watchers are willing to proclaim a Republican revival is quite remarkable. The Democrats continue to recruit strong candidates, though in fewer numbers than in recent years, and have thus far managed to stem a tide of retirements, generally a leading indicator of losses to come. What’s more, as mentioned here and elsewhere, the GOP isn’t raising anywhere near the type of money necessary to run a competitive nationwide effort next year. So up to and until there are some actual metrics pointing to a GOP takeover of the House in 2010 rather than mere assumptions that the Republicans are on the rise, I am remain skeptical of the Beltway common wisdom.

And a commenter named “the mollusk” responds to Singer’s post with another pertinent observation:

None of us know how we’ll feel after Health Care Reform passes. Personally, I think people are underestimating the importance of that in the current dynamic. The process feels stalled right now and that feels like a Democratic defeat. If it comes in December or January, a lot of Congressors will have a good stump speech when they go back home. The Repubs, on the other hand, will just have to go back and say “I voted against the single biggest reform measure in 60 years and it passed anyhow”. Flaccid stuff.

A wise perspective. With Democratic recruitments holding their own, retirements low, GOP fund-raising lagging and health reform legislation soon to be enacted, predicting a big year for the Republicans seems a tad premature. The Republican strategy going forward requires incessant spin trumpeting a mounting, through mythical, backlash against Democrats. Smart pundits and bloggers will take it into account before accepting the GOP spin wholesale.

Last night I hung out with my father for a few hours, and as we chatted cable news was on the tube in the background (CNN, as it happens). I don’t watch as much cable news as I probably should to stay in touch with the zeitgeist, but the experience helps explain why the stuff makes me crazy.
On a day when the Senate was beginning a momentous debate on health care reform, and on the eve of the President’s big speech on Afghanistan, what were the gabbers gabbing about? Mainly the White House “party crashers” and Tiger Woods. In other words, two “stories” where nobody currently knows the facts, and everybody probably will know most if not all of the facts in a few days. Even the guests being beamed across the planet to discuss these weighty matters seemed to run out of anything to say within minutes.
There was, on Larry King, a brief discussion of Afghanistan, but only in the context of an “interview” with Jesse Ventura, who bellowed at the camera on this subject along with the Big Two of the party crashers and Tiger.
The only other story I noticed was the death watch for Mike Huckabee’s presidential ambitions in the wake of the killing spree apparently undertaken by the man whose sentence for burglary was commuted by Huck back in the day.
But it got worse. Driving away from my father’s house late last night, I twirled the AM radio guide in search of something innocuous, only to discover that virtually every station I could pick up was sporting right-wing talk. The main subject on Wingnut Radio was Huck, whom nobody defended, though the burial ceremony was made less interesting by the admission of each and every one of these firebreathers that they hated Huckabee as a “bleeding heart” long before this incident (typically because he doesn’t profess to hate immigrants, and because he criticized other Republicans last year for not admitting the economy was in trouble–you know, the same economy that’s now proof that Obama needs to be driven out of office). And to think: before yesterday the Arkansan’s main political problem were the lbs. he’s been putting on, and the distant thunder of a possible Palin run for the White House.
Next time I’m in the car, I’ll just listen to the hockey broadcast. It’s totally inscrutable to me, but far less offensive.

As I noted earlier, a new Washington Post poll of Republicans recorded the remarkable extent to which today’s rank-and-file GOPers can’t identify much in the way of any clear-cut Republican leaders. Having just read Sam Tanenhaus’ meditation on Sarah Palin in the New Yorker, I’m beginning to wonder whether the leaderless nature of the GOP represents a temporary vacuum or something a little more profound.
Here’s Tanenhaus’ kicker:

To judge from [Palin’s] book, the most exciting time in her life was the election of 2008, when she was embraced by the army of “everyday, hardworking Americans,” the “everyday folks,” and “thousands of regular Americans coming out with their signs” who mobbed her tumultuous rallies, thrilling to her odes to the “true America.” She gave them a “magnifying mirror.” They reflected her own image back to her. This adoration is kept alive today by the excited autograph-seekers in Grand Rapids and Fort Wayne, in the audience that gave Oprah Winfrey her best ratings in two years, and in the various advocacy groups that have sprung up to promote Palin for the Presidency: Conservatives 4 Palin, Team Sarah, Vets 4 Sarah, 2012 Draft Sarah Committee, Sarah Palin Radio, SarahPAC. The true meaning of Palinism is Sarah Palin—nothing more and nothing less. She is a party unto herself.

Now it’s hardly novel to observe that the excitement Palin has aroused among (particularly) cultural conservative activists reflects how closely she resembles them, or that her fans celebrate her lack of conventional credentials or policy knowledge as a badge of honor. But it may also reflect a genuine leadership crisis in the conservative movement and the GOP, wherein no one who is not a Palin-style “mirror” of grassroots qualities can be trusted.
It’s not enough to call this sentiment “populist.” Historically, most “populist” leaders have represented a preexisting ideological set of beliefs in one or both major political parties, and a relatively specific set of policy goals. Yes, populists like Tom Watson (with his dirt-farmer persona) and William Jennings Bryan (with an idiom derived largely from the Bible) derived some of their appeal from personal identification with the lives and values of people who felt disenfranchised. But they were also genuine leaders who pulled their followers along to positions on policy matters and political loyalties they might not have embraced on their own.
The history of “right-wing populism” in this country is murkier and more controversial. But by and large, the conservative populist impulse has been one that relatively conventional Republican politicians (notably Nixon and Reagan) or regional reactionaries (George Wallace) have exploited in the pursuit of conventionally conservative ends.
Palin strikes me as more like another famous conservative “populist,” Joseph R. McCarthy. And I don’t say that in order to invoke an invidious identification of the overall political dangers represented by St. Joan of the Tundra and the famously irresponsible red-hunter. What strikes me as similar is the extent to which both politicians were relatively ordinary people who were suddenly swept into vast celebrity by an almost accidental association with grievances poorly advocated by conventional political leaders.
McCarthy stumbled upon the power of many years of accumulated unhappiness–mostly among heartland conservatives, but elsewhere as well–with a bipartisan foreign policy led by northeastern elites that aligned the United States with what many considered historic national enemies–not just the Soviet Union, but “Europe” generally, and for many Irish-Americans, the United Kingdom. It’s sometimes forgotten that many of McCarthy’s red-hunting conservative allies fulminated against the “loss” of China and the “betrayal” of Korea because they deeply resented a Euro-centric foreign policy, as reflected in their general opposition to the establishment of NATO. At a deeper level, many of McCarthy’s supporters (particularly in the midwest) were the very people who were initially opposed to war with Nazi Germany, on the theory that Hitler represented a Western bulwark against Bolshevism; even those who didn’t feel we backed the wrong side in Europe often thought we should have negotiated an armistice with Germany that would have avoided the Soviet conquest of Eastern Europe (an argument still advanced by Pat Buchanan). The eventual consolidation of conservatives in favor of an aggressively internationalist anti-communism was a later development, but it’s obscured the isolationist roots of the McCarthy uprising.
McCarthy eventually came to grief, of course, in part because of his sloppy and reckless tactics, but more immediately because he extended his attacks on Democratic foreign policy “betrayals” to attacks on the Eisenhower administration and even the Army. And thus the leadership class of the Republican Party came together to crush the fiery Wisconsinite, even as they sought to coopt his appeal by their own anticommunist fervor.
Like McCarthy, Palin is appealing to a variety of unredeemed cultural and political discontents, and like McCarthy, she’s gradually extended her liberal-baiting into attacks on conventional Republican pols, most notably the people surrounding the very presidential campaign that made her a celebrity. Unlike McCarthy, however, she’s not taking on a highly popular and newly elected Republican president, but a defeated GOP establishment that millions of conservative activists believe betrayed them through “big government” initiatives, excessive bipartisanship, and the failure to successfully execute a counter-revolution against legalized abortion, legitimized homosexuality, and other forms of cultural pluralism and diversity (or as they would say, “relativism.”). Moreover, said establishment has also been terribly weakened by its association with economic calamity, caused, so thinks the conservative “base,” by the reward-the-crooks-and-welfare-loafers “big government” betrayals of the autumn of 2008.
This doesn’t mean that Palin is destined to fill the leadership vacuum in the Republican Party. Like Joe McCarthy, she’s more suited to act as a vehicle for discontent than as the agent for its vindication. But make no mistake, the contemporary dynamics of the Republican Party and the conservative movement make it very unlikely that anyone from that quarter will curb her as Ike and his allies curbed and then broke McCarthy. If and when Palin succeeds again in creating a national public policy furor via a casual Facebook post, as she did with the famous “death panel” screed (arguably as irresponsible as anything Joe McCarthy said), it’s more likely that Republicans will coopt her than repudiate her. So while Sarah Palin probably won’t become the leader of the GOP, she may well play a major role in setting the terms on which anyone else can command the leaderless masses she represents.
UPDATE: Just discovered that the great historian of populism, Michael Kazin, penned a piece for the Washington Independent right after Palin’s selection as McCain’s running-mate, comparing her to Joe McCarthy. But I’ve made a quite different argument about her–and McCarthy’s–relationship with “elites” in the GOP.

Today’s Washington Post features a big new poll of self-identified Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Unsurprisingly, these voters don’t like Barack Obama, don’t like the general direction of the country, and don’t want their leaders to help enact health care reform legislation (not that they are in any danger of doing so).
The two findings most worth paying attention to are (1) yet another confirmation that Republicans are undergoing a rightward shift; and (2) the complete lack of a consensus about Republican leadership.
On the ideological front, there’s been a modest but revealing shift in the composition of the Republican rank-and-file since the last time the Post polled them, in 2007. Asked if they regard themselves as liberal, moderate, conservative, or very conservative, GOPers chose this last category, the most extreme available, more than ever. In June of 2007, self-identified liberals (11% of the total) and moderates (24%) together outnumbered those insisting on calling themselves “very conservative” (30%) by five percentage points. Now the “very conservative” are up to 32%, while “moderates” have declined to 22% and “liberals” have been nearly halved, to 6%. Overall, “conservative” GOPers currently overwhelm “moderate” GOPers by nearly a three-to-one margin. This is in sharp contrast to the ideological profile of the Democratic Party, in which the number of “moderates” equals and usually exceeds self-identified “liberals.” The overwhelming ideological impetus in the Republican Party is centrifugal, not centripetal.
The second finding of note is that today’s GOPers have no agreement whatsoever about where to look for leadership. Offered an open-ended question about “the one person [who] best reflects the core values of the Republican Party,” nobody receives over 18%, and 8% insist “there is no leader.” The last presidential nominee, John McCain, does respectfully well at 13%, though nobody really thinks of him as the future of the GOP, and his running-mate, Sarah Palin, runs first at 18%, out of a combination of celebrity and her special appeal to social issue extremists. After that, no one scores in double digits. The congressional leaders, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell, each weigh in at a booming one percent.
All this adds up to a situation where the increasingly conservative rank-and-file “base” of the Republican Party is pulling its putative leaders to the right rather than following their direction. Given the traditionally hierarchical nature of the GOP, that may be a refreshing change for its members, but it’s not exactly designed to produce a message or candidates that appeal to the rest of the electorate.

The knee-jerk cynics, Obamaphobes and comedians have gotten lots of play lately, dissing the President for what they see as his lack of accomplishments during his first year. But over at SLATE.com, Jacob Weisberg takes a more thoughtful look at Obama’s first year and sees something very different:

This conventional wisdom about Obama’s first year isn’t just premature—it’s sure to be flipped on its head by the anniversary of his inauguration on Jan. 20. If, as seems increasingly likely, Obama wins passage of a health care reform a bill by that date, he will deliver his first State of the Union address having accomplished more than any other postwar American president at a comparable point in his presidency. This isn’t an ideological point or one that depends on agreement with his policies. It’s a neutral assessment of his emerging record—how many big, transformational things Obama is likely to have made happen in his first 12 months in office.

Regarding health care reform in particular:

…Democrats have been trying to pass national health insurance for 60 years. Past presidents who tried to make it happen and failed include Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton. Through the summer, Obama caught flak for letting Congress lead the process, as opposed to setting out his own proposal. Now his political strategy is being vindicated. The bill he signs may be flawed in any number of ways—weak on cost control, too tied to the employer-based system, and inadequate in terms of consumer choice. But given the vastness of the enterprise and the political obstacles, passing an imperfect behemoth and improving it later is probably the only way to succeed where his predecessors failed.
We are so submerged in the details of this debate—whether the bill will include a “public option,” limit coverage for abortion, or tax Botox—that it’s easy to lose sight of the magnitude of the impending change. For the federal government to take responsibility for health coverage will be a transformation of the American social contract and the single biggest change in government’s role since the New Deal. If Obama governs for four or eight years and accomplishes nothing else, he may be judged the most consequential domestic president since LBJ. He will also undermine the view that Ronald Reagan permanently reversed a 50-year tide of American liberalism.

Not too shabby for openers. Further:

…There’s mounting evidence that the $787 billion economic stimulus he signed in February—combined with the bank bailout package—prevented an economic depression…Pundits and policymakers will argue…for years to come. But few mainstream economists seriously dispute that Obama’s decisive action prevented a much deeper downturn and restored economic growth in the third quarter…

Then there is Obama’s course-altering leadership in foreign affairs:

…He has put America on a new footing with the rest of the world. In a series of foreign trips and speeches, which critics deride as trips and speeches, he replaced George W. Bush’s unilateral, moralistic militarism with an approach that is multilateral, pragmatic, and conciliatory. Obama has already significantly reoriented policy toward Iran, China, Russia, Iraq, Israel, and the Islamic world. Next week, after a much-disparaged period of review, he will announce a new strategy in Afghanistan. No, the results do not yet merit his Nobel Peace Prize. But not since Reagan has a new president so swiftly and determinedly remodeled America’s global role.

Weisberg concedes that President Obama has “wisely deferred some smaller, politically hazardous battles,” including the closing of Guantanamo, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and Israel’s West Bank settlements, focusing instead on “his most urgent priorities—preventing a depression, remaking America’s global image, and winning universal health insurance.” As Weisberg concludes, what President since FDR has accomplished more in year one?

This item is cross-posted from The New Republic.
It’s hardly a secret or an accident that much of politics revolves around the elimination of doubt among voters on public policy issues. Base-mobilization strategies for elections typically involve convincing people with clear preferences but weak civic engagement (or doubts about their own “team”) that any given trip to the ballot box is of epochal importance. Swing-voter persuasion strategies also tend to focus on efforts to convince the undecided that one’s party or candidate will make the country a much happier place. And while doubt’s evil twin, fear, most definitely has a place in both base and swing strategies, it’s still aimed at convincing voters there is a clear and unambiguous, if largely negative, difference between the consequences of voting this way or that.
I mention the dubious political status of doubt in the context of a long and fascinating piece we just published at The Democratic Strategist by Jasmine Beach-Ferrara, director of The Progressive Project, entitled “Zero For Thirty-One: Lessons From the Loss in Maine.” A veteran of the struggle for LGBT rights and marriage equality, Beach-Ferrara concludes that ballot measures to stop gay marriage keep winning in no small part because equality advocates don’t talk much to conflicted voters, particularly those for whom religious dogma pulls them away from their own personal sense of fairness–i.e., non-bigots who are lumped in with bigots in most LGBT-rights strategies.
Based on her first-hand interviews with torn voters, Beach-Ferrara contends that marriage equality activists would do well to spend some time convincing such voters to reflect their true convictions by conscientiously passing up the opportunity to make a choice they aren’t prepared to make. In other words, rather than pushing people to come down on one side or the other, activists should have looked at doubt as a political asset.
Beach-Ferrara’s provocative article immediately reminded me of the only politician I’ve ever heard talk about doubt as a religious value: Barack Obama. In his famously controversial but ultimately effective commencement speech at Notre Dame in May, Obama addressed the faithful in terms that Beach-Ferrara (herself a divinity student) would find congenial:

[T]he ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It is the belief in things not seen. It is beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what He asks of us, and those of us who believe must trust that His wisdom is greater than our own.
This doubt should not push us away from our faith. But it should humble us. It should temper our passions, and cause us to be wary of self-righteousness. It should compel us to remain open, and curious, and eager to continue the moral and spiritual debate that began for so many of you within the walls of Notre Dame..

Given the usual tendency of progressives to deal with conservatively inclined religious people by pandering to them, steering clear of the subject, or offering the faith-based counterdogmas of the Christian Left, Obama was indeed offering something new: pluralism based on conscientious doubt, or as it was once called, the fear of God.
But doubt can obviously become a political asset beyond the ranks of the religious. We normally think of doubt on political or policy questions as an inherently conservative force, leading to a preference for the devil you know. At a time like the present, however, when “wrong-track” sentiments are exceptionally strong and most major public and private institutions are held in low repute, doubt can lead in very different directions depending on how that emotion is deployed.
That’s one important reason why health care reform has been so difficult a topic for progressives. Democrats have been focusing much of their efforts reassuring people with health insurance that reform won’t degrade their coverage. But this message has come at the expense of accurately describing the terrible unfairness and inefficiency and unsustainable trajectory of the current system. Reassured voters have no real stake in reform. Doubters may, but only if they are convinced the status quo represents as much or more of a risk than a new system.
The bottom line is that doubt is going to be an important popular sentiment on complex topics like health care, climate change, globalization, or the long-term fiscal challenge. It can work for progressives, or against them, but the prevailing unhappiness about current conditions in the country ought to make doubt-based decisions—or in the case of gay marriage, decisions not to make decisions—friendlier to real change. So long as we treat certainty as the object of every political communication, and write off the doubtful as stupid, cognitively challenged, or unmotivated, we miss that opportunity.

Like most everyone else who is not in the food or other essential services industries, we’re taking a break from work today. And we’re very thankful for not having lost a job, a loved one, or our minds, during the last year.
A happy Thanksgiving Day to all, and we’ll be back tomorrow.