Over at MyDD, Chris Bowers gets the new year rolling with a post about the gradual displacement of “liberal” by “progressive” as the key self-identifier of Americans on the left and center-left of our political system. Chris’ history lesson on the subject is basically sound if a bit incomplete. He’s correct in saying that late-nineteenth century Democrats (at least up until the fusion with Populists in 1896) were “liberal” in the European sense of favoring laissez-faire economic policies; there’s a good reason that ur-libertarian Ayn Rand regarded Grover Cleveland as the beau ideal of American political history. But they did not always think of themselves as such, given their espousal of states-rights and constitutional strict-construction doctrines; regular southern Democrats in particular called their party “conservative” through most of the nineteenth century.Likewise, “progressive” was not universally used as the self-identifier of the center-left prior to the New Deal. The term was often used by business interests who thought of advanced capitalism as a historically determined trend. And many Populists, who often argued they were restoring a pre-capitalist Jeffersonian political order, certainly didn’t embrace the label of “progressive,” either. Chris is spot-on in noting that “progressive” became tainted by its association with the pro-communist (or at least anti-anti-communist) Left, especially in 1948. And he’s also right in acknowledging that the revival of the “progressive” self-identification occurred almost simultaneously in two very different parts of the Democratic Party in the 1990s: the anti-war, anti-corporate, anti-establishment Left, and the New Democrat movement in the center-left. I have one quibble with Chris’ suggestion that New Democrats started using the term “progressive” (most notably with the establishment of the Progressive Policy Institute in 1989) “as a means to avoid being labeled as ‘liberal.'” That suggests the terminology was purely cosmetic and non-ideological. In fact, the early New Democrats argued that “liberalism” had become temperamentally reactionary, consumed with defending the dead letter of every single New Deal/Great Society program and policy, while sacrificing the spirit of innovation that made “progressives” progressive. The whole international “Third Way” phenomenon was not designed to produce a moderate middle-point between Left and Right, but instead a reformulation of the progressive mission of the center-left at a time when the Right was successfully battening on popular discontent with outworn social democratic programs. That’s why many of us from the New Dem tradition heartily dislike the “centrist” or “moderate” labels, even though they are hard to escape as a short-hand for intra-party politics. (I could, but won’t, go off into a digression about the unusual nature of the American left, which never even flirted with Marxism, and never really embraced European-style democratic socialism, despite some social-democratic features of the Populist program and the New Deal).As for Chris’ ultimate question about the advisability of “progressive” as a unifying, if not always clarifying, self-identifier for the American left and center-left, I’m certainly comfortable with the P-word as opposed to the L-word. Outside the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom (and perhaps to a very limited extent, Germany), the term “liberal” is invariably associated with the political right, while “progressive” has begun to replace “social democratic” as the preferred general term for the left and center-left (the latter process being hastened by the collapse of communism). A particular irritant in any transnational discussion of political terminology has been the variable meaning of the term “neo-liberal,” which outside the US denotes the Thatcher-Reagan revival of the political right based on dogmatic market capitalism, while here it lingers as the chosen self-identifier for those proto-New Democrats of the 1980s associated with the germinal thinking of the Washington Monthly in those days, which reached its brief zenith in Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign. Even if “progressives” often disagree on a host of issues, the term reminds us of our common moorings in a tradition that is hostile to inherited or state-backed privilege, committed to equal opportunity, cognizant of the ultimate solidarity of all human beings, and determined to both accept and shape the forces of change through collective action. That’s why I’m a progressive, anyway.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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February 6: Democrats Have Wised Up and Stopped Trying to Cooperate With Trump
This has been quite the chaotic week or so, and one of the byproducts of the nihilistic conduct being displayed by Donald Trump and his allies has been a decided end of Democratic cooperation, and I welcomed that development at New York:
Following the time-honored ritual of giving a new president a “honeymoon,” a good number of prominent Democrats made friendly noises about their nemesis after Donald Trump’s November election victory. Some, like Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, seemed inclined to cross the partisan barricades whenever possible, praising Trump’s dubious Cabinet nominations, calling on Joe Biden to pardon Trump to get rid of his hush-money conviction, and even joining Truth Social. Others, notably Bernie Sanders, talked of selective cooperation on issues where MAGA Republicans at least feigned anti-corporate “populism.” Still others, including some Democratic governors, hoped to cut deals on issues like immigration to mitigate the damage of Trump’s agenda. And one congressional Democrat, the normally very progressive Ro Khanna, promoted cooperation with Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative, at least with respect to Defense spending.
This made some sense at the time. After all, Democrats, having lost control of both Congress and the White House, didn’t have much power of their own, and there was always the chance that having achieved his improbable comeback, Trump would calm down and try to become a normal chief executive in his final term in the job.
Now it is extremely clear that is not the case. The past chaotic week or so has convinced most Democrats that Trump has zero interest in compromise, bipartisanship, or even adherence to the law and to the Constitution. Musk and his Geek Kiddie Corps are ravaging agency after agency without the slightest legal authorization; OMB is preparing its own unilateral assault on federal benefits that don’t fit the Project 2025 vision of a radically smaller social safety net; and congressional Republicans are kneeling in abject surrender to whatever the White House wants. Democrats are resigning themselves to the mission of becoming an opposition party, full stop, making as much noise and arousing as much public outrage as they can. They shouldn’t be credited all that much for courage, since the new regime has given them little choice but to dig in and fight like hell.
OMB’s January 27 memo freezing a vast swath of federal programs and benefits, inept and confusing as it was, kicked off the current reign of terror. It reflected (and was likely dictated by) the belief of Trump OMB director nominee Russell Vought that the president can usurp congressional spending powers whenever he deems it necessary or prudent. Yet Congressional Republicans went along without a whimper. House Appropriations Committee chairman Tom Cole, who would have gone nuts had a Democratic president threatened his role so audaciously, said he had “no problem” with the freeze. The federal courts stepped in because OMB’s order was incoherently expressed, but there’s no question the administration will come back with something similar. As a sign of belated alarm over OMB’s direction, Senate Budget Committee Democrats boycotted Vought’s confirmation vote in reaction to this challenge to the constitutional separation of powers. After Republicans gaveled him on through without a whisper of dissent, Senate Democrats held an all-night “talk-a-thon” to recapitulate past and present concerns about Vought, a self-described Christian Nationalist and one of the principal authors of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint for a radically diminished federal government. He will be confirmed by the full Senate anyway.
Musk’s guerrilla warfare on the federal workforce and the programs they administer made the OMB power grab unfolding at about the same time look like a walk in the park. Even as his landing teams of 20-something coders took control of multiple agency IT systems and fired anyone who got in their way, Musk himself was on X making wild charges about the programs he was short-circuiting and all but cackling like a cartoon villain over his unlimited power. When Ro Khanna upbraided him for his lawlessness, he responded as you might expect, tweeting at Khanna: “Don’t be a dick.”
Khanna’s centrist Democratic colleague from Florida, Jared Moskovitz, had actually signed up for service on the DOGE oversight panel Mike Johnson created, despite its clear purpose as an ongoing pep rally for Musk. Now he’s out, as Punchbowl News reports:
“I need to see one of my Republican colleagues in the caucus explain the point of the caucus, because it seems that Elon doesn’t need them, because it seems what Elon is doing is destroying the separation of powers. And I don’t think the DOGE caucus at this moment really has a purpose … Whether I stay in the caucus, I think is questionable. I don’t need to stay in a caucus that’s irrelevant.”
Meanwhile, as all this madness was unfolding from the executive branch and its outlaw agents, congressional Republicans have been laboring through the process of putting together budget legislation to implement whatever portion of Trump’s agenda that wasn’t rammed through by fiat. Democrats are not being consulted at all in these preparations to produce a massive bill (or bills) that is expected to pass on a party-line vote and that cannot be filibustered in the Senate. Because of the immense leverage of the House Freedom Caucus over this legislation, the plans keep shifting in the direction of deeper and deeper domestic spending cuts at levels never discussed before. Per Punchbowl News:
“Speaker Mike Johnson and the House Republican committee chairs initially proposed between $500 billion to $700 billion in spending cuts as part of a massive reconciliation package. Yet conservative GOP hardliners rejected that, saying they wanted more. They’re seeking as much as $2 trillion to $5 trillion in cuts.”
Democrats can’t really do anything other than expose the extent and the effect of such cuts in the forelorn hope that a few House Republicans in particularly vulnerable districts develop their own counter-leverage over the process. But whatever emerges from the GOP discussion will have to be approved by OMB, where Russell Vought will soon be formally in charge. There’s just no path ahead for Democrats other than total war.
They do have their own leverage over two pieces of legislation Trump needs: an appropriations bill to keep government running after the December stopgap spending bill (which Musk nearly torpedoed in an early demonstration of his power) runs out, and a measure increasing the public debt limit. These bills can be filibustered, so Senate Democrats can kill them. There are increasing signs that congressional Democrats may refuse to go along with either one unless Trump puts a leash on Vought and Musk and perhaps even consults the Democratic Party on the budget. If there’s a government shutdown, it couldn’t be too much worse than a government being gutted by DOGE and OMB.
Republicans hope that Trump’s relatively strong popularity (for him, anyway) will keep Democrats from defying him. But they may not be accounting for the 47th president’s erratic character. On any given day, he may do something completely bonkers and deeply unpopular, like, say, suggesting the United States take over Gaza, expel its population, and build a resort development.