It wasn’t a big shock, but still, citizens of the United Kingdom woke up today to a very unsettled political situation, having rebuffed Labour and the Liberal Democrats in yesterday’s election, but without giving the Tories the majority necessary to immediately govern.
With votes still out from two seats, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258, the Lib Dems 57, and other parties 28. The popular vote split 36% Tory, 29% Labour, and 23% Lib Dem. The major surprise was that the “Cleggmania” that seemed to grip the electorate during the campaign did not translate into a much better showing for the Lib Dems, who actually lost seats. But they certainly retained some influence as the party holding the balance of power, and today Nick Clegg is entertaining semi-public overtures from both the big parties to form a coalition government, while hoping to secure some sort of agreement to move the electoral system away from the first-past-the-post method that has so long frustrated the Lib Dems (most notably yesterday).
The most likely outcome is a minority Tory government under David Cameron with a short-term mandate to deal with the country’s immediate economic and financial problems and then hold another election, possibly even this year. Given the brevity of British campaigns, that’s not quite the nightmare scenario it sounds like to American ears. On the other hand, given the problems Britain faces right now (as eloquently outlined by William Galston), it’s unlikely a minority government facing an immediate election is going to exactly represent a profile in courage.
Ed Kilgore
This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on April 30, 2010.
For those who have been following the Demos/TDS forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” and for those just tuning in, I’d like to offer some observations about the discussion as it is unfolding, and about points of convergence and disagreement among our distinguished group of essayists.
John Schwarz’s introductory essay was based on two core convictions: that “freedom” is a very powerful concept in American politics which conservatives have come to “own” and identify with their own “negative liberty” ideology; and that a positive progressive vision of freedom can and must be aggressively articulated just as the Founders, Lincoln, FDR, and–until recently–Barack Obama did.
There’s some disagreement among our essayists about the first argument: that, as Lew Daly puts it, “the meaning of American freedom is being hijacked by the right.” Matt Yglesias argues that the right’s freedom-rhetoric is transparently empty and hypocritical, and is not terribly important to contemporary political battles. The erosion in the faith in government that’s become so prevalent of late is, Yglesias suggests, mainly attributable to the country’s economic problems, and is likely to abate if and when the economy revives. The immediate challege for progressives is to expose the agenda of conservatism “in all its splendor and horror,” and arguments over the true nature of freedom do not necessarily contribute to that task.
Mark Schmitt also doubts debates over “freedom” will have immediate political resonance, but thinks it’s worth talking about for a more fundamental reason:
[E]ven if a liberal claim on the word won’t suddenly make the right shut up and go home, it’s worth thinking about whether a richer language of freedom would give a stronger sense of purpose to liberalism, not just for political reasons, but because we actually care about it.
John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira come at Schwarz’ hypothesis from a different angle: they contend, based on their own research, that robust majorities of Americans actually do embrace a progressive definition of “freedom,” but deeply mistrust government as an effective instrument for pursuing it. It’s this mistrust that progressives need to do something about most urgently:
They must take far more aggressive and sustained steps to defend government itself, despite its currently unpopularity, and make clear to people exactly how government enables individual freedom and the common good.
Will Marshall accepts the political salience of freedom, but argues that to be credible progressives must admit that their goals do involve the balancing of freedom with other values of equal importance to Americans. Instead of “rebranding” freedom in congruence with progressive policy aims, he suggests a pragmatic approach that acknowledges the validity of public concerns about overreaching government and focuses on “expanding opportunity rather than government.”
Hilary Bok weighs in on the side of those who think it’s important and achievable to contest conservative freedom-rhetoric:
[W]hile people’s views of political parties don’t change as quickly as I’d like, they do change eventually. Republicans have already forfeited their reputation for competence and fiscal discipline. I suspect that they are in the process of losing much of the credibility they once had with the military, though I expect this to take a while. If there is any justice in the world, their claim to support liberty will eventually become as obviously risible as their claim to be responsible stewards of the economy. Since I care about liberty, I want to do whatever I can to help this process along.
She also argues that the distinction between “positive” and “negative” concepts of freedom can be misleading, since government action is sometimes essential to enhance freedom generally, even in such simple forms as traffic laws. Beyond that:
[M]any programs that liberals support arguably increase our liberty – our freedom to decide what kind of life we should lead from among a reasonable set of alternatives, and to have a good shot at living a decent life if we are willing to work hard and play by the rules.
Schwarz’ second main theme, which lays out a distinctive progressive vision of freedom, has also attracted some commentary. Yglesias, Marshall and Schmitt all emphasize the importance of certain “negative” freedoms that progressives are far more likely to defend than do conservatives.
Mark Schmitt offers a broader definition of the freedom progressives should fight for, particularly as it relates to issues that go beyond the pocket-book, and argues for “an optimistic, bright vision of human possibility and fulfillment in all dimensions of life–material and non-material,” as opposed to the “narrow, dark vision of freedom from an oppressive government” that conservative so often present.
Will Marshall is more skeptical than other essayists about the political salience of a “positive freedom” agenda that involves expansion of government, and also argues that progressives should reclaim their own legacy of promoting freedom internationally.
All seven essays offer distinctive perspectives from a common starting-point, and provide serious food for thought, not just by professional “thinkers” but by people engaged in practical politics and government who must deal with the consequences of both progressive and conservative freedom-rhetoric.
We anticipate new essays next week from Paul Starr and Orlando Patterson and perhaps others, and will then work towards distilling the discussion to draw out points of consensus.
This item by James Vega was first published on May 2, 2010.
Writing in a Washington Post op-ed he says:
On the one hand:
Most important, tea partiers must remain distinct from both political parties. The GOP would like nothing better than to co-opt the movement and control the independent conservatives who are its members.
…But we must keep in mind that perhaps the single biggest mistake of the conservative movement was becoming an appendage of the Republican Party.
… Remember that most conservative leaders and organizations in Washington were silent when George W. Bush and congressional Republicans were expanding government at a record-breaking pace.
Even today, too many conservatives are willing to overlook the fact that the GOP’s leaders in Congress, Sen. Mitch McConnell and Rep. John Boehner, were willing accomplices of Bush’s spending policies and that Mitt Romney was for Obamacare before Obama was.
But on the other hand:
… If conservatives fall into the third-party trap, they will split the right-of-center vote, thereby guaranteeing the left’s control of America for at least another generation. The opportunity of a lifetime will have been wasted.
The tea party electoral strategy should be simple and consistent: We must run principled conservatives in the primaries and then throw our support behind the most conservative major-party candidates in the general election.
OK. Everybody got that? Like the man says, it’s “simple and consistent”
“Don’t become an appendage” to the Republican Party
“Remain distinct” from the Republican Party
“Don’t allow [The Republican Party] to co-op you”
Don’t forget their many betrayals
…but, oh yes, vote for them – all of them — in November anyway
It’s sure lucky that Viguerie clearly labeled this strategy the “simple and consistent” one. I’d hate to see what the inconsistent one looks like.
This item by Ed Kilgore was first published on April 30, 2010.
I suspect lots of you who have never heard of Nevada senatorial candidate Sue Lowden have heard of the “Chickens For Checkups” brouhaha, which has already swept through the late-night comedy circuit and is now endangering Lowden’s front-running campaign to beat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
Long story somewhat shorter: at a candidate forum Lowden got to talking about individual negotiations between patients and health care providers as a tool to hold down health costs, and suggested that people without insurance barter with their doctors.
Asked about it on a Nevada TV station, Lowden defended the validity and relevance of bartering for health services, and mentioned the “olden days” when people would pay their doctors with chickens. And then, for reasons that defy imagination, she kept defending her gaffe, and getting other Republicans to defend her gaffe, turning what should have been a one-day story into a major political disaster.
Worse yet, her main rival for the Republican nomination, Danny Tarkanian, is now using her clueless handling of the controversy as a good reason to vote against her. Tark’s campaign is encouraging people to watch a video of Lowden’s latest interview on the subject, which is pretty devastating. She has finally stopped defending poultry-bartering as a good idea, but instead engages in a stammering effort to change the subject while accusing Harry Reid of “trying to change the subject.”
It’s unclear exactly how much damage Lowden has done to herself (a DKos/R2k poll released just yesterday showed her remaining well ahead of Tarkanian and maintaining a small lead over Reid) , but it is clear the gaffe-aganza will haunt her campaign til the primary, and, if she survives it, all the way to November.
Sue Lowden is a casino owner and a former state party chair; she wasn’t born yesterday. It’s entirely possible that some of the hilarity at her expense is based on sexist gender stereotypes, particularly since she is, after all, a former Miss New Jersey and a self-proclaimed advocate for the Miss America Pageant. But in any event, I suspect something else is going on here that has largely escaped notice: poultry metaphors aside, Lowden believes what she says about bartering, reflecting the bedrock conservative conviction that reliance on health insurance, private or public, is what’s driving up health care costs. According to this theory, when people in the “olden days” had to pay for health services out-of-pocket, they were more responsible for taking care of themselves and had a strong incentive to obtain the lowest possible prices. With “third parties” (i.e. insurance providers) handling health care provider payments, these incentives have largely disappeared.
This implicit hostility to the very idea of insurance and risk-spreading is what accounts for the perpetual Republican support for Health Savings Accounts, which provide tax incentives for purchasing health services with saved cash, theoretically limiting the need for insurance to catastrophic ailments. (Indeed, Lowden talked up HSAs in her original “bartering” comments). And it’s also why virtually every major GOP health “reform” proposal (notably those advanced by George W. Bush and John McCain) in recent years has focused on driving people into the individual market for both insurance and health services. They never come out and say it like Lowden did, but the idea is to go back to the “olden days” of the 1950s or earlier when Americans were basically left to their own resources to deal with health problems.
So give Sue Lowden some credit for candor, and more importantly, be prepared to hang the “Chickens-For-Checkups” label on any Republican who talks vaguely about the need for greater “individual responsibility” in health care.
When you read as much stuff on politics as I do, there’s an odd sort of exultation when you spot something so very poorly reasoned that you can spend many pleasurable hours tearing it apart. It helps when the author of such a “pinata” (i.e., it can be hit from just about any direction) is arrogantly or angrily wrong, stamping his or her feet at the very necessity of having to explain obvious truths that are anything but obvious or true. That’s why, on doctor’s orders, I only allow myself to read Peggy Noonan’s columns, so predictably full of rich manure, now and then.
Today the famous pollster and sometimes-Democratic, sometimes-strategist, Mark Penn, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post that is Noonan-esque in its strongly-held folly. You can read the whole thing, but basically, Penn is saying that the vast uptick in independent voter sentiment in this country is creating a good environment for a centrist third party that’s socially liberal and economically conservative, and Penn points to the rise of the UK’s Liberal Democrats as an example of what could happen here.
As Jon Chait notes in his own demolition of Penn’s column, the first contention is demonstrably wrong, though it appears it will take wooden stakes to kill it:
In fact, pollsters and public opinion experts — a group that apparently excludes Penn — understand that independent self-identification largely reflects a desire not to be seen as a closed-minded, automatic vote. It does not, however, reflect actual voting independence. Most self-identified independents are at least as partisan in their voting behavior as self-identified Democrats or Republicans. It’s largely a class phenomenon, with wealthier and more educated voters being more likely to call themselves independent, but not more likely to go astray in the voting both. The rise of independent self-identification has little to do with voters moving toward the center or the parties moving toward the extremes. Plenty of those self-identified Democrats in the 1950s voted for Ike.
In other words, actual as opposed to professed independent political behavior–i.e., ticket-splitting–has regularly decined now for decades, as has the percentage of the electorate made up of “true” independents. So there is no ripe uncaptured constituency out there, and to the extent that it even exists, it’s ideologically polyglot, not a “centrist” coalition ready for the taking. Many self-professed “independents,” as we’ve seen once again in the Tea Party Movement and in elements of the Left disgruntled with Obama and before him with Bill Clinton, are more ideological than self-professed partisans. Maybe they’ll vote, and maybe they won’t, but they are not combinable in some sort of third-party impulse.
More importantly, as Penn does acknowledge, there are powerful institutional barriers to the rise of third parties. But in noting the failure of the last two major efforts (John Anderson’s in 1980, and Ross Perot’s in 1992 and 1996), Penn simply says they failed because neither leader was “dynamic” enough. Perhaps, as some observers will undboutedly conclude, Penn’s column is really a public valentine to some very rich person (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) who might look in the mirror and see the leader “dynamic” enough to succeed where so many others, including reasonably dynamic people like Teddy Roosevelt, have failed. But in any event, Penn’s case for the viability of a third party totally depends on his analysis of the “centrist” and “independent” electorate, which is bogus to begin with.
Perhaps sensing the weakness of his case (or just looking for a news “hook”), Penn then hauls in the Liberal Democrats in an effort to divine some sort of transatlantic movement. You wouldn’t know if from his account, but far from being a “new” phenomenon, the LibDems represent a centuries-old political tradition (technically, the party represents a merger of the ancient Liberals with the Social Democrats, a splinter party that left Labour for many of the same reasons that Tony Blair and his associates found for reforming it a few years later). And it’s not exactly easy to match the Lib Dems to Penn’s template of “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” voters. Aside from “change,” they are for tax increases to reduce public debt, legalized same-sex marriages, major reductions in defense spending, liberalized immigration laws, and more aggressive participation in Europe. Their opposition to British entry in the Iraq War is probably the recent position with which they were most identified. Does this agenda sound “nonpartisan centrist” in any context that is transferable to America, or to Penn’s own agenda? Or more like the left wing of the Democratic Party, which Penn despises?
Moreover, “Cleggmania” aside, it’s very unlikely that the LibDems will make gains in their parliamentary representation that are in any way comparable to the share of the popular vote they receive today. And that’s in a country where the barriers to third parties are considerably lower than in the U.S.
I am not, as it happens, among the vast ranks of Penn-haters in the progressive blogosphere. I gave his last book one of its more favorable reviews. But the reality is that Mark Penn is largely frozen out of today’s Democratic Party elites thanks to years of intra-party combat and particularly his abrasive role in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Yes, he’s very wealthy and still has the juice, it appears, to command the op-ed pages of the Washington Post when he feels like it. The third party he describes as just over the horizon, however, is pretty much a party of one.
As you probably know, it’s Election Day in the United Kingdom, after a remarkably brisk but intense campaign. And it looks like it will wind up where it started, with the Conservatives likely to win a plurality of the vote and come close to a majority of the seats in the House of Commons. Whether or not there is technically a “hung parliament” (i.e., no majority for any one party) a sizable Tory plurality would very likely produce a government led by David Cameron. He’s already reportedly cut a deal with Ulster Unionists to forge a coalition if he falls just a handfull of seats short of a majority.
In any event, it’s been a memorable campaign, notable mostly because British politics finally followed the U.S. into a television-dominated competition of party leaders, not just parties. The three televised debates may not have changed the ultimate outcome that much, but probably did change the nature of campaigning and media coverage forever.
Here’s a link to Alex Massie’s suggestions for how you can best follow the returns and reactions.
Results from yesterday’s primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio showed that on occasion the conventional wisdom is right.
Dan Coats did indeed win a Senate nomination in IN with an unimpressive (39%) percentage because the hard-core conservative vote was divided between Jim DeMint’s favorite, Marlin Stutzman (who finished second), and paleoconservative John Hostettler.
Lee Fisher did indeed parlay superior money, name recognition and endorsements into a fairly confortable (56/44) OH win over Jennifer Brunner.
And in NC, Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham are indeed headed for a runoff on June 22, with Marshall leading the first round a few percentage points short of the 40% threshold for outright victory. As expected, Ken Lewis ran third, though with a relatively strong 17%.
A PPP survey over the weekend showed Marshall leading a hypothetical runoff contest 43/32 with a quarter of the vote undecided. I guess we will see just how much money Cunningham’s friends in the DSCC are willing and able to raise to help him overcome that lead.
In House races, the closest thing to a real upset was in IN, where endangered incumbent Republican congressmen Mark Souder and Dan Burton narrowly survived. This disappointed journalists who had prepared “anti-incumbent mood” pieces in advance.
Rep. Larry Kissell pretty easily won his primary in NC, and zany self-funded conservative Tim D’Annunzio will be in a runoff in his effort to take on Kissell.
Next up on the calendar is Utah’s Republican State Convention on Saturday, which will determine the fate of endangered Sen. Bob Bennett, who may have fatally displeased conservatives by cosponsoring bipartisan health reform legislation. One of Bennett’s chief tormenters, Red State’s Erick Erickson, is already moving on to an effort to demonize the guy who appears to be running second ahead of Bennett in delegates, so it must not look good for the incumbent.
It’s primary day in three states, with a host of congressional and state legislative contests on tap, and three interesting Senate primaries, one on the Republican side (Indiana) and two on the Democratic (Ohio and North Carolina).
I’ve written previews of the Senate campaigns over at 538.com (here and here). The only pretty clear, easy-to-predict race is in OH, where Lee Fisher seems to be pulling away from Jennifer Brunner, having outraised and outspent her by nearly four-to-one; Fisher also has labor and DC support. In NC the race is likely to go to a runoff between long-time front-runner Elaine Marshall and the candidate recruited by the DSCC, Cal Cunningham, but watch out for the possiblity that Marshall will top 40% and end it tonight. Almost anything could happen in Indiana, though the general expectation is that John Hostettler and Marlin Stutzman will split the True Conservative vote and enable Dan Coats to limp into the general election against Brad Ellsworth. Coats would have a strong national wind at his back, but this may not be the best year for a candidate sporting a recent history as a DC lobbyist for big banks.
There are an assortment of interesting House primaries, most notably in IN, where longtime conservative Rep. Mark Souder, who violated a term limit promise, is in trouble against a self-funded car dealer, Bob Thomas. Another self-funding GOPer, NC’s Tim Annunzio, may be in the process of buying the nomination to face vulnerable Dem Larry Kissell, but Annunzio’s history of erratic behavior could make him non-viable in the general election (Kissell faces his own primary against Nancy Shakir, whose campaign has been fed by unhappiness with Kissell’s vote against health reform, but the incumbent is expected to win).
Turnout will be terrible in OH and NC, perhaps higher (on the GOP side at least) in IN. Stay tuned for analysis of the results tomorrow.
UPDATE: Take away the modifier “perhaps” before my suggestion that turnout in IN will be higher than in today’s other primary states. According to the IndyStar, turnout may be running ahead of 2006 levels, particularly on the GOP side, where the Senate primary is just one of a number of hot races around the state.
Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.
But in his weekly column for National Journal over the weekend, Ron Brownstein has done us all the great service of carefully documenting how far and how fast Republican members of Congress have moved on this subject since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006:
Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. That bill was co-authored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy. President Bush strongly supported it. The Republican supporters also included such conservative senators as Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky….
The measure almost certainly could have attracted the necessary 218 votes to pass the House. But it died when House GOP leaders refused to bring it to a vote because they concluded that it lacked majority support among House Republicans.
Since 2006, Republican support for comprehensive action has unraveled. In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster. By 2008, McCain declared in a GOP presidential debate that he would no longer support his own bill: Tougher border enforcement, he insisted, should precede discussion of any new pathway to citizenship.
So the GOP position was moving rightwards at warp speed even with a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, George W. Bush, still in the White House, being advised by Karl Rove, who viewed such legislation as critical to maintaining a competitive position for Republicans among Hispanic voters. But it’s shifted even more since then, even though levels of immigration have significantly dropped.
For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates, including a “biometric” Social Security card to certify legal status for employment. On balance, their proposal appears more conservative than the 2006 bill.
Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward. Even Graham angrily backed away this week, after Senate Democratic leaders briefly suggested they would move immigration reform ahead of climate-change legislation he is also negotiating. Reform advocates suspect that Graham is withdrawing from the immigration effort partly to avoid embarrassing his close ally McCain, who faces a stiff primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
So it appears that Senate Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform (or to be exact, a more conservative version of it) has dropped from 23 to 1 and perhaps soon to nada.
Underneath this shift, notes Brownstein, is the self-replicating demographic isolation of the GOP, which, as Rove forsaw, could make the construction of a Republican majority much harder in the medium-to-long-range future:
[T]he hardening GOP position also shows how the party is being tugged toward nativism as its coalition grows more monochromatic: In a nation that is more than one-third minority, nearly 90 percent of McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election came from whites. That exclusionary posture could expose the GOP to long-term political danger. Although Hispanics are now one-sixth of the U.S. population, they constitute one-fifth of all 10-year-olds and one-fourth of 1-year-olds.
This may not matter to Republican candidates in tough primaries this year, who aren’t looking beyond their noses and figure they can’t afford to get outflanked by opponents who are “getting tough” on immigration. But they are in danger of taking an existing demographic problem facing the GOP and making it immeasurably worse, and more immediate.
For those who have been following the Demos/TDS forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” and for those just tuning in, I’d like to offer some observations about the discussion as it is unfolding, and about points of convergence and disagreement among our distinguished group of essayists.
John Schwarz’s introductory essay was based on two core convictions: that “freedom” is a very powerful concept in American politics which conservatives have come to “own” and identify with their own “negative liberty” ideology; and that a positive progressive vision of freedom can and must be aggressively articulated just as the Founders, Lincoln, FDR, and–until recently–Barack Obama did.
There’s some disagreement among our essayists about the first argument: that, as Lew Daly puts it, “the meaning of American freedom is being hijacked by the right.” Matt Yglesias argues that the right’s freedom-rhetoric is transparently empty and hypocritical, and is not terribly important to contemporary political battles. The erosion in the faith in government that’s become so prevalent of late is, Yglesias suggests, mainly attributable to the country’s economic problems, and is likely to abate if and when the economy revives. The immediate challege for progressives is to expose the agenda of conservatism “in all its splendor and horror,” and arguments over the true nature of freedom do not necessarily contribute to that task.
Mark Schmitt also doubts debates over “freedom” will have immediate political resonance, but thinks it’s worth talking about for a more fundamental reason:
[E]ven if a liberal claim on the word won’t suddenly make the right shut up and go home, it’s worth thinking about whether a richer language of freedom would give a stronger sense of purpose to liberalism, not just for political reasons, but because we actually care about it.
John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira come at Schwarz’ hypothesis from a different angle: they contend, based on their own research, that robust majorities of Americans actually do embrace a progressive definition of “freedom,” but deeply mistrust government as an effective instrument for pursuing it. It’s this mistrust that progressives need to do something about most urgently:
They must take far more aggressive and sustained steps to defend government itself, despite its currently unpopularity, and make clear to people exactly how government enables individual freedom and the common good.
Will Marshall accepts the political salience of freedom, but argues that to be credible progressives must admit that their goals do involve the balancing of freedom with other values of equal importance to Americans. Instead of “rebranding” freedom in congruence with progressive policy aims, he suggests a pragmatic approach that acknowledges the validity of public concerns about overreaching government and focuses on “expanding opportunity rather than government.”
Hilary Bok weighs in on the side of those who think it’s important and achievable to contest conservative freedom-rhetoric:
[W]hile people’s views of political parties don’t change as quickly as I’d like, they do change eventually. Republicans have already forfeited their reputation for competence and fiscal discipline. I suspect that they are in the process of losing much of the credibility they once had with the military, though I expect this to take a while. If there is any justice in the world, their claim to support liberty will eventually become as obviously risible as their claim to be responsible stewards of the economy. Since I care about liberty, I want to do whatever I can to help this process along.
She also argues that the distinction between “positive” and “negative” concepts of freedom can be misleading, since government action is sometimes essential to enhance freedom generally, even in such simple forms as traffic laws. Beyond that:
[M]any programs that liberals support arguably increase our liberty – our freedom to decide what kind of life we should lead from among a reasonable set of alternatives, and to have a good shot at living a decent life if we are willing to work hard and play by the rules.
Schwarz’ second main theme, which lays out a distinctive progressive vision of freedom, has also attracted some commentary. Yglesias, Marshall and Schmitt all emphasize the importance of certain “negative” freedoms that progressives are far more likely to defend than do conservatives.
Mark Schmitt offers a broader definition of the freedom progressives should fight for, particularly as it relates to issues that go beyond the pocket-book, and argues for “an optimistic, bright vision of human possibility and fulfillment in all dimensions of life–material and non-material,” as opposed to the “narrow, dark vision of freedom from an oppressive government” that conservative so often present.
Will Marshall is more skeptical than other essayists about the political salience of a “positive freedom” agenda that involves expansion of government, and also argues that progressives should reclaim their own legacy of promoting freedom internationally.
All seven essays offer distinctive perspectives from a common starting-point, and provide serious food for thought, not just by professional “thinkers” but by people engaged in practical politics and government who must deal with the consequences of both progressive and conservative freedom-rhetoric.
We anticipate new essays next week from Paul Starr and Orlando Patterson and perhaps others, and will then work towards distilling the discussion to draw out points of consensus.