This item, the fifth in the Demos/TDS forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” is by Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Freedom, says John Schwarz, is too important to be left to conservatives. No argument there. For too long, liberals have been flummoxed by conservatives’ success in posing as defenders of liberty against government encroachment. This stance has given the conservative cause a simple, reductive logic and ideological coherence that liberals lack – and often envy. It has enabled the right to tap the deep strain of anti-statism that really does make American politics exceptional.
Modern liberals have chafed at the constraint that this classically liberal understanding of freedom imposes on their social vision. For decades, they’ve struggled to articulate a countervailing principle that can trump the power of what Louis Hartz called America’s underlying “Lockian” consensus.
Arriving in Washington just after Ronald Reagan’s election, I’d often ask shell-shocked liberals to define their first principle. The invariable, deflating answer: “affirming a positive role for government.” This trope reflected a confusion of means with ends – and it goes a long way toward explaining why only about a fifth of Americans have been willing to call themselves liberals since the early 1970s.
The story of how liberalism came to be linked with social engineering and redistribution, with tax and spend, and with rights and entitlements to favored groups is too familiar to need rehashing here. Suffice it to say that liberal efforts to expand government’s role to advance worthy social goals have often crossed lines that are important to many if not most voters. These lines mark the boundaries between individual and collective responsibility, and between government’s legitimate efforts to assure equal opportunity as opposed to equal outcomes.
So Schwarz’s diagnoses is right: the public’s abiding suspicion that expansive government means contracting freedom tends to stack the political deck in conservatives’ favor and keep liberals on the defensive. His ideas for reversing the presumption in liberals’ favor, however, fall short.
When it comes to freedom, liberals face an inescapable dilemma. They can never be as simple-minded as conservatives. They can’t simply counter conservatives’ classic-liberal conception of freedom with a social liberalism that aspires to greater equality and social justice. Mid-century liberals succeeded by keeping these often antagonist approaches in equipoise. Modern liberals have lost the balance, and with it, the ability to persuade a majority of Americans to their point of view.
Here it’s important to distinguish between Democrats and liberals. Most liberals are Democrats, but most Democrats are moderates (and another 17 percent say they are conservative). The outlook of moderate-to-conservative Democrats remains anchored in the classic liberalism of the American creed. Liberal Democrats incline toward social democracy, especially the Nordic model.
If liberals are very far from a majority, Democrats are achingly close. This suggests that we shouldn’t exaggerate the talismanic power of the right’s paeans to personal freedom. They didn’t prevent Democrats, first under Bill Clinton and now Barack Obama, from staging a political comeback. They didn’t stop Obama and his party from finally realizing their oft-deferred dream of universal health care, though it was a close-run thing.
Plus it’s arguable that, on the cultural front, Democrats already hold the high ground of freedom. Where morality is concerned, conservatives are all about government coercion; they want more legal prohibitions on individual behavior, not less. Liberals, to their ever-lasting credit, have fought to defend the individual freedom of minorities, women and gays against discriminatory laws and customs. Often they’ve paid dearly, as when the New Deal coalition splintered over civil rights. Over time, however, the right has been losing ground in the culture wars (to take the latest example, it won’t be long before the Pentagon retires “don’t ask, don’t tell”). No wonder Republicans are now turning from social issues to confront big government, big deficits and President Obama’s supposed plans for a government takeover of economic life.
This is the crucial battleground. Of course, the GOP’s “socialism” canard is ridiculous. But independents and moderates do worry that Democrats are insufficiently respectful of economic freedom and individual initiative, unwilling to discipline public spending, too trusting of central bureaucracies and regulation, and too focused on distributional equity at the expense of growing the economic pie.

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This item, the fourth in the TDS/Demos forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” is by John Halpin and Ruy Teixeira, senior fellows at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Teixeira is also a Founder and Co-Editor of The Democratic Strategist.
John Schwarz’s introductory essay provides many important insights about the philosophical framework of contemporary politics and offers a compelling overview of the continuity of progressive and liberal notions of freedom from Jefferson and Lincoln to FDR and Obama. We wholeheartedly agree with his assessment that the White House and progressives need to make this worldview a centerpiece of their public education and communications efforts. This is sound advice and the clear ideological markers laid out in the President’s speech on the economy at Georgetown would be a good place to start.
We disagree with Schwarz’s conception of the political challenge, however. Looking at the data, progressives do not have a problem with public resistance to their conception of freedom. Despite all the hype around the tea parties, extreme libertarian individualism is a much tougher sell in this country than FDR’s deeper conception of liberty as consisting of freedom of speech and religion coupled with freedom from want and fear.
Our research on political ideology last year found that by a 19-point margin, Americans agree more with a progressive vision of freedom similar to the one outlined in the essay over a more libertarian ideal put forth by Ayn Rand, Glenn Beck, and the tea partiers: 57 percent of Americans agreed that, “Freedom requires economic opportunity and minimum measures of security, such as food, housing, medical care, and old age protection,” versus 38 percent who believed that, “Freedom requires that individuals be left alone to pursue their lives as they please and to deal with the consequences of their actions on their own.” In numerous public polls and our own work, Americans also express a clear desire for tolerant policies that treat people equally and allow for diversity of thought, lifestyle and worship. They do not want the agenda of social conservatives. And even with the hostility to Obama and progressives that emerged over the course of the past year, the American public still believes in the core aspects of progressive government—regulation of the economy, support for the vulnerable, and public investments in education, infrastructure, health care, defense, research and energy transformation—although, in some cases, at lower levels than existed at the beginning of the Obama presidency.
The problem for progressives is not their conception of freedom as encompassing robust government actions to increase economic opportunity and social protections for people. The real problem for progressives lies in the severe public distrust that government can actually perform effectively and accomplish what Americans want it to do.
The recent Pew finding showing only 22 percent of Americans trusting the federal government—one of the lowest marks in half a century according to their analysis—is broadly indicative of this challenge and part of a larger issue of eroding public trust in large institutions ranging from Wall Street to the media. Looking at the data more closely, the stated reasons for this distrust are instructive. First, the massive divide between conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats over the size and function of government presents an unavoidable reality. Progressives must accept that they are in titanic battle with conservatives over the proper role of the state and the individual in society and the economy—a battle that has been going on more or less for a century and is not likely to subside anytime soon given the internal structure of conservative politics and the asymmetry between conservative and progressive media.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, Pew finds that majorities of Americans—across party lines—believe it is a major problem that the federal government is often wasteful and inefficient, does too little for average Americans, and has policies that unfairly benefit some groups. This is the deeper and more difficult challenge for progressives.
In order for a fuller conception of liberty to take hold—one that encompasses both negative freedom from undue coercion and effective freedom to live a full and materially secure life as John Dewey and FDR postulated—progressives must undertake a more elaborate project. They must take far more aggressive and sustained steps to defend government itself, despite its current unpopularity, and make clear to people exactly how government enables individual freedom and the common good. They must deliver on their promises and ensure that expanded government action measurably improves the lives of working- and middle-class citizens and leads to growth and shared prosperity. They must get far more serious about purging corporate influence in government and reforming the political system so that government actually works for the people in an equitable manner. And they must systematically challenge the selfish and hollow conservative notion of freedom that amounts to little more than helping rich people avoid paying taxes and allowing corporations to do whatever they want regardless of the consequences for the nation.
Put simply, progressives need to constantly argue that government plays a vital role in promoting human freedom and advancing national prosperity. Individuals are capable of making tremendous advances in their own lives. But they cannot stop financial markets from crashing. They cannot stop jobs from being eliminated or wages from being cut. They cannot stand up to health insurers on their own. They cannot direct national resources to key public needs like education, infrastructure, defense, and energy production. Americans need an advocate and a supporter and a means to express their voice in key debates and in support of common purposes. The private sector needs a public counterbalance and communities need mechanisms to advance larger goals and aspirations. This is why we have government. In order to promote genuine human freedom and opportunity, government must perform its role properly by ensuring full and equal rights for all people, defending the nation, guarding against undue corporate influence in policymaking, protecting people from market failures, and investing in public goods. This is the time-honored American vision of freedom and government that dates to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
If progressives articulate the case for government clearly and confidently, and ensure that their actions and policies live up these principles in practice, they will be successful. If conservative anti-government ideology goes unchallenged, and reform efforts stall or get turned into half measures, the hopes of building a long term political environment conducive to progressive policies and expansive notions of human freedom outlined so well by Schwarz will be severely diminished.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The most recent Quinnipiac survey provides an intriguing backdrop to President Obama’s impending Supreme Court nomination. Fifty-three percent of the respondents are very or somewhat confident that the president will make the right decision about who should replace Justice John Paul Stevens. At the same time, 42 percent expect that his nominee will be more liberal than they would like, versus only 8 percent who think the nominee won’t be liberal enough. Perhaps that is why people are almost evenly divided (46 percent to 43 percent) between those who trust the president more than Senate Republicans and vice versa.
The people polled have clear views about judicial philosophy and behavior. Forty-nine percent favor original intent as the basis of Supreme Court decisions (up from 40 percent in 2008), while 42 percent say that the Court should consider “changing times and current realities” (down from 52 percent). But they don’t think that either of these jurisprudential norms entirely dominates the justices’ decision-making. Instead, 78 percent believe that their political views enter in as well. This belief is shared across lines of partisanship and ideology—by 82 percent of Republicans, 72 percent of Democrats, and 80 percent of independents, by 77 percent of liberals, 78 percent of moderates, and 80 percent of conservatives. And respondents are divided almost evenly (47 percent to 43 percent) between those who believe senators should take only the nominee’s qualification into account and those who believe they should also consider his or her views on controversial issues such as abortion and gay marriage. Forty-eight percent believe that senators who disagree with the nominee’s views on these issues would be justified in filibustering the nomination; 41 percent disagree.
The survey also shows that many of the specific positions that Democrats and the president care most about enjoy substantial public support. For example, 60 percent of the people endorse Roe v. Wade, including 42 percent of Republicans and even 39 percent of self-identified conservatives. And, on the topic of campaign finance, President Obama has repeatedly expressed his belief that the Supreme Court went badly astray in its well-known Citizens United case, which struck down key limits on election spending, especially by corporations and unions. By a margin of 79 percent to 14 percent, the American people agree with him—82 percent of Democrats, 79 percent of independents, and 78 percent of Republicans (along with 69 percent of self-professed conservatives). This suggests that, if his Supreme Court nominee shares Obama’s view (which is likely), his Republican adversaries in the Senate would be ill-advised to challenge that view very aggressively.
There’s no doubt that Obama will take many different factors into account when selecting his nominee, including the capacity for intellectual leadership on the Court and ease of confirmation. But the Quinnipiac Survey suggests that, while the president has room to maneuver on specifics and the Republicans might be unwise to defy a nominee’s more liberal views on certain hot-button issues, the public tends to believe the president will pick someone more liberal than they themselves are. Republicans, in turn, would not necessarily pay a high political price if they filibustered the nominee. We could be in for quite the confirmation circus.

This item, the third in the TDS/Demos forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” is by Matt Yglesias, a Fellow at the Center for American Progress, a prolific writer at thinkprogress.org, and the author of Heads in the Sand. Matt’s post is a response to John Schwarz’s earlier essay in this series.
I was a philosophy major in college, and as such I came to appreciate the importance of the controversy between the libertarian conception of “negative liberty” (the absence of state coercion) and the modern liberal idea of “positive liberty” (the presence of opportunity). And John Schwarz has given us a brilliant tour of how this these contrasting conceptions of liberty—or, to use the more Anglo-Saxon term, “freedom”—can illuminate certain high-level disagreements of principle about public policy matters and how this dispute has played out in the history of American political rhetoric.
So far so good. But I think this issue is much less relevant to actual political practice than he seems to believe. In particular, I seriously doubt that Republican Party success at mobilizing freedom-rhetoric has much of anything to do with Barack Obama’s falling poll numbers or public hostility to Obama’s health care or cap and trade proposals. After all, these proposals existed during the 2008 campaign and were described then as threats to American freedom, but at the time those arguments had little purchase. On one level, the reasons behind the change are complicated. On another level, they’re simple—the poor performance of the American economy has eroded people’s trust in incumbents in general, Obama in particular, and the public sector writ large. There’s good reason to believe that this will turn around if the economy turns around, but not otherwise.
Beyond narrow electoral considerations, I also think it’s a mistake to too-closely identify the right’s freedom-rhetoric with the formal philosophical conception of libertarian-style negative liberty. It is, rather, a slogan that’s invoked as a gesture of ideological identity and solidarity that’s largely devoid of semantic content—it plays a role similar to the one “yes, we can” (itself an echo of the United Farm Workers’ “¡si se puede!”) plays for Obama’s supporters.
Consider that the proponents of right-wing “freedom” are not even slightly inclined to back elements of a libertarian agenda that conflict with conservative identity politics. When John Boehner says “most importantly, let’s allow freedom to flourish” he’s not suggesting we should open our borders to more immigrants or drop the vestigial Selective Service system or allow gay couples to marry or let Latin American countries sell us more sugar or reduce military expenditures. Indeed, the very same critics who castigate Obama for limiting Americans’ freedom also accuse him of being insufficiently eager to torture people, unduly hesitant to detain suspects without trial, and too eager to take the side of black professors subject to police harassment for the crime of trying to enter their own home.
Which is just to say that Boehner is a conservative. He sides with the military, with law enforcement, with the business establishment, and with the dominant ethno-cultural group in the country. In the United States of America, people who adhere to these values like to talk about “freedom” but this has nothing in particular to do with any real ideas about human liberty.
Back in September of 1960, the leading lights of the nascent conservative movement met in Sharon, Connecticut to found Young Americans for Freedom and they proclaimed that “foremost among the transcendent values is the individual’s use of his God-given free will, whence derives his right to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force.” A naive person might read that and conclude that William F Buckley, Jr was a strong proponent of federal anti-lynching legislation and other civil rights laws since, clearly, it was African-Americans in the Jim Crow South who were most subject to “restrictions of arbitrary force” and general lack of freedom. In the real world, a couple of lines down the Sharon Statement is talking about state’s rights, “the genius of the Constitution – the division of powers – is summed up in the clause that reserves primacy to the several states, or to the people in those spheres not specifically delegated to the Federal government.” In 1962, YAF gave its Freedom Award to none other than Strom Thurmond, and in 1964 they helped organize the GOP nomination victory of Barry Goldwater, spearheading the party’s turn away from its historic support of liberty for black people. Somewhat similarly, the far-right parties in the Netherlands and Austria are both called “Freedom Party.”
Which is not to say that invocations of “freedom” circa 2010 are really about racism. It’s just to say that in 2010 as in 1960 they’re about conservatism in all its splendor and horror, and have little to do with serious disagreements about the nature of liberty.

This item, the second in the TDS/Demos forum on “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom,” is by Demos Senior Fellow Lew Daly, the co-editor of this forum. It is intended to raise questions of immediate interest to progressives about the “Ideal of Freedom” as it affects practical politics.
The national elections of 2006 and 2008 suggested a powerful political realignment and raised hopes for a revival of progressive ideas about government and society. War-weary, disengaging from the culture wars, and reeling from economic collapse, the American electorate voted decisively against the failed conservative policies and incompetent governance of the George W. Bush years. Yet today, an explosive combination of media and activist engagement on the right has defined the terms of key national debates in ways that have made it difficult if not impossible to advance progressive policies in Washington. There may be rosier edges to this scenario in the distance, given deeper voting trends driven by demography and cultural change, but the political process for achieving strong progressive policy goals seems very much in disarray.
Among several key reasons for this, from the faltering economic recovery, to ever-more blatant lobbying influence, to Senate voting rules, far too little attention is being paid to thematic and ideological dynamics and how these dynamics shape political identification and public opinion on issues and policies. Today more than ever, with so many major challenges confronting us, we should be paying closer attention to the thematic and ideological dynamics that are shaping our politics and indeed distorting our politics in dangerous ways.
It has always been the case, and it remains so today: the central theme in the ideological dynamics of American politics is freedom. Yet the political struggle for freedom is completely one-sided today: Conservatives—and especially free-market conservatives—own the term, and their definition of the idea is dominant. They deploy it tirelessly and in unison with political leaders; and they are all working in concert on a polarization strategy that hinges on branding progressive policies and those who support them as enemies of freedom.
Yet, the truth is that progressives, not conservatives, stand closer, much closer, to the vision of freedom held by America’s founders and developed by the two greatest presidents who followed them, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Progressives, not conservatives, understand and seek to advance American freedom, as traditionally understood.
Even though the meaning of American freedom is being hijacked by the right, little is being done to expose their distortion of values or to revive the truth about freedom and what it requires. We have developed this online forum to help progressive thought- leaders, strategists, and activists address this problem and change the political environment into one in which progressives once again own this most powerful thematic and ideological ground.
We hope that participants can help address several questions of immediate importance to progressives:
1. How does the progressive “freedom” theme fit in with other progressive themes such as “a common national purpose,” “equality,” and “fairness”?
2. Is this progressive concept of freedom resonant with the public’s understanding of freedom?
3. (A) Is a progressive “freedom” agenda particularly appealing to constituencies and to major voting blocs (such as the white working class) that are particularly up for grabs? (B) Is the progressive “freedom” theme consistent or inconsistent with a progressive “populist” message? (C) Can the “freedom” agenda effectively challenge the current conservative populist backlash?
4. What are two or three banner areas of domestic policy in which progressives can most emphatically identify themselves with the defense of freedom?
5. What concept of the proper role of government is most consistent with a systematic progressive concept of freedom? What are the most effective ways of communicating that concept of government to the public?
We hope to have a lively discussion on these and other topics.

This item on the British election campaign, by TDS Co-Editor William Galston, is crossposted from The New Republic.
Seldom has a single debate had such an impact on a political campaign. A week ago, jaded observers were wondering whether David Cameron’s Conservatives could hold on to the lead over Gordon Brown’s Labour Party that they had enjoyed for more than two years, and the Liberal Democrats seemed doomed to their traditional also-ran status. In the wake of Liberal Democratic leader Nick Clegg’s strong performance in the first of three face-to-face encounters, though, the Liberal Democrats have surged into contention, vaulting ahead of Labour in several surveys and ahead of the Conservatives in at least one.
Underlying this development are deep reservations about the two major parties. While Gordon Brown gets grudging credit for a kind of stolid persistence, the fact remains that he was chancellor of the exchequer for a decade before succeeding Tony Blair as prime minister, so he can hardly evade responsibility for Britain’s acute fiscal crisis. As for the Tories, the electorate wonders whether David Cameron’s effort to reinvent his party as greener and more compassionate goes more than skin-deep. The Liberal Democrats’ gains reflect a desire—especially among younger voters—for something new and different … even if the third party’s platform offers an inadequate response to the structural problems Britain faces.
Whatever its cause, the Liberal Democrats’ surge does not mean that they have a serious chance of emerging with the most seats—let alone a majority—in the next parliament. Largely because of the way their votes are distributed among the electoral districts, the Liberal Democrats are almost certain to receive a much smaller percentage of seats than their share of the popular vote—which helps explain why they favor dramatic changes in the voting system. All other things equal, they could receive 30 percent of the popular vote and end up with fewer than 100 seats—less than 15 percent of the 650 seat total.
The oddities of this election do not end there. Labour’s votes are distributed far more efficiently than are those of the Conservatives. In 2005, Labour’s 35.2 percent of the vote brought them 356 seats, versus 198 seats for the Conservatives (32.4 percent) and only 62 for the Liberal Democrats (22.1 percent). Based on an algorithm found at ukpollingreport.co.uk, I was able to calculate that while Labour could retain a narrow majority this year with about only 34.5 percent of the popular vote, the Conservatives would need about 39.5 to win an outright majority, and the Liberal Democrats would need an implausible 41.3 percent. Otherwise put, Conservatives need to increase their share of the popular vote by about 7 percent points over last time to take over—not out of the question, but well above their showing in recent surveys.
What does all this mean? Well, there’s a good chance that the 2010 election will result in a “hung” parliament, in which neither Labour nor the Conservatives enjoys an outright majority. This would leave the Liberal Democrats as the kingmaker, and their price for entering a coalition government would include a major modification of the first-past-the-post system that has disadvantaged them for decades. This would change the dynamic of U.K. politics in ways that are hard to calculate but sure to be consequential.
Here’s one. For decades, the Liberal Democrats and their predecessors have struggled against the traditional disability of third parties in a first-past-the-post system: a vote for them might not only be “wasted,” but could actually work to the advantage of the voter’s least preferred outcome. If a vote for the Liberal Democrats in a new electoral system were a vote for them, full stop, they would have a better chance of attracting support from a new generation of voters who find themselves unimpressed by the major parties. If that happened, the Liberal Democrats would have to get more serious about a governing agenda than they have been up to now. But that’s a story for another day.

This item by John E. Schwarz is the opening and framing essay in an online forum cosponsored by Demos and TDS entitled: “Progressive Politics and the Meaning of American Freedom.” Responses to this essay, and other thoughts on the subject of progressivism and freedom, will be featured here over the next two weeks. John Schwarz is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, Professor Emeritus of Political Science at the University of Arizona, and the author, most recently, of Freedom Reclaimed: Rediscovering the American Vision.
Standing on the steps of the capitol, just before the House voted on its health-care reform bill last November, House Republican leader John A. Boehner proclaimed: “This bill is the greatest threat to freedom I’ve seen in the 19 years I’ve been here.” He used the very same terms four months earlier when he declared war on the Obama cap and trade bill: “The fight we have between the two (political parties),” he said, “boils down to one word—freedom: the freedom to allow the American people to live their lives without all these extra taxes and all this bureaucracy. I say to my colleagues… let’s trust the American people, let’s allow America to flourish, and, most importantly, let’s allow freedom to flourish.”
That is the core of the conservative message, and it has strong legs. Consider what happened to the single-payer plan in the health-care reform debate. President Obama and most progressives believed a comprehensive single-payer system provided the most effective foundation for reform, and they often said so. However, they also knew it was politically out of the question. So they settled for a “robust” but optional public plan instead. That already represented a substantial compromise for them, more than half a loaf. Yet, what they got in the House was far weaker still, a public option so eviscerated that a mere 2-3 percent of Americans would be eligible, most of them with such poor health conditions that insurance companies didn’t want to cover them anyway. They ended up with nothing in the Senate. An opposition asserting the cause of freedom and raising the specter of big government, as much as anything else, brought that result about. The cap and trade bill that Boehner attacked as an assault of coercive government on freedom is currently experiencing a similar fate.
Polls show that individual freedom is a highly potent value for Americans across the ideological spectrum, among strong partisans of both sides and independent swing voters as well. (Center for Policy Alternatives, “Findings From a Nationwide Survey,” Lake Research Partners, November 2006; p.31-32; Center for American Progress, “The State of American Political Ideology, 2009: A Study of Political Values and Beliefs,” p. 40 ) We see our country as the land of the free. We identify ourselves as the free and the brave. Freedom has been the battle cry behind the adamant reaction that has grown against raising taxes. It has been the clarion call in town halls and tea parties everywhere across the country. By rallying around the contrast between individual freedom and government oppression, the Republicans are advancing an emotional appeal with deep and powerful resonance.
The same message has worked with profound effects many times before. For decades, conservatives hit liberals over the head as uncaring about individual freedom and personal responsibility, given their repeated advocacy of big governmental programs and regulatory planning. The attacks succeeded with such thoroughness that not only were liberals put into a perpetually defensive position, but the word “liberal” itself actually became an unmentionable political pejorative—the “L” word. Unless President Obama and the Democrats learn how to counter the opposition’s call for freedom effectively, it will continue to delimit them and the country in advancing the nation’s agenda over the years to come no differently than it proved able to demonize liberalism, emasculate the public option in the health-care reform bill, and make increasing taxes to finance government practically prohibitive.
What is supremely ironic here is that President Obama and the Democratic majority actually are the real defenders of American freedom. It is they, not the Republicans, who represent the true ideal of American freedom. They need to make that case strongly, for all to see, both for their own success and for the nation’s ability to build the stronger foundation required to move forward effectively. They must defeat the opposition on what it has come to presume is its own home turf.
They do not have to look very far to find the alternative theme and narrative they need. It is already spread throughout the speeches and writings of the incumbent President. Though not yet fully employed, it is contained in hundreds of President Obama’s statements that align closely with his actions. Together they cohere into a remarkable vision, a paradigm. We might call it “the Obama Doctrine.” Its single overriding aim is the very goal that the opposition claims as its own: to enlarge and expand the freedom of Americans here at home.
In seeking that goal, however, the Obama Doctrine calls us back to an ideal of freedom that is more faithful to the Founders’ beliefs, and to Abraham Lincoln’s, than is the conservative way of thinking about freedom that currently prevails in our politics. Here is the crucial difference. Obama shares with the Founders and Lincoln an ideal of freedom that, building upon personal accountability, also embraces certain mutual responsibilities toward one another and shared sacrifice for others and the common good as crucial obligations of freedom. By contrast, except for the realm of national security and defense, such mutual obligations and shared sacrifice have had a far lesser place in the highly individualistic conservative notion of freedom that is politically supreme today.
Similarly, what distinguishes the Obama Doctrine from conservatism is its positive recognition of the need for governmental activism to effectuate the obligations we have toward one another that are imbedded in the Founders’ and Lincoln’s ideal of freedom. Because they are obligations of freedom, and not options, government is the proper arena to address them and assure that they are carried out. At the same time, in doing so, government must maintain discipline and carefully control itself so that it not exceed its own legitimate bounds. A government that fails this test will not retain public support.
In the eyes of the Founders and Lincoln, the prevailing conservative view of freedom is mistaken at its core. Nonetheless, it has dominated both our politics and public policy for much of the past three decades, with severely damaging results that the Founders might well have predicted. The grave economic consequences that a great majority of American families have experienced, and the urgent need for an alternative capable of reversing them, will become clearer in the pages to come. Ultimately, the Obama Doctrine not only advances the most fundamental political value that has inspired Americans through the ages, including its connection to shared sacrifice for others and the common good. It not only builds upon basic principles that Americans intuitively understand and accept. At the same time, it promotes the most deep-felt economic interests of everyday Americans—crucial to both Democratic and independent swing voters alike, and many Republicans too— that the flawed individualistic conception of freedom has so egregiously abused for nearly two generations now. It is an exceptional political combination.

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This commentary from noted Democratic strategist Mike Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, is cross-posted from The Huffington Post.
Between health care reform, financial reform, and analyzing the fascinating and disturbing trends in right wing ideology over the last 15 months, I haven’t written that much about the 2010 elections lately, but that will be changing in the months to come. This election season will be intriguing.
Back in March of last year, I started warning my fellow Washington, DC Democrats that we could be headed for a 1994 style train wreck if we didn’t watch out. By following the Geithner/Summers plan to coddle the big banks and accept the classical trickle-down economic idea that “jobs would be a logging indicator,” I feared we were both discouraging base voters and ticking off working class swing voters. My worst fears proved in the New Jersey, Virginia, and Massachusetts elections, as working class swing votes turned against us with a vengeance and Democratic base voters – young people, unmarried women, and people of color – did not turn out to vote in very high numbers.
It is way too early to tell what will happen in November. There are signs that Democrats are starting to understand what they need to do to improve their chances. The passage of health care reform shows that Democrats have the guts and ability to get big things done. Pushing back harder and picking a fight with the big bankers and their Republican allies (thank you, Mitch McConell!) is incredibly important, and the Obama administration has been willing to do that. Going to the mat for immigration reform will help turn out Hispanic and young voters. And if the real economy – meaning jobs and wages, not the stock market or bankers’ profits – starts to see real improvement, Democratic performance in 2010 might surprise some people. However, it’s still too early to tell how all this is going to play out.
One thing that is clear to me, though, is that the mood of voters is more anti-establishment and anti-incumbent than it is purely anti-Democrat. When a formerly popular Republican Governor Charlie Crist is being trounced by 30 points in the polls to a previously unknown far right-winger like Rubio, when a republican icon like McCain is struggling with a primary challenge, and when a longtime, well-liked Republican Senator like Chuck Grassley sees his approval rating go from the mid 70s to the low 40s in a year, you know that voters’ ire is at least as much about incumbency as it is about party.
In that context, I want to raise a big red flag about one of the most traditional strategies political parties fall back on in a challenging election cycle, which is what I call the “defend the flag” strategy. The assumption is that they have to defend all incumbents at all costs, and give up on challengers breaking through. I think that is a major mistake in an anti-incumbent, anti-establishment year like this one. Usually, party committees and the numbers prove that in an average election cycle, saving incumbents is easier than electing challengers. In a year like this one, I think it’s a huge mistake for Democrats to make. It’s the outsiders, the anti-establishment, anti-status quo candidates who have more traction in this election.
In Florida, Kendrick Meek has a very solid chance at taking out far right extremist Rubio after he wins his ugly primary fight with Crist. In Ohio, both Lee Fisher and Jennifer Bruning are strong candidates to take out a Bush administration hack in Rob Portman. In NH, Paul Hodes is strongly positioned to win the Gregg’s Senate seat given the nasty primary on the Republican side. In Missouri, Robin Carnahan is a very appealing alternative to Tom DeLay’s closest ally in Roy Blunt. In Kentucky, if Jack Conway wins that primary, his reformer credentials give him a solid shot at beating extremist libertarian Rand Paul. And in Iowa, crusading anti-corporate lawyer Roxanne Conlin might have the stuff to beat ancient insider Grassley. These would all be pick-up seats for the Democrats. That’s 6 races where Democratic challengers have a decent shot at taking a Republican seat.
My strong advice to my friends at the party committees and in the donor community: don’t forget about races like these. Pulling back and playing only defense to save incumbents and seats we currently hold is a formula for bigger losses this year. We have a chance at holding our own this cycle if we play some offense well.

This item by TDS Co-Editor William Galston is cross-posted from The New Republic.
The new journal National Affairs is attempting to recreate the vanished, much lamented Public Interest along more orthodox conservative lines. While a lot of its content is predictable, some articles have opened up space for a productive conversation. Donald Marron’s recent contribution, “America in the Red,” is one such piece. Although I disagree with his specific prescriptions for our long-term fiscal ills—for example, he suggests 40 percent of GDP as a long-term target for the national debt, which I think is unrealistically low—his diagnosis is credible, and several of the strategic points he makes about how to respond are important.
To begin, Marron makes an effective case that long-term fiscal imbalances matter—a lot. Among the reasons:
•Once the economy gets back on its feet, prolonged deficits and mounting debt will weaken economic growth.
•Prolonged debt will likely fuel concerns about inflation and will eventually induce lenders to demand an inflation premium on interest rates.
•As the share of our debt held by foreign lenders increases, we will become vulnerable to pressure on a number of diplomatic fronts.
•The growing debt—and especially our dependence on short-term debt instruments—exposes us to greater rollover risk.
•Rising debt limits flexibility by limiting our ability to borrow more if and when we are faced with another calamity.
•Finally, deficits feed on themselves as the logic of compound interest works against us.
Marron goes on to make some strategic points that liberals should take seriously. Among them:
•A key objective is to stabilize our debt to GDP ratio at a level that does not impose a heavy burden on economic growth. He recommends 60 percent as a plausible interim target. While others might prefer a lower or higher figure, few think that 90 percent, which is where we’re headed by 2020 unless we change course, is acceptable.
•Even with optimistic assumptions, we cannot hope to grow our way out of the problem. And given demographic and political realities, we cannot solve the problem with spending cuts alone, or with tax increases alone. We need both.
In perhaps the most challenging part of his article, Marron implicitly addresses both liberals and conservatives. He reminds liberals that not all spending programs and tax increases are created equal: some tend to spur growth, others retard it. And because growth is so important to a sustainable future, we need to take those consequences of our fiscal choice seriously.
At the same time, he questions the assumptions that guide much conservative fiscal dialogue. What he says is worth quoting:

Policymakers should not always assume that a larger government will necessarily translate into weaker economic performance. As few years ago, Peter Lindert—an economist at the University of California, Davis—looked across countries and across time in an effort to answer the question, “Is the welfare state a free lunch?” He found that countries with high levels of government spending did not perform any worse, economically speaking, than countries with low levels of government spending. The result was surprising, given the usual intuition that a larger government would levy higher taxes and engage in more income redistribution—both of which would undermine economic growth.
Lindert found that the reason for this apparent paradox is that countries with large welfare states try to minimize the extent to which government actions undermine the economy. Thus, high-budget nations tend to adopt more efficient tax system—with flatter rates and a greater reliance on consumption taxes—than do countries with lower budget. High-budget countries also adopt more efficient benefits systems—taking care, for example, to minimize the degree to which subsidy programs discourage beneficiaries from working.”

This is an example of the kind of conservative thinking—empirically based and open to argument—with which liberals can and should engage. This kind of thinking is the only basis on which the necessary grand bargain between Republicans and Democrats can be struck.
Everyone knows what the grand bargain will look like, at least in broad outline. Relative to the current baseline, revenues must rise substantially, but in the way most conducive to long-term economic growth. Relative to the current baseline, expenditures must fall substantially, but without hurting those who are least able to make it on their own. And there is no way to do this without modifying the large programs whose mandated spending rises in response to demographic and technological change. Congressman Paul Ryan will not get his way. Nor will the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare. The only real questions are how long it will take us to get where we must go, and how much damage we will inflict on ourselves by delaying the inevitable.

Why are Republicans willing to accept Michael Steele’s many missteps as National Chairman of their party? Well, part of the story is that they aren’t real eager to confirm their image as the party of Angry Old White People by dumping an African-American chairman who’s willing to toe their increasingly reactionary line, but there’s more to it than that. As John Heilemann explains for New York magazine, the specific role of the two parties is already being narrowed rapidly by the new campaign finance rules:

In the wake of McCain-Feingold and more recently the landmark Citizens United Supreme Court decision on campaign spending, both national parties were already in the process of seeing their roles weakened dramatically and taken over by private interests. That trend is secular and has nothing to do with Steele. But his gaffes, mismanagement, and all-purpose absurdity may very well exacerbate the trend within the GOP—in the process presenting a short-term opportunity for Democrats to do better in 2010 than the political class expects.

To make a long story short, Citizens United is rapidly shifting many partisan functions to private groups. But RNC incompetence is giving the DNC a bigger-than-expected advantage in the functions that are left:

[Republican meta-operative Ben] Ginsberg points to three distinct areas where Steele and his people appear to be in danger of falling short: developing a ground game (“they’ve cut the budget like maniacs”); pumping money into the congressional campaign committees to put more seats in play (“instead, we’re going to wind up leaving more than we need to on the table”); and the crucial work on this year’s post-Census redistricting (“the Democrats are in a really good place, and the RNC is letting everyone down—they’re nowhere”).

Tim Kaine’s not getting much attention during the endless saga of Steele’s mistakes. But that’s fine with Democrats. the DNC doesn’t pretend to be the big dog in Democratic finance, strategy or message, and it’s playing its critical support role competently, and compared to the opposition, well enough to win.