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Political Strategy for a Permanent Democratic Majority

Editor’s Corner

Rational and Non-Rational Arguments Against Gay Marriage

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 28, 2009
With all due allowances for Jonathan Chait’s impressive logical and rhetorical skills, it’s still amazing how briskly he is able to dispatch the rational arguments made against marriage equality in The New Republic today, reflecting “a body of opinion held largely by people who either don’t know why they oppose gay marriage or don’t feel comfortable explicating their case.” So gay marriage advocates do tend to state rather than explain their position, or come up with assertions about the baleful effects of same-sex marriage that wouldn’t stand up in a high school debate.
Jon begins, however, from a premise that is broadly accurate about the rules of discourse in contemporary Western society, but that clearly isn’t embraced in its entirety among conservatives:

In a liberal society, consenting adults are presumed to be able to do as they like, and it is incumbent upon opponents of any such freedom to demonstrate some wider harm.

That’s another way of saying that the proper question about gay marriage isn’t “why?” but “why not?” And that is indeed the question Americans are beginning to ask more often, particularly as their circle of gay or lesbian acquaintances grow, and as same-sex couples come out of the shadows with no visible bad effect on anything other than the tender sensibilities of homophobes.
But the growing shabbiness of the “rational” case against same-sex marriage helps expose the extent to which gay marriage opponents actually depend on non-rational but still powerful arguments from Tradition and Revelation.
The case from Tradition, which you hear over and over from gay marriage opponents, is that marriage has always been defined as the “union of a man and a woman.” Sometimes in their exasperation they stamp their feet and enumerate how very long always is. The idea is that same-sex marriage is a dangerous act of (to use the term employed by the Catholic Bishops of Iowa in the statement linked to above) “social engineering” that challenges the settled wisdom of the ages. From this quintessentially conservative point of view, of course, the liberal presumption in favor of the rights of “consenting adults” has always been rejected, on this and every subject, in favor of what Chesterton called, approvingly, the “democracy of the dead.” Traditionalists typically try to deploy the rational arguments that Chait demolishes to buttress their case, but their case is essentially unrebuttable because it treats precedent as the only authority.
The main weakness of the Argument from Tradition, of course, is that much of what we have come to recognize as the Western Tradition in recent decades has reflected an Enlightenment-based revolt against much older traditions–in other words, that the liberal habit of mind that Chait cites has become, even though unevenly applied, the real Tradition that demands respect. Even the most rabidly inflammatory exaggerator of the impact of same-sex marriage would have to acknowledge that the emancipation of women has been a vastly greater change in the “traditional” way of life of the human species, and even anti-feminists are loath to suggest we were better off when women couldn’t vote or own property. In the long, long sweep of history, slavery has about as strong a pedigree as “traditional” marriage. So the “democracy of the dead” can and must be overturned now and then in the interests of the living.


Strategy Memo: the situation in Iraq is deteriorating. Democrats must start now to prepare for the coming Republican smear attacks that will try to blame Obama for whatever goes wrong.

This item by James Vega was originally published on May 21, 2009
It has unfortunately now become clear that despite certain promising trends in the December elections in Iraq, in general the situation is sharply deteriorating. The Sunni “awakening councils” – whose pacification was a critical part of the reduction in violence — have not been paid since last winter when responsibility for their payments was passed to the Shia army. Instead of the jobs and assimilation into the Shia-dominated army that they were promised, many “awakening council” members have been arrested and others have gone into hiding. Bombings have once again become regular and frequent events. All the major religious and ethnic groups are preparing for a renewal of fighting.
It now appears that even a “best-case” scenario for Iraq is a continuing level of sectarian violence that resembles past eras in Northern Ireland. The “worst-case” scenario is a return to the full scale, grotesquely violent ethnic civil war of 2006-2007.
The Republicans, because they are out of power (and committed to their “take no prisoners” propaganda strategy) are already beginning to prepare utterly opportunistic attacks on Obama and the Democrats regardless of what actually happens in Iraq.

• If Obama decides to slow the withdrawal of troops from Iraq (assuming this can be negotiated with the Iraqi government) Republicans will criticize him for failing to achieve a clear “victory”–i.e. to completely suppress the ethnic violence.
• If Obama sticks to his current plan for withdrawal while conditions worsen, Republicans will attack him for “losing” the war in Iraq that the surge had “won”.

This propaganda strategy requires almost no effort for the GOP. It is, in effect, a perfect “no- lose” situation for them. They just have to avoid inadvertently insulting the work of General Petraeus and the military while they attempt to assign the entire blame for whatever transpires onto Obama and the Democrats.
What should Democrats do in response? The first and most urgent challenge will be to present a unified and coherent response to the Republican attacks and to avoid the appearance of internal disarray. This will not be easy because there are at least three quite distinct strategic views about Iraq within the Democratic Party — and more if one includes the formerly Republican neoconservative military strategists who — in an extraordinary case of instant mass epiphany — all rediscovered the virtues of principled political nonpartisanship around 11:03 P.M. last November 4th (as one observer acutely noted, “they did not flee the sinking Republican ship; they teleported”).
But, even as Democrats continue to debate alternative military strategies among themselves, they can, without contradiction, also present a unified response to Republican attacks. The basic theme of this response should be that there is a fundamental difference between responsible and irresponsible criticism. Obama, General Petraeus, and the other military advisors face deeply difficult, “no easy answer” trade-offs regarding how to allocate limited troops and deal with deeply rooted interethnic violence. Republicans who want to criticize Obama’s strategy therefore have an obligation to confront key questions like the following:

• In order to deal with the current shortage of available troops, should the U.S. bring back the draft? Should it hire 50,000 or more additional paid mercenaries to fill the gaps? If a Republican is not in favor of these steps, then he or she must explain where the troops will be found to carry out any broadened U.S. mission before he or she criticizes Obama.
• To deal with rising ethnic violence in Iraq, should the U.S. resume the payments to the “Awakening Councils, even if the Maliki government objects? Should the U.S. redeploy increased numbers of American troops to Iraq’s major cities to maintain peace between Shia and Sunni? If not, then Republican critics must explain exactly what alternative strategy it is that they propose before they criticize Obama. Demanding “victory” is not an alternative military strategy – it is a goal.

When Republicans attack Obama without honestly answering these kinds of questions — as they most surely will — Dems should consistently make three parallel points about the difference between sincere debates over military strategy and the following key phrase — “irresponsible political posturing”:

• Partisan demands for “victory” or “success” which do not include a realistic plan to provide the troops and resources needed to achieve those goals are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan accusations that Obama’s strategy “is failing” or has “failed” which do not offer a coherent alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.
• Partisan attacks on Obama and the Democrats as showing “weakness” but which offer no alternative strategy are irresponsible political posturing.

In short, Democrats should respond to Republican attacks on Obama by insisting that Republicans have a patriotic obligation to the troops and to the county to offer serious and responsible military alternatives rather than empty partisan rhetoric. The American people understand that there are no easy, magic solutions in Iraq. If the Republican “alternative” is to pretend that magic solutions exist, they will not receive the support of most Americans.
Democrats should as their very first response to Republican attacks consistently and repeatedly assert the basic demand that Republicans avoid “irresponsible political posturing” on this issue. Democrats should insist that if Republicans engage in this kind of shamelessly irresponsible behavior, they do not even deserve to be answered; they deserve to be condemned and ignored.


The Abortion Issue and Democratic Strategy

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by Alan Abramowitz, who is Alben W. Barkley Professor of Political Science at Emory University, and a member of the TDS Advisory Board. It was originally published on May 20, 2009.
Is support for abortion rights hurting Democratic candidates at the polls and, if so, would abandoning the Party’s traditional pro-choice position help Democrats win over pro-life voters? These questions are being raised with increasing urgency following the release of new Gallup and Pew polls that supposedly show a substantial decrease in support for the pro-choice position among the American public.
The findings of the Gallup and Pew polls are rather surprising given the stability of public attitudes on the abortion issue over several decades. Moreover, a number of other polls conducted before and after the 2008 election found no dramatic change in public opinion on this issue. For example, the two most respected academic surveys of the American public, the General Social Survey and the National Election Study, found no decline in support for abortion rights between 2004 and 2008. More importantly, the evidence from the 2008 National Election Study indicates that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights was a net plus for his candidacy and that attempts by Democrats to win over pro-life voters by abandoning the Party’s support for abortion rights would probably do more harm than good.
Every four years since 1980, the American National Election Study has asked a sample of eligible voters to choose one of four positions on the issue of abortion: abortion should “never be permitted,” abortion should be permitted “only in case of rape, incest, or when the woman’s life is in danger,” abortion should be permitted “for reasons other than rape, incest, or danger to the woman’s life, but only after the need for the abortion has been clearly established,” or “a woman should always be able to obtain an abortion as a matter of choice.”
The results in 2008 were very similar to those in other recent election years: 13 percent of voters supported a total ban on abortion, 26 percent supported allowing abortion only under highly restrictive conditions (rape, incest or danger to the woman’s life), 19 percent supported allowing abortion under less restrictive conditions but only if a there was a clearly established need, and 42 percent supported allowing abortion as a matter of choice. For analytical purposes, I combined the first two options, banning abortion completely and allowing it only under highly restrictive conditions, into a single pro-life category. I left the rather vague third option, allowing abortion only if a need had been clearly established, as a middle category, and I used the fourth option, allowing abortion as a matter of choice, as the pro-choice category. This resulted in 39 percent of voters being classified as pro-life, 19 percent being classified in the middle position, and 42 percent being classified as pro-choice.
There was a strong relationship between abortion position and presidential vote in 2008. Pro-life voters supported John McCain over Barack Obama by decisive 62 percent to 38 percent margin. But pro-choice voters supported Obama over McCain by an even more decisive margin of 73 percent to 27 percent. Those in the relatively small moderate group favored McCain over Obama by a fairly narrow 55 percent to 45 percent margin.
According to the NES data, pro-choice voters supporting Obama made up 30 percent of the electorate while pro-life voters supporting McCain made up only 24 percent of the electorate. These results suggest that Barack Obama’s support for abortion rights helped him more than it hurt him in 2008. Before accepting this conclusion, however, we need to control for the influence of partisanship because opinions on abortion are strongly correlated with party identification and 90 percent of Democratic and Republican identifiers voted for their own party’s presidential candidate in 2008.
In order to evaluate the impact of the abortion issue on the performance of the presidential candidates, we need to know whether partisan defection rates were affected by opinions on abortion.


“Millenial Generation” Leads Pro-Democratic Shift

This item from the TDS staff was originally published on May 19, 2009
In his May 18 ‘Public Opinion Snapshot’ at the Center for American Progress (CAP) website, Ruy Teixeira expounds on an extremely encouraging development for progressive Democrats, the dawning of the “millennial generation” — those born between 1978 and 2000 — as a political force. As Teixeira explains:

Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will be increasing by about 4 and a half million a year and Millennial eligible voters by about 4 million a year. And in 2020, the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age, this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
Last November’s election was the first in which the 18- to 29-year-old age group was drawn exclusively from the Millennial generation, and they gave Obama a whopping 34-point margin, 66 percent to 32 percent. This compares to only a 9-point margin for Kerry in 2004. Behind this striking result is a deeper story of a generation with progressive views in all areas and big expectations for change that will fundamentally reshape our electorate.

Teixeira references another new CAP study “The Political Ideology of the Millennial Generation,” by John Halpin and Karl Agne, which indicates

Overall, Millennials expressed far more agreement with the progressive than conservative arguments. Indeed, of the 21 values and beliefs garnering majority support in the survey, only four can be classified as conservative. Moreover, six of the top seven statements in terms of level of agreement were progressive statements. These statements included such items as the need for government investment in education, infrastructure, and science; the need for a transition to clean energy; the need for America to play a leading role in addressing climate change; the need to improve America’s image around the world; and the need for universal health coverage..,.When asked in the 2008 National Election Study whether we need a strong government to handle today’s complex economic problems or whether the free market can handle these problems without government being involved, Millennials, by a margin of 78 to 22 percent, demonstrated an overwhelming preference for strong government.

On May 13th, David Madland and Teixeira had a more in-depth post, “New Progressive America: The Millennial Generation,” on the political attitudes of this important demographic group. First, the demographic explosion:

We can start with the sheer size of this generation. Between now and 2018, the number of Millennials of voting age will increase by about four and a half million a year, and Millennial eligible voters will increase by about 4 million a year. In 2020—the first presidential election where all Millennials will have reached voting age—this generation will be 103 million strong, of which about 90 million will be eligible voters. Those 90 million Millennial eligible voters will represent just under 40 percent of America’s eligible voters.
The diversity of this generation is as impressive as its size. Right now, Millennial adults are 60 percent white and 40 percent minority (18 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 5 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). And the proportion of minority Millennial adults will rise to 41 percent in 2012, 43 percent in 2016, and 44 percent in 2020 (21 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black, 6 percent Asian, and 3 percent other). This shift should make the Millennial generation even more firmly progressive as it fully enters the electorate, since minorities are the most strongly progressive segment among Millennials.


Now for the Hard Part

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 14, 2009
We’ve all been interested in the relatively high approval ratings President Obama has maintained during his first few months in office, which seem to have resulted from a combination of actual approval of his policies, appreciation of his leadership style, and the mistrust earned by Republican critics, this last factor deepened by Republican extremism. Another measurement of public sentiment, a rising “right track” number, is a bit harder to analyze, since it probably reflects optimism about the future more than approbation of current conditions.
The big question, of course, is whether that optimism is based on expectations of immediate improvements in the economic situation, and if so, how much progress the Obama administration needs to show, and how quickly.
John Judis of TNR has an interesting analysis of these dynamics out today, leading to a prediction that the President’s approval ratings are likely to drop significantly in the autumn unless the “green shoots” of economic revival grow faster than appears probable at present.
I personally think his prediction is debatable, precisely because it’s unclear how much patience with Obama’s agenda is harbored by those independents (and even a significant minority of Republicans) in the population who spell the difference between high and middling approval ratings. It’s also unclear how much fresh controversy will be generated by the budget fight, and particularly the health care and climate change debates, where Obama’s opponents don’t seem to have obtained much political traction so far.
Having said that, the point made by Judis that should cause the most concern to Democrats involves Congress more than the public at large:

Obama’s real test of leadership may not turn out to have been his first 100 days, but those 100 or 200 days that begin sometime late next fall. If unemployment is still rising, will he still be able to convince Congress, which will have become grey-haired over growing deficits, to pass another equally large stimulus program? If the bank bailout doesn’t merely get a “C,” but fails, will he be able to resist pressure from the American Bankers Association and take the next step of nationalizing failing banks?

The general consensus of economists that a second stimulus bill may prove necessary, and the certainty that some action other than additional subsidies would be the next step to deal with the financial crisis, both create large dilemmas for the administration if economic conditions don’t begin to improve. As Judis concludes: “One can only wait and hope.”


The GOP’s New “Evil Empire”

This item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 13, 2009
Like a lot of non-Rush-Limbaugh listeners, when I first heard that a large faction of Republican National Committee members was pushing for a formal resolution calling on GOPers to start referring to the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Socialist Party,” I thought it was a puerile joke that the adults in the Republican Party would quash.
Apparently not. According to sources speaking to Politico‘s Roger Simon, the Republican National Committee will approve the resolution at a special meeting of the RNC called for that very purpose.
Here’s how the sponsor of the resolution, Jeff Kent from Washington State, explained its rationale a few weeks ago:

There is nothing more important for our party than bringing the truth to bear on the Democrats’ march to socialism. Just like Ronald Reagan identifying the U.S.S.R. as the evil empire was the beginning of the end to Soviet domination, we believe the American people will reject socialism when they hear the truth about how the Democrats are bankrupting our country and destroying our freedom and liberties.

I don’t know what’s more offensive: the idea of identifying the Democratic Party, which the American people elected to run Congress and the executive branch just six months ago, with the Soviet Union, or the idea that Ronald Reagan brought about the collapse of the Soviet bloc through a magic spell. All in all, the highly adolescent nature of Kent’s thinking is illustrated not only by this comic-book historical revisionism, but by his insistence on retaining in his version of the “Evil Empire” the little-boy-taunt of dropping the last syllable from the adjective “Democratic.”
The St. Paul of the “Democrat Socialist” rebranding, Indiana RNC member James Bopp, Jr., sent an encyclical around further explaining its purpose. Here’s a pertinent passage:

The threat to our country from the Obama administration cannot be underestimated. They are proceeding pell mell to nationalize major industries, to exponentially increase the size, power and intrusiveness of the federal government, to undermine free enterprise and free markets, to raise taxes to a confiscatory level, to strap future generations with enormous unsustainable debt, to debase our currency, to destroy traditional values and embrace a culture of death, and to weaken our national defense and retreat from the war on terror. Unless stopped, we will not recognize our country in a few short years.

Yeah, I think the 60-plus-percent of Americans who approve of the job President Obama is doing are pretty happy with the plan to “destroy traditional values and embrace a culture of death.” Or perhaps they don’t understand that returning the top marginal tax rate to where it was ten years ago, and at a far lower level than in those fine days when Ronald Reagan abolished the Soviet Union, represents “confiscatory” taxes. Who knows, maybe they even think that we don’t need to deploy barbaric torture methods to fight terrorists.
It’s easy to mock this stuff, but it’s actually pretty significant: we are not talking about some radio blowhard or self-promoting Fox “personality” in this case, but the Republican National Committee. If, as Simon predicts, it approves this resolution, Republicans who like to think of themselves as serious people need to feel some real shame. Comparing the Democratic Party to the leadership of a totalitarian society, and treating it as an enemy of the country, isn’t just ridiculous: it’s an incitement to crazy people to act crazy or worse.


An Open Letter From Stan Greenberg to Ed Gillespie, head of Resurgent Republic

Note: This item was originally published on May 4, 2009
To: Ed Gillespie Founder, Resurgent Republic
From: Stan Greenberg Greenberg Quinlan Rosner
RE: RESURGENT REPUBLIC
Dear Ed,
Congratulations on forming Resurgent Republic with the goal of replicating “on the right the success Democracy Corps has enjoyed on the left.” Like Democracy Corps, you are promising to become a resource for groups and leaders, enhanced by the public release of credible surveys and focus groups and, indeed, your first survey has been widely discussed and already used by Republican leaders. Well done.
You would probably be surprised if I didn’t have some reactions and advice to offer, as you explicitly state, you are “modeled on Democracy Corps.” Given your goal, I am perplexed that your first poll would be so outside the mainstream on partisanship. Your poll gives the Democrats just a 2-point party identification advantage in the country, but other public polls in this period fell between +7 and +16 points – giving the Democrats an average advantage of 11 points. Virtually all your issue debates in the survey would have tilted quite differently had the poll been 9 points more Democratic.
One thing Democracy Corps has tried to do is be very “conservative” – watching very closely to make sure all our choices in survey design are well grounded or tilted against the Democrats, including the choice of “likely voters” that normally favors the Republicans. You have probably noticed that our job approval ratings for George Bush were almost always higher than the average of polls, just as our job approval ratings for Barack Obama are now somewhat lower.
If the Resurgent Republic poll is to be an outlier on partisanship, then I urge you to explain what about your methodology produces it – or simply to note the difference in your public release.
The problem of partisanship pales before the problem of self-deluding bias in question wording that might well contribute to Republicans digging themselves deeper and deeper into a hole.
Your most important finding was the strong opposition to Barack Obama’s budget when you describe it for voters. Ed, from your platform on Meet the Press, you told Republican leaders they can confidently oppose this budget and expect independents to side with them.
Your Republican leaders would have been well served had you asked first whether voters favor or oppose the budget, without describing it – as Democracy Corps does routinely. That would have shown a majority or large plurality in favor of the budget, as in all other polls. Instead, your survey begins with this stunningly biased description: “President Obama has proposed a budget for next year that would spend three point six trillion dollars and have a deficit of one point four trillion dollars.” That would be okay if you think that is all voters will learn from the media and Democrats about the budget. I suspect they are already hearing about inherited deficits from Bush, the funding for the jobs recovery plan, health care reform, education and energy independence, and about deficits cut in half – all aspects of the budget. Don’t you think the leaders and groups you are advising deserve to know how this might really play out?
It is a shame because you didn’t need to construct this biased exercise to show that voters are concerned about spending and deficits and that is indeed the strongest critique Republicans can offer. In our own recent polls, we have flagged this concern for progressives and urged them to continue to underscore accountability, long-term deficit reduction, and middle class tax cuts.
For years, James Carville and I pushed Democrats and liberal groups to examine inherited positions in new times, but you are at risk of doing the opposite – urging Republicans to stay the course on key arguments with self-deluding results. In some cases, you prove competitive or you win the argument by presenting the Democratic argument as flat but the Republican, full of emotive terms. In Democracy Corps, we always try to use the language actually used by our opponents.
Nothing is more self-defeating than attributing to the Democratic argument the language and themes Republicans use to attack Democrats rather than the language Democrats use themselves. In effect, your survey has you winning an argument with yourself. Indeed, that is where you start your analysis of the first poll – telling readers in bold and underlined type that you are winning the big ideological debate by two-to-one, which “verifies America remains a center-right country.” In this seminal debate, one side says:
Government policies should promote opportunity by fostering job growth, encouraging entrepreneurs, and allowing people to keep more of what they earn.
The other, pathetically out-of-touch side says:
Government policies should promote fairness by narrowing the gap between rich and poor, spreading the wealth, and making sure that economic outcomes are more equal.
With that demand for equality rejected two-to-one in the survey, Resurgent Republic can tell conservatives to be confident: you are on the winning side of this historic argument about government and the economy.
The problem is that this is the language Republicans use to characterize the Democratic argument, not what Democrats use themselves. Yes, it is true that candidate Obama made the off-hand comment on “spreading the wealth” in an exchange with “Joe the Plumber.” The Republicans tried to use that in the last two and a half weeks of the campaign and Obama’s lead on handling taxes and the economy went up steadily, ending with a double-digit lead on both.
While campaigns may succeed on “gotcha,” you will not win a big argument if you do not respect the other side’s argument and you do not learn from experience. We tested in a different context this philosophic choice, using Obama’s words and ideas – “government policies should rebalance the tax code so the middle class pays less and the wealthiest pay their fair share.” In our work, it is the strongest argument for the budget. (See Democracy Corps national survey of 1,000 2008 voters (830 likely 2010 voters) conducted March 4-8, 2009, Democracy Corps national survey of 1,000 2008 voters (863 likely 2010 voters) conducted March 25-29, 2009 and Democracy Corps survey of 1,500 likely 2010 voters in the congressional battleground conducted April 16-21, 2009.)
The section on energy and cap-and-trade is a parody of the real debate. The implication is that Democrats believe climate change is so serious that it must be addressed, regardless of cost to the economy, with higher taxes. Unmentioned on the Democratic side of the debate is the conviction that investment in energy independence creates new jobs and a new economy and energy costs have to be offset with middle class tax cuts. Failing to construct real debate must leave Republicans puzzled about why the Democrats’ advantage on handling the energy issue has risen to nearly 30 points among likely voters. (See Democracy Corps national survey of 1,000 2008 voters (830 likely 2010 voters) conducted March 4-8, 2009.)
I recognize that in focusing on economic, not cultural issues, Resurgent Republic is making a statement about a new direction for the party and its coalition. But it does not help a party renew itself with survey results so removed from the real debates taking place around it.
I do wish you luck with Resurgent Republic. I’m fully aware that our first public survey a decade ago might well have been critiqued on similar issues and that getting it right under these pressures requires constant vigilance. I look forward to the debate.
All the best,
Stan


Reality Check for Republican “Reformers”

Note: this item by Ed Kilgore was originally published on May 5, 2009
It is a good thing that some Republicans, though hardly all, have come to the conclusion that their party’s problems are real, and that simply shrieking at Barack Obama and congressional Democrats while policing each other for any signs of heterodoxy isn’t a very effective strategy for making an electoral comeback.
Yes, many conservatives aren’t there yet and may never arrive, as they frantically look around, via slanted poll questions and vast exaggerations of the importance of “tea parties” that the polls somehow don’t pick up, for evidence that they can’t trust their lyin’ eyes about the trouble they are in. Yes, there’s too much quick-fix talks about social networking and grassroots organization that belie an inability to reconsider conservative ideology. Yes, far too many Republicans seem to believe that they can instantly wash their hands of the legacy of George W. Bush, who was somehow imposed on the party by “moderates” or space aliens (he was in fact the chosen and quasi-universal candidate of the conservative movement in 2000, and was nominated for near-divinity by conservatives in 2004). Some even seem to think that Arlen Specter has been the problem all along, and still others seem to have lost their minds and are yammering about secession and nullification like hormone-addled teenagers.
Nonetheless the “official” GOP has launched a National Council For a New America that at least pays lip service to the recognition that Republicans need “innovative solutions” to the challenges that Barack Obama and congressional Democrats are working on, instead of simply denying them.
But I have a bit of advice for these Republican “reformers:” you need to take a fresh look at how you understand and describe what Obama and the Democrats are doing before you can offer credible alternatives.
If you look at the NCNA press release, and its vaporous statement of purpose, you will see a lot of nice rhetoric about using non-big-government mechanisms to solve big national problems. What you won’t find is any acknowledgement that Obama has already occupied much of that high ground.
For all the Republican hysteria about Obama trying to usher in “socialized medicine” or “government-run health care,” the fact remains that most Americans under Obama’s plan would continue to buy health insurance from private firms, and would continue to be treated by private-sector providers. Yes, there may or may not be a “public plan” in the competitive mix, but if that’s “socialism,” then perhaps Republicans want to call for the privatization of Medicare.
The same is true of Obama’s cap-and-trade proposal for reducing carbon emissions: it is precisely not a government regulatory effort to dictate to industry how it operates its business; it’s an effort to let markets determine innovative ways to adjust to an energy economy where carbon is priced according to its true costs. And the same is true of education policy, where Obama and most Democrats champion public school choice and competition. Republicans almost never acknowledge that. And then there’s that instrument called the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, which was one of Ronald Reagan’s favorite policy innovations, and a centerpiece of Republican efforts to find an alternative to welfare and support productive work. It’s now the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s tax proposals, and now Republicans are attacking it as “welfare.”
You can get away with some of this sloppy rhetoric and mischaracterization that Republicans continue to embrace, but after a while, it begins to affect your credibility.
And here’s the grand irony: if Republicans keep this up and offer “alternatives” to some fantasy-vision of the socialist extremist Obama, instead of the actual president, the public will indeed have a tendency to dismiss Republicans as offering “Obama Lite,” the terrible fate-worse-than-death that leads some conservatives to oppose the very idea of “alternatives.”
The point here is that you can’t graft an effective policy agenda onto a delusional understanding of public opinion and the opposition. That’s the lesson learned by Democratic reformers of the 1980s and 1990s who argued against a progressive “politics of evasion” that failed to take a realistic look at why Democrats were losing elections.


What is “right-wing extremism?”

Note: this item by James Vega was first published on April 30, 2009
The recent much-discussed report on “Rightwing Extremism” by the Department of Homeland Security has raised a very important issue of definition: What precisely is right-wing “political extremism” and how does it differ from other concepts like “the radical right” or “hard-right conservatism”?
For most Americans, the most critical — and in fact the defining — characteristic of “political extremism” – whether left or right – is the approval of violence as a means to achieve political goals. Opinions on issues, no matter how “extreme” or irrational they may be do not by themselves necessarily make a person a dangerous “extremist.” Whether opinions are crackpot (e.g. abolish all paper money) or repulsive (e.g. non-whites should be treated as sub-humans), extreme political opinions are not in and of themselves incitements to or justifications for violence.
But there is actually one very clear and unambiguous way to define a genuinely “extremist” political ideology — it is any ideology that justifies or incites violence.
Underlying all extremist political ideologies is one central idea – the vision of “politics as warfare”. While this phrase is widely used as a metaphor, political extremists mean it in an entirely concrete and operational way. It is a view that is codified in the belief that political opponents are literally “enemies” who must be crushed rather than fellow Americans with different opinions with whom negotiated political compromises must be sought.
In recent decades we have unfortunately become accustomed to political opponents being defined as “enemies” rather than fellow Americans, but the notion was profoundly shocking when Richard Nixon first used the term in his famous “enemies list.” It marked a tremendous change from generally collegial attitudes of Senators and members of Congress, where a certain basic level of civility was almost always maintained, even among the most bitter political opponents. Unlike many other countries, until the Nixon era American politicians generally saw “politics” as the job of achieving rational compromises among democratically elected representatives and not as the task of crushing, purging or liquidating political enemies, as was often the case in totalitarian countries.
Watergate and the election of Jimmy Carter temporarily derailed the trend toward defining politics as warfare, but the notion got a powerful “second wind” in the 1980’s – which came from two main sources.
The first was the culture and doctrines of counter-insurgency and covert operations that blossomed in the Reagan era. In combating insurgent movements, U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine carefully studied Leninist organizations and frequently imitated their strategy and tactics in order to dismantle them. The basic philosophy was frequently to “fight fire with fire” using any available tactics, including even blatantly undemocratic and morally indefensible ones.
During the Reagan years, there was a massive expansion of extremely secret counter-insurgency programs – primarily in Central America and Afghanistan – that were conducted outside the formal structure of traditional civilian-military control. Among the people involved in these programs, an ethos of loyalty developed to the secret military/intelligence hierarchy that was conducting these operations rather than to the formal elected government.
The hero and symbol of this trend was Oliver North. By showing up in his military uniform at congressional hearings called to investigate his role in the illegal funding of counterinsurgencies in Central America and Afghanistan (although he was actually a political appointee of the Reagan white house at the time and not on active military duty) North dramatically embodied the view that his primary loyalty was to the covert military/intelligence command running the secret operations around the world and not to the majority of Congress that had specifically prohibited the actions he had coordinated. He became a symbol of a perspective that viewed the majority of Congress (that had voted against funding the Nicaraguan “contras”) as an internal “enemy” just as the Nicaraguan Sandinistas were an external enemy.
By the early 1990’s this general point of view had become deeply entrenched among many right-wing conservatives. As conservative talk radio shows grew in popularity, many hosts like Rush Limbaugh repeated and refined this militarized and combative version of conservative ideology.
These views became even more extreme after the fall of the Soviet Union. In the conservative view, Liberals quickly replaced communism as the principal “enemies” of America. Conservative leader Grover Norquist expressed the view quite clearly when talking to a former college classmate. He said: “For 40 years we fought a two-front war against the Soviet Union and statism in the U.S. Now we can turn all our time and energy into crushing you. With the Soviet Union it was just business. With you, it’s personal.”


Democrats: Let’s face it: the two terms “the left” and “centrists” have become so vague and imprecise they no longer have any use in serious discussions about Democratic strategy. They degrade the clarity of any argument in which they appear

Note: this item by James Vega was originally published on April 22, 2009.
These two terms have been around for so long that the reality of their present uselessness may not seem immediately obvious. But, in fact, there are actually three very different political groups who are lumped together inside the vague term “the left” and six or seven very distinct meanings of the term “centrist.” For any serious intra-Democratic political discussion to be productive, Democrats have to start making the effort to clearly distinguish between these differences.
In the case of the term “the left,” the problem is obvious to any Democrat who listens to Fox News. Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck and their imitators relentlessly hammer away at a succession of straw men called “the loony left”, “the hard left”, “the extreme left” and so on — a powerful group who, they assert, have substantial if not total control of the Democratic Party.
Aside from other political commentators, the only specific examples they offer are — not really surprisingly – such powerful and influential figures as junior professors at small state colleges, eccentric elementary school teachers in communities no one has ever heard of before and a variety of well-known (or just as often barely known) Hollywood actors – individuals whose views or actions are confidently asserted to reflect the absolutely typical or dominant attitude of the entire Democratic community.
The truth, on the other hand — as all serious observers know perfectly well — is that there are actually three profoundly distinct groups that compose “the left” and they are so different that it is essentially useless to make any generalizations about them as a whole.

1. The first group is the traditional social movement organizations dedicated to causes like the environment, civil liberties, labor and so on. The most distinctive characteristic of these groups are their single issue focus and political strategy of bargaining with candidates to win their support.
2. The second group is the multi-issue, internet-based organizations like MoveOn and Daily Kos. Their political stance tends to be militantly partisan and pro-Democratic but not ideologically extreme. Surveys have shown that the political attitudes within this group tend to resemble traditional post-war liberal and progressive views.
3. The third group is the genuine “radicals.” These days they are less often doctrinaire socialists than eclectic ecological/peace/anti-establishment militants. They are concentrated among graying tenured faculty members and young energetic protestors in movements like the anti-globalization coalitions. Although their attitudes are asserted to be the dominant ones in the Democratic coalition, in fact they generally have relatively little interest in standard electoral politics and rarely become involved in the grass-roots organizational activities of the Democratic Party.

The differences between these three groups are generally greater than the similarities, a fact that is relatively obvious when comparing the authentic radicals and the others, but is also evident between the netroots and the traditional organizations (The Daily Kos’s Markos devoted an entire chapter in his book Storming The Gates to outlining the Netroots’ disagreements with traditional single-issue organizations)
Since Obama’s paradigm-breaking campaign, there has mercifully been far less abuse of the general term “the left” within the Democratic Party then in the years preceding. But Democrats nonetheless need to officially retire the phrase and replace it with more specific discussion of issues and questions concerning the positions and actions of the three distinct groups.
Meanwhile, the term “centrist” is, if anything, even more desperately in need of retirement than “the left”. It does not only refer to several different groups, but more confusingly to a cluster of fundamentally different concepts — each of which needs to be clearly distinguished from the others.
When Progressives criticize “centrism” they are generally focusing on three very distinct and specific political behaviors or characteristics (1) an excessive conservatism in ideology, becoming at the extreme nearly indistinguishable from Republicanism (2) a marked timidity or even cowardice in political strategy and (3) corruption in financial and ethical standards.
It is not hard to understand why grass roots Democratic activists who live outside Washington find it relatively easy to feel that these characteristics do all substantially overlap in the group generally known as the “beltway insiders.” From a distance, these people all appear extremely intimate and chummy – appearing on the same think-tank panels and sitting amiably side by side on the Sunday talk shows, referring to each other by first names in the most friendly and collegial way.
But, regardless of how many canapés and podiums the “Beltway insiders” share together, the three characteristics above simply do not necessarily imply each other or overlap. Lumping them all indiscriminately together conceptually in a single term “centrism” is intellectually sloppy thinking and is deeply detrimental to the quality and usefulness of progressive thought.
Let’s untangle the distinctions.