The last three on the island

Pluralities US conservatives believe, or at least claim to that:

The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
Mainstream science is a communist plot
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future

I’m not sure what “pluralities” means in this context. Sincet can’t mean “majorities” (if it did, then John Quiggin would say so) it must mean something like “more believe [Obama socialist Kenya-born Muslim] than believe”–but what? Do (say) 34% believe socialist Kenya-born Muslim while 28% believe socialist Muslim not born in Kenya, 21% believe Kenya and Muslim but not socialist, etc.? Similarly with “armed revolution likely near future”–do smaller identifiable subgroups believe “possible near future,” “likely remote future,” etc.?

Disclaimer: the little I’ve read by any of the named “reformers” hasn’t changed my initial opinion that they’re a lot of chowderheads; I’m not defending any of them or any of their views, just trying to make a point about using mathematical terms in what I think is a fatally ambiguous way.

Most interesting is this piece by Ross Douthat

I suppose that, in a purely comparative sense, such a statement can be true: there can be a class of related pieces so uninteresting that Douthat’s is, by default, the most interesting. Otherwise “interesting” and “piece by Ross Douthat” do not belong in the same sentence, except, perhaps, when the subject is “what the f**k is wrong with Ross Douthat and how did he get that way?”

@5
Ornstein…is paying for it, career-wise.
How? seems to me his career is doing ok. maybe he doesn’t get invited on certain conservative outlets as a commenter anymore. big deal.

I’m not really familiar with Salam’s work, so no opinion there, but Douthat and Ponnuru have been slimy hacks as long as I’ve been aware of them.

Ponnuru, in October 2001: “America is guilty. America is always guilty. Even when it’s attacked. So it appears, at least, to a certain type of commentator. When the Towers fell, when the Pentagon was pierced, when thousands of our countrymen were slaughtered — the America Last pundits were there to explain how we had brought these calamities on ourselves. We were attacked, they explained, because we had angered the world.” And of course he’s the guy who wrote that book of thoughtful temperate criticism called The Party of Death.

Others have covered Douthat’s vileness way better than I could here.

Douthat wrote a decade ago that the primary advantage of his worldview was that if he saw a fairy on his windowsill, he wouldn’t be surprised. He has always been crazy.

(I’m picturing the conservative reformers swimming to shore after the GOP crashes and burns, only to discover later that the island is an illusion, they’ve been in an asylum the whole time.)

Hello? Anybody out there to defend or rescue the castaways? Hello? Hello?

#13 “So it’s more of the same old priggish scolding about the crisis of “values” among the lower orders, tarted up as The Next Big Thing. Hey, it’s a living.”

#3 “Is there really no room left in the dustbin of history?”

Unfortunately, as you can see, it has been replaced with a recycling bin.

A glance at the Douthat piece reveals — to my admittedly ignorant eyes — some weird-sounding stuff about monetary policy (I have little or no idea what ‘market monetarism’ is and no intention rt now of reading even a short wiki entry on it).

I’ll come out and say that Douthat’s agenda was better than I expected. a, d, e and f each arguably represent an improvement over the status quo. c could be a reasonable part of a “grand bargain”.

The worst is definitely b, repealing and replacing ACA. The proposed replacement he links has a strange obsession with “continuity of coverage” as a moral responsibility–that if someone lets their coverage lapse, they should be locked out of the system, apparently forever. The overall system doesn’t seem well-designed–if every person maintaining continuous coverage is eligible for any kind of insurance, and there’s little to no regulation on the kind of insurance offered, why wouldn’t someone have the cheapest possible insurance until the day they need it, then switch to something better? Of course, if everyone did that, there wouldn’t be any “something better” to switch to.

But, still, if a conservative gives me a 6 point agenda, and only one item is absolutely unacceptable, well, that’s pretty good, right?

Consumatopia: For one piece, yes. Now tote up all his recommendations over a month or year and see how many are anything short of just vile…

Brett @19
thks

To my mind, the most injurious tenet of conservative American thought is the conviction that something which works elsewhere, like “socialized medicine”, could not possibly work here. We used to thrive by stealing shamelessly, but at some point, perhaps during Prohibition, the very notion became heresy.

The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
Mainstream science is a communist plot
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future

While you do hear all these things (especially on blogs…) I’m not convinced they’re the majority (or plurality) opinion.

And the left is at least as guilty of the “armed revolution” one.

It seems to be the discourse, rather than the individuals, who are “crazy”. That is, the agreed social convention for political speech is that the obvious falsity or impracticality of what you’re saying doesn’t matter. It’s possibly distinguishable from actual clinical psychosis where people act on delusional beliefs in situations where there isn’t a social agreement that you’re allowed to do that.

And the left is at least as guilty of the “armed revolution” one.

Perhaps 50 years ago, but today?

Can you name a single prominent blogger or public intellectual on the left who engages in that kind of rhetoric? Revolutionary posturing now seems to be a peculiar and particular pathology exclusive to the American right. False equivalence is not useful here.

Though conservative “thinkers” seem far out of touch to those reading this blog, it seems in my adopted state of North Carolina that their orthodoxy has won (at least for now.) Education funding has been slashed to the bone. Art Pope controls the budget. The idea of establishing a state religion has been floated. The state seems emboldened to seize the capital of local entities (witness the Asheville water grab by the state.)

Illinois (my home for most of my life) seems on the verge of overturning its long-running ban on carrying firearms. It is a state drowning in debt. Rahm is at war with Chicago public school teachers.

We apparently live in a state of anarchy that requires guns to protect us all from the loonies armed to kill us when we go to the movies or school. We also need guns to protect us from the government so intent on squashing our individual liberties. Abortionists must be murdered to protect “life.” Education must be “vocational.”

One party in our two party system – the GOP – has the very focused goal of destroying the president – solving extremely serious issues like TBTF is not on their agenda. They are not interested in “reforming” their mindset at all. Why would they?

And while Sullivan is politically agile, I think he’s burned his bridges with the wingnuts.

I wouldn’t count on that. When the next big push for a glorious exercise in democracy-spreading comes along (or, if you prefer, throwing some crappy little country against the wall to show we mean business), I don’t think Sullivan will be able to resist the pull. Another chance for him to be Orwell, only it’ll work this time.

The wingnuts will be more than happy to trot him out “even that degenerate liberal Andrew Sullivan thinks enough is enough and the time has come to liberate Tehran (or Damascus, or wherever) with the Bombs of Freedom.” And he’ll be more than happy to be thus trotted.

The wingnuts will be more than happy to trot him out “even that degenerate liberal Andrew Sullivan thinks enough is enough and the time has come to liberate Tehran (or Damascus, or wherever) with the Bombs of Freedom.” And he’ll be more than happy to be thus trotted.

I expect Sullivan will turn rightward over time, but I really doubt it’s going to be in a neoconservative direction on foreign policy. You mention Tehran and Damascus, but Sullivan has been among the better bloggers out there for pointing out the absurdity of continuing neocon drum-beating.

He’s personally embarrassed about his support for the Iraq War, personally affronted by the people whose lies he bought, and intellectually engaged with the conservative realist tradition in foreign policy. That’s a bridge that is really unlikely to be crossed back.

He’s still a kind of imperialist, but I think he’s happy to be a Washington Consensus imperialist now, with gestures toward ugly race theory, rather than an aggressive neocon imperialist.

He’s still a kind of imperialist, but I think he’s happy to be a Washington Consensus imperialist now, with gestures toward ugly race theory, rather than an aggressive neocon imperialist.

I suppose that does qualify as an improvement of a sort. Truth be told I don’t pay enough attention to Sullivan to know about this shift you’re describing. I proceed from the assumption that his only real core belief is in his confidence in own awesomeness, and thus he can never resist an opportunity to feel “heroic” (at no personal risk to himself, of course).

” and it’s hard to recall, but there was a time when people like Glenn Reynolds and the Volokhs seemed like serious intellectuals…” I’m still a little stunned by the idea that there was ever a time, or place, or star system, or alternative universe, where Glenn Reynolds was in shooting distance of serious intellectuality. Glenn Reynolds? Heh heh Reynolds? Are you sure you aren’t talking about another Reynolds? This is a little bit like hearing that there was a time when Doctor Pepper seemed like a credible medical authority.
JQ, I think you should save this generosity for a better cause. I’m cringing just thinking of your nostalgic reassessment of Anne Althouse…

“He’s personally embarrassed about his support for the Iraq War, personally affronted by the people whose lies he bought, and intellectually engaged with the conservative realist tradition in foreign policy. ” Not that this motivates Sullivan to ever actually apologize to the people he accused of being fifth-column allies of Al Qaeda, or to refrain from accusing them of suspicion of treason all over again when they offend his pique du jour.

Re: Ponnuru and Douthat, on the other hand, are fairly religious, so it’s pretty unlikely they’ll shift leftward without embracing more moderate religious beliefs.

You could include Dreher in there too (he’s Eastern Orthodox, the other two are RC). Of course, your statement doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There are plenty of socially conservative Democrats out there, and you can be faithfully Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, or evangelical without embracing free-market capitalism or other ‘conservative’ economic positions.

Unless, of course, you think the key issues defining American politics are the ‘cultural issues’ like abortion, gay rights, etc.. Many people do believe that, liberals as well as conservatives, but I think that says more about them than it does about the actual importance of the issues.

Dreher abstained from voting in the last Presidential election, according to his blog: he’s one of those people who (mistakenly) prioritizies cultural issues, and abortion/gay marriage/contraception issues keep him from voting Democratic, while the foreign policy issues keep him from voting Republican. I could conceivably see him being a conservative Democrat someday though.

I wouldn’t ordinarily recommend C S Lewis, about whom I have highly mixed feelings except for some of his academic stuff like English Literature in the 16th Century, but if Douthat really thinks that seeing a fairy is compatible with a Christian world view he certainly needs to read Lewis. Or, as a rather bad monk who was a teacher of mine some fifty years ago used to say, “God doesn’t multiply miracles.”

US conservativism is far from a “series of irritable mental gestures.” It is a deliberate, well-planned movement with serious thought behind it. And it is extremely powerful and effective in killing the middle class, killing the economy, killing any MLK-like movement toward equality (both gender and racial equality – they want the women at home and they want the white men to rule the world.)

In this nation devoted to the idea that all are created equal, the GOP, in the last few decades, has perfected the xenophobic appeal. (http://nyti.ms/18GtgPE) What an accomplishment!

When Cheerios feels compelled to disable comments on a cereal ad that features an interracial family (compelled to do so by the vitriol and racism of the comments), it’s obvious that the GOP has a powerful base from which to build on its apocalyptic vision of this country. (http://wapo.st/1aOB54Z)

There is not one reformer within the GOP (if there are even any reformers, which is doubtful) who seriously wants to move beyond Lee Atwater’s southern strategy….

“Re: Ponnuru and Douthat, on the other hand, are fairly religious, so it’s pretty unlikely they’ll shift leftward without embracing more moderate religious beliefs.” It bears repeating, often, that there are plenty of left-wing people who have strongly held religious convictions, who are doing their part to improve the world in ways that seem to them to follow quite directly from their understanding of the divine nature and will. Fred Clark and Cornel West are at least as serious about their faith in action as Douthat, Ponnuru, or Sullivan.

fwiw (not making any comment on it, as i’ve only glanced through it) — the title is a bit misleading
here

We’re agreeing then, Bruce, in that creativity and invention has got to come from outside of the realm of politics as usual. It’s part of my complaint about the OWS for example — that it failed to reach a wider audience, the blacks, the poor, the ever dwindling middle class. By focusing on a number of esoteric, which isn’t to say unimportant, issues, like student debt, it came across as lily white, and the protesters as such another bunch of spoiled middle- to upper class kids.

It was no different with the counter-culture revolution of the sixties, except that in that instance, the anti-war protests, the MLK movement in the South, the urban uprisings in the ghettos and the Black Panthers proved the necessary adjunct — a lethal combinations that the powers just had to capitulate to.

So it’s still a matter of building a critical mass, from any and all quarters.

The efficacy of a movement need not depend on deep pockets.Isn’t that one of the lessons of the Civil Rights Act?

No, not really.

I cannot pretend to know why a perennial vaguely-left meme puts so much stock in the purity of motive, represented by poverty and celibacy. I cannot help associating it with the traditions of the Catholic Church. The alleged aims of the Church are otherworldly, so in their context, it makes a certain, warped sense, though the perversion of priests, who cannot be trusted with youth, of bishops living in palaces, or Mother Theresa hobnobbing with the Duvaliers ought to call the whole scheme into question.

In the real world, most available leaders are ambitious, and human enough, to act from mixed motives. And, staffing a bureaucracy dedicated to public purposes, necessarily entails both a plausible, non-corrupting career path, and the ability of parents, financially, to care for their own children — there just are never enough monks, with a true calling.

The Civil Rights movement rested on the pillars of a liberal order, newly invigorated by the solidarity generated by, and the meaning assigned to, the Great Depression, the New Deal and the Second World War. They may not have had “deep” pockets, by the standards of our runaway plutocracy, but they had many reliable pockets, in the resources commanded by liberal institutions: the journalism of the high-minded municipal press (and the rents from dominance in urban-area advertising, which felt little dependence on any business interest, not the publisher’s own [noting, of course, that newspaper publishers were often real estate developers]); from an academia of rapidly expanding state colleges and universities proudly and generously supported by property and income taxes; from the liberal clergy of well-funded, establishment mainstream Protestant churches (the Episcopalians, (northern) Presbyterians, Lutherans, etc.; from a cadre of corporate managers and leaders, who took great pride in the probity of their business institutions; from an array of liberal professions, including law and medicine; and something like a quarter of working Americans belonged to labor unions, working in industries, where they could wrest significant economic rents from capitalists represented by a largely indifferent or sympathetic management (autos, steel, mining, railroads, trucking, airlines, electrical equipment, electrical and telephone public utilities) — many labor unions and professional associations had liberal leadership.

And, they were not up against “deep pockets” on the scale we face today. The Great Compression of income distribution, from finally taming the financial sector in the second round of financial regulation in 1938, and from the high taxes and price controls imposed to finance the war effort, meant that there were no equivalent of Sidney Adelson or Haim Saban or Pete Peterson, to single-handedly finance an overwhelming propaganda effort. It was much closer to an even fight. William F. Buckley did finance the National Review, and General Electric gave us Ronald Reagan, but the relative scale and effectiveness of those efforts paled by comparison to the liberal institutions and their Liberal Consensus. (Remember God and Man at Yale? Buckley felt lonely and isolated at Yale!!! Imagine if he had had to take is oil-stained butt to Iowa State or Wisconsin?) Texas oilmen were reduced to financing New Dealer, LBJ — a lot of good that did them.

A strategy of non-violent protest was predicated on a significant part of the establishment, indeed of the whole society, being deeply sympathetic to the ideals espoused, and being economically secure enough not to fear the consequences of admitting another 25% of population to the circle of American prosperity, where they might have access to resources. The class of rich plantation owner, whose wealth depended on choking off development and keeping a class of worker in peonage, was very small and shrinking in the post-war boom.

The core of the Civil Rights Movement was funded initially, and for decades, by white liberals, and it grew in strength as a small, but well-educated African-American elite grew under the nurturance of liberal institutions into a self-confident and capable, professional leadership. A parallel system of college education was created in the South, and aided from northern institutions. Black businesses grew up in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Boston, Harlem. The niches were often tiny, and many were foreclosed by the rise of segregation and political terrorism, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. (One critically important source of early
political funding, organization and social stability in urban ghettos was the union of porters, all black, who served aboard the sleeping cars of the Pullman Palace Car Company, run under the unlikely leadership of Robert Todd Lincoln; another was the practice of the Republican Party of appointing black postmasters, during Republican administrations.)

Armies, Napoleon told us, march on their stomachs. So do mass political movements.

I don’t subscribe to a mechanical (or spiritual-class) economic determinism, but economics matters, and to ignore it or to deny its importance from a false idealism, is foolishness. If you are “conservative”, but idealistic enough to think that ideas matter more than money, you just end up like Burke at the Impeachment of Warren Hastings, isolated and ineffectual.

I do not think “conservative” has to be strictly and stupidly reactionary. I take it the “reformers” think that this episode, in which reactionaries lead conservatives in the Republican Party may be nearing an end. I don’t see it. Conservatives are leading liberals in the Democratic Party, and that’s a much more effective strategy in getting a conservative agenda legitimized and enacted — against the popular will. Nobody really cares that the reactionaries dominate the Republican Party, as long as they keep 25% of the electorate — very angry, ill-informed authoritarian-follower populists — corralled; the Republican Party is just a mob of useful idiots for Obama’s masterful disempowering and de-legitimizing of progressive forces and ideas.

A crash may be coming, or just a period of accelerated decline, but the “liberal” Obama will bear the blame, and the alternative offered by Republicans will be authoritarian, and the Democrats will lack all credibility on policy.

The economic situation we face is not a pleasant one: peak oil, climate change, ecological collapse, overpopulation speak to a world, where there isn’t enough to go around. Many powerful occupants of Lifeboat earth will want to throw a significant fraction of the world’s population overboard to drown (and form a carbon sink), in order to preserve their own privileged, and dominant, position.

I see some well-intentioned liberals thinking that we all just get along, and the plutocrats, though fantastically greedy and careless of consequences, can be placated, or persuaded that a less brutal hell-on-earth might be worth permitting a modest redistribution of income, or restraint in predatory or parasitic activity.

I am not entirely sure that life on earth can survive the political power and leadership of the Koch brothers or Pete Peterson. The kind of extremes of income and wealth distribution under which we labor can only be sustained by massive disinvestment and externalizing of costs. If we try to “adapt” to climate change in the style of Mitt Romney, vulture capitalist, or the Vampire Squid at Goldman Sachs, we will accelerate our own doom — or, rather, they will accelerate our doom, thinking all the way along, “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”, except somebody (not me, personally; I’m old) will be here for the slow motion crash of human population and civilization.

There’s no liberal utopia, which can be offered as an alternative. Human population has overshot the carrying capacity of the earth by several billion. “One child” is not a liberal vision, but some things very much like it, may be necessary. Within any plausible range of technical possibilities for energy generation, we will have to conserve power, on the order of 2 or 3 or 4 of 5. We cannot be eating meat or fish on the scale preferred today by the prosperous. I think the enthusiasm for technological utopias — “breakthroughs”! — carries some very large measure of self-deception, to match the idea that we can continue tolerating an elite leadership, greedy and short-sighted beyond all reason.

I say all of this because I am disturbed by what I take to be a cheerleading for ideological progress in the idea that smart conservatives have been voted off the island, in a game of political survival that they are losing, and this indicates a cause for optimism for the zeitgeist ahead. Maybe, I am misreading the implications — certainly, there’s precious little support for this lead in the OP. So, my apologies, if I have misread the OP.

@ 56, Bruce Wilder

You make a great case to the effect that the situation today doesn’t come close to approximating the kind of support that was readily available in the sixties for popular, anti-establishment movements. My only retort would be — movements are organic by nature.

I think of IRA, for instance, or any example, past or present, of anti-colonial struggle. Surely, IRA needed funding, great deal of funding, in order to be able to carry out its mission. But would you be ready to say that without that funding they wouldn’t have accomplished their goals, sooner or later?

In any case, I don’t regard the fate of today’s social or political resistance to the status quo as any different from anti-colonial struggle (since it’s surely not going to be resolved by going through the channels).

Main Street Muse @ 59: The GOP has abandoned rational thought. And that is why the future of this country is at risk.

Imho, the GOP is just a pathetic bit of business in Obama’s embrace of a conservative and plutocratic agenda. Most Democrats have abandoned liberalism — indeed all honest moral principle — to support Obama in his right-wing political agenda. The ridiculousness of the GOP plays an important part in convincing many Democrats of the necessity of doing so — that’s the suspension of rational thought and moral reasoning — a suspension on the nominal “Left” — which dooms the country.

Damn question mark seems to have moved!

@ Bruce Wilder 06.02.13 at 2:42 am, #61

Fair enough.

To take it to an even more elementary level, the success of, say, guerrilla warfare is predicated on the level of support from the larger community (in terms of such basic necessities as food, hideout places, etc). Che Guevara’s failure in Bolivia, the failure of the Philippine–American war, are prime examples (in contrast to, say, North Vietnam, with its heavy support from China).

#51

But surely, people like Cornel West are legitimate champions of the poor.

Perhaps you can tell us what Dr. West has done for the poor lately that has helped more than say, a $10 contribution to the local food bank.

If Ross I-lost-my-boner-because-a-woman-said-she-was-on-the-pill-therefore-contraception-is bad Douthat is the best the Republicans can do for reform, then boy are they in trouble.

Also Chaz @27: “So I think we can let a fair number of these folks off as very ignorant instead of crazy.”

It’s the other way around surely? “Crazy” means mental illness, which under certain circumstances can reduce responsibility for thoughts and actions. Assholery or ignorance, on the other hand, is much less excusable.

It’s hard to even take any of this seriously because, as Douthat mentions, there is just no evidence whatever that the GOP has any intention of taking any of these “reform” ideas the slightest bit seriously.

I think the actual premise – that the Republican party even cares about ideas or spends any time thinking about them – is flawed. The party functions according to interests, not ideas, and until some sort of structural reform, or campaign finance reform, or whatever happens, I don’t see how or why that will change. I think this whole discussion is far too sophisticated, given that the party is just such an outlier, in terms of mainstream political parties in the West. When the party, from the top down, accepts climate change, accepts evolution, accepts Obama’s citizenship, etc, then maybe we can move on to nuanced discussions of tax reform and take them seriously. Until then, until the GOP as a whole acknowledges basic, observable facts about the modern world, it really can’t be considered a real political party as that term is traditionally understood.

Funny, I thought Dems were taking their turn at governing… so what’s with all the attention on (and misinterpretation of) conservatives?

Before we bash the minority with our preconcieved notions of conservitive reform, perhaps Dem apologists could attempt to establish some ‘reform’ high road from which they can justifiably whine about the minority party on the road below? But no, that would be too honest, and too difficult… it’s much easier to justify one’s immoral positions by claiming the other guy’s positions are more immoral… you know, the old lesser of two evils canard.

Guantanamo – still open for business.
Wall St. – still unreformed and unregulated.
Foriegn Policy – death from above – just as stupid, just as expensive, just as many servicepersons and contractors in theater and in harms way… still zero results.
Civil Rights – due process and individual rights thrown out the window. drone surveillence, detention w/o charges… apparently liberals love martial law – who knew!
Terrorism – we were told the bad guys would love this new guy… guess not.
Economics – punish the job-creators… great strategy. Still looking for that shovel-ready stimulus from 2009-10… guess four+ years isn’t enough time to judge poor policy and pathetic execution… oh wait, another bridge just collapsed… Bush’s fault!
Domestic Policy – still coddling corporations and wealthy farmers.
Governance – lobbyists-in-charge, backroom deals, zero transparency, and now politically-driven tax treatment.
Education – yet another gov’t initiated debt bubble. Terrible achievement record but record-high budgets & costs… no need for reform here!

So much to brag about!! How do you find time to harass conservatives?

“Guantanamo – still open for business.
Wall St. – still unreformed and unregulated.
Foriegn Policy – death from above – just as stupid, just as expensive, just as many servicepersons and contractors in theater and in harms way… still zero results.
Civil Rights – due process and individual rights thrown out the window. drone surveillence, detention w/o charges… apparently liberals love martial law – who knew!
Terrorism – we were told the bad guys would love this new guy… guess not.
Economics – punish the job-creators… great strategy. Still looking for that shovel-ready stimulus from 2009-10… guess four+ years isn’t enough time to judge poor policy and pathetic execution… oh wait, another bridge just collapsed… Bush’s fault!
Domestic Policy – still coddling corporations and wealthy farmers.
Governance – lobbyists-in-charge, backroom deals, zero transparency, and now politically-driven tax treatment.
Education – yet another gov’t initiated debt bubble. Terrible achievement record but record-high budgets & costs… no need for reform here!”

This list is so hilariously inaccurate that I felt it needed to be repeated. I really liked the line about “punishing” the job creators.

Revolutionary socialists exist, and to this day are still sometimes encountered in the wild (at least in Britain and the rest of Europe) but their numbers may have seriously declined in recent years.

The issue then, is that while the left certainly has an element that the mainstream left considers to be lunatics and tries to supress, it is a declining one, while the right is facing an increase of the element it views as lunatics (cf., in the UK, the alleged use of the term “swivel-eyed loons” by Consevatives to refer to UKIP; the Tea Party in the US).

The best theory I could come up with is an effect of a general right-ward shift of the population’s political views — as support for the left (including the moderate left) falls, the embarrasing extremist fringe also falls, while conversely the right — and its associated embarassing extremist frings — grows. (An imagined bell-shaped curve might account for faster rates of change in the tails). Continued far enough (in either a left-wards or a right-wards direction) the embarassing fringe becomes the mainstream, at least in terms of numbers.

Rich, surely you’ve been on the Internet to recognize trolling as trolling, even when you can extract a substantive point from the trolling.

Walt, my basic sympathies are with the trolls. It’s really difficult to comment on a blog in which people don’t almost exactly agree with you without soon functioning as a troll. Certainly I’ve gotten banned from a majority of those I’ve ever commented on, and I’ve never set out to troll for a laugh.

liberals who aren’t primarily Dem partisans and others on the left who are concerned with the outcomes of mainstream politics.

As one of those non-mainstream fringey irrelevancies, I do not understand why this political faction is not as totally discredited as their macroeconomic branch.

The liberal-not-quite-Democrats are those who have told me since the 60s that the system is structurally ok, they can work within it and move it gradually to the left of existing corrupt party politicians. There has been some progress (and a little regress) on social issues.

But if there is a liberal-left on macroeconomic or equality issues it should bear some or a lot of responsibility for the forty+ years of fail.

The liberal-left stakes their claim in the territory of getting something done.
We Marxists keep trying to explain why they will fail. After the next crisis, I sure hope the people listen to us, because they will not listen to you, and the alternative, as Wilder says, is horrible to contemplate.

87: Thank you! He is a star! Excellent stuff.

“Liberalism’s original sin lies in its lack of a dynamic theory of power. Much of its discourse is still fixated on an eighteenth-century Enlightenment fantasy of the “Republic of Letters,” which paints politics as a salon discussion between polite people with competing ideas.”

Well, one of them. Also a-historical, non-materialistic, and universalist.

Its sins are also its virtues, of course. As a system it has to theoretically treat a Koch as it treats me. But that will only work when there are no more Kochs.

JQ
In US usage, “left” seems to me to refer to the Marxist/radical left, never large and now a tiny minority, altogether outside the mainstream as was pointed out above.

Not exactly, I think. “Left”in U.S. parlance, afaik, can and sometimes does refer to a spectrum going from, say, Dem. Socialists of America (DSA) through to the Fourth Int’l and beyond and encompassing a lot of groups I haven’t heard of. So it’s a larger spectrum than JQ’s remark suggests.

Neoliberalism is a genetic disease, apparently; one, like gout, which is aggravated by too rich a diet combined with too sedentary a life.

The historic political spectrum in the U.S. encompassed sentiments and styles of political appeal broadly labeled “progressive” and “populist”, with a strong class distinction. “Progressives” could be paternalistic as well as technocratic, and come from money, as we once said, with some mix of envious admiration. Populism had more of a demagogic flavor, with resentments playing an important organizing principle.

Both Right and Left, Democrats and Republicans, have had their “progressive” and “populist” movements (outside Party) and factions (inside Parties) over the years. Major institutional reforms generally involved some kind of alliance: the Parties competing to co-opt a movement, or factions within (or across) Parties cooperating.

Traditionally, the Republicans were the “insiders” in American cultural, civic and business life — the mainline Protestants of British descent with establishment economic interests — and the Democrats were the “outsiders”, everyone else. In this scheme, the Democrats did most of the populism, and the Republicans kept the progressives in their clubhouse (where they tortured them). Wilson’s (largely unsuccessful) trick, and FDR’s (wildly successful), was to take the progressives into the Democratic mansion of many apartments to form a workable majority in the country. Inside the Democratic house, FDR renamed them, “liberals,” to make them more acceptable to Big City machine pols and union leaders, who had long fought with “progressive” do-gooders .

Nixon’s (initially unsuccessful) and Reagan’s (eventually successful) trick was to broaden the “in-group” definition of the Republican Party, more along racial lines, and less on class or ethnic lines. They were helped, both policy-wise and politically, by the declining interest among Democrats in fighting the class war. (Thank you, Jimmy Carter) Resentment against privileged progressives returned as resentment against welfare queens and limousine liberals.

To me, the interesting question in American politics isn’t where on a European spectrum from liberal to socialist, someone may fit ideologically, but in whether that person is willing to make, or be associated with, populist appeals, and what kind of populist appeals. It doesn’t matter, what the person as an individual, with private thoughts and convictions, believes in, as political or policy Truth. What matters, practically, is what they are willing to subscribe to, (or legitimate, say, by muting objections), in the interest of building or managing the Team / Tribe.

In this, I would strongly disagree with JQ on this point: “Democrats are reasonably well-defined since it’s a formal party affiliation.” That’s a serious, serious misreading of the American two-party system. It’s a slow, circular dance, in which each Party is constantly gaining and shedding voters, who identify with them or feel alienated, and it continues constantly, at both a national and local level (with considerable cross-currents between national and local), and it is strategic. Everything you do, as a politician, in framing an issue, or taking action, or spinning out a narrative is going to gain some support and lose some support, maybe to the other Party or the alienated, and those gains and losses will be gradual, blending with demographic change in its pace. Who is a Democrat, or going to be a Democrat, is a fuzzy, strategic projection.

And, at the moment, the key strategic question, with a strong bearing on policy as well as propaganda, turns on whether Democrats will make populist appeals to mobilize mass support, particularly from among the alienated and oppressed.

In the last election, the smart money in the Republican Party made a supreme effort to deliver the worst possible candidate, a man deeply unpopular with a large part of the base, particularly with that part of the base, which thrives on populist appeals. And, not coincidentally, he was the most vulnerable Republican candidate to populist appeals since . . . well, ever, really: a certifiable vulture capitalist tax cheat, in the aftermath of a financial crisis and deep recession. The smallest, softest, mildest populist appeals imaginable from a Democrat could blow Romney away, like a dandelion seed.

It was a testament to the Obama campaign, that most Democrats seemed to think Romney was an existential threat, with Obama scarcely having to make any kind of populist appeal or promise, when, in fact, Romney was insanely vulnerable and never had a prayer. Obama’s campaign calculated on a close, but certain margin of victory, to preserve Obama’s policy agenda, and most observant Democrats seemed to think that was a miracle crafted by Nate Silver!

There’s a political market for populist appeals, and bad economic policy is making its potential grow. The big money buyers actually want this to be a market for lemons, as it were, served by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, as a first choice, or Obama, the Eisenhower-Republican, as a second choice. Politicians like the security of money flowing, but will, in a pinch, go for a winning electoral strategy, even if it entails a policy agenda that might do some good, for someone, who isn’t already rich. (It’s been known to happen.)

One tricky point of strategic ideological contention — secondary to funding, to be sure — are the liberals, who love humanity and hate actual people enough to find populism, unacceptable on principle. And, of course, there are the Scott Lemieux’s, who love to punch a hippie, and are certain that any policy that would actually benefit and work for a potential populist voter cannot possibly be on a practical agenda: Medicare-for-all is an impossible dream; while PPACA will fail and alienate so few tens of millions, that it is hardly worth quibbling over.

So, that’s why I say it doesn’t matter where a person is on the theoretical spectrum. What matters is who she is willing to tolerate in the same room, particularly what kind of populist appeal will she craft, tolerate or support to win a majority at an election.

I guess this populist/progressive thing is part of what I meant by saying I don’t fit neatly on the US political spectrum.

” And, of course, there are the Scott Lemieux’s, who love to punch a hippie, and are certain that any policy that would actually benefit and work for a potential populist voter cannot possibly be on a practical agenda: Medicare-for-all is an impossible dream; while PPACA will fail and alienate so few tens of millions, that it is hardly worth quibbling over.”

Bruce this is extremely unfair to Scott.

The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
Mainstream science is a communist plot
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future

This reminds me very strongly of the inputs for the computer program that generated random conspiracy theories in Foucault’s Pendulum.

Who was married at the wedding in Cana?
Since
The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
and
Thirty days hath September April June and November
It follows that
because
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
The Templars have something to do with everything.
What follows is not true:
Mainstream science is a communist plot
and
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future
because
Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate.

bexley @ 103 – The PPACA was considered constitutionally dicey because it mandated citizens to purchase a private product. Medicare for all – the government simply providing health insurance to everyone – I’m not even sure if that would be constitutionally controversial? Politically controversial, obviously, but what would be the constitutional case against it? There’s no case against Medicare, currently, so what could they say about simply expanding it?

We’ll never know if Medicare-for-all was an “impossible dream,” because major power factions in the Democratic party never even raised the idea. People like Weiner and Sanders and Kucinich occasionally showed up on TV to promote it, but nobody in Democratic power circles gives a shit what they have to say.

bexley @ 103 – The PPACA was considered constitutionally dicey because it mandated citizens to purchase a private product. Medicare for all – the government simply providing health insurance to everyone – I’m not even sure if that would be constitutionally controversial? Politically controversial, obviously, but what would be the constitutional case against it? There’s no case against Medicare, currently, so what could they say about simply expanding it?

My understanding was that the idea that PPACA was unconstitutional was laughable. It’s plainly constitutional under the Commerce Clause. The supposed unconstitutionality was trumped up by right wing hacks and the four hacks on the Supreme Court had to ignore some of their own precedents in trying to strike it down The same thing would have happened with a Medicare-for-all bill.

@105, Rich Puchalsky 06.04.13 at 4:18 pm

At last, some philosophical questions worth asking and getting one’s teeth into, Rich.

But in light of your second comment, to Bob, aren’t you skeptical of the cash value of the term “populist”? I do understand that you’re posing it as just another question, but don’t you think the term has been sufficiently tainted by the neoliberal “agenda,” which to my mind consists mostly of backpedaling, that we may have to invent new kind of language that would be more responsive to our intended meanings?

Bruce if you had any amazing ideas on the democrats could have gotten single payer through Congress I would love to hear them. Scott has repeatedly said that he personally supports single payer. He just doesn’t think it is politically realistic.

. . . he personally supports single payer. He just doesn’t think it is politically realistic.

I call that bait-and-switch.

I call that bait-and-switch.

It’s a description of the landscape, not advice for an activist.

No way it is some kind of value-neutral description of the landscape.

Please describe who sponsored and voted for single-payer, senate and congress.

LGM is totally in the tank for Obama, and their overall attitude towards the left around elections is “Shut up and vote”. After elections, they largely ignore the left. That said, they’re right on Obamacare — it’s possible that we could have gotten a plan somewhat further left than what we got, but given the nature of the Democratic party, not much further, for reasons that are largely outside of Obama’s control.

In other words, he’e right enough on any given issue—supporting ACA, voting for Obama, etc., but the overall strategy produces a situation where it’s terribly difficult to pass a bill once endorsed by the Heritage Fuckin’ Foundation, for fucks sake! (Or was it AEI—anyway, you know what I mean.)

In other words, he’e right enough on any given issue—supporting ACA, voting for Obama, etc., but the overall strategy produces a situation where it’s terribly difficult to pass a bill once endorsed by the Heritage Fuckin’ Foundation, for fucks sake!

Yes. It sucks.

Geez, Substance, I really don’t think this the time to hash over Obama’s first term yet again. But activism has to be aspirational. You can not go into the streets or into the precincts and tell people that now they have to work really hard to get the minimal change that will keep the oligarchy from having to do anything. It’s always “realistic” to say that nothing can be done, but that’s not the spirit that actually wins anything. And it takes a certain kind of personality to apparently find one’s highest joy in scolding hippies at every opportunity, as if everything is riding on them not getting in the way.

“I agree, but it isn’t Scott Lemieux holding anyone back.”

There I agree with you. None of us on blogs is holding anything back, which makes it even more puzzling that there’s a ritual around elections of telling us all how important it is that we not hold things back. And if it’s trolling … well, see way above in this thread, about mockery of people in power vs mockery of people not. Defending the President against those hippies to his left is an interesting form of trolling, sure.

As for the rest — no, I’m not going to get into yet another description of why Clinton’s situation was legislatively different from Obama’s, etc. A troll too far.

As for the rest — no, I’m not going to get into yet another description of why Clinton’s situation was legislatively different from Obama’s, etc. A troll too far.

I haven’t seen even a single description from you so far on why Clinton’s situation was different. The only argument I can imagine you making is that Clinton didn’t have 60 democrats in the Senate to defeat a filibuster. But he couldn’t even get all of the votes of the Democrats who were there so having 60 Democratic senators wouldn’t have helped unless he could persuade them all to back Hillarycare.

I have a hazy memory of Rich going over this ground so fatigue might be an excuse not to respond.

In any case I haven’t seen an argument to make me disagree with MPAVictoria up the thread about unfairness.

And if it’s trolling … well, see way above in this thread, about mockery of people in power vs mockery of people not.

What does “in power” mean?

Yawn…excuses, excuses… The counterpart to hippy-punching is veal-penning. So what’s news about that? That’s how power coteries and their acolytes behave. Why put any credence in such behavior?

OTOH the issue isn’t really the pathetic health insurance “reform”, in the place of health care reform, which inevitably left the corporate status quo intact, but rather the prioritization of such a “reform” in the face of a vast economic crisis, which should have been the first task of any “progressive” leader, sine qua non, else all other reforming prospects, “popularly” speaking, would come to naught. I was wondering as Obama campaigned, whether he had any idea about the extent of the economic crisis that was coming, (which first explicitly manifested itself in Aug. 2007, just as he was revving up his machine). But clearly not, as was evident in his key appointments even before his inauguration, R. Emanuel, L. Summers, and T. Geithner. He’s just an assiduously conformist, over-ambitious, and supercilious non-entity, as should be expected from the prevailing power-structure, as are all those who would support and/or claim to “correct” him.

Amazingly enough, if you need to look up who is the current President … wow, Obama is “in power”!

And LGM bloggers form the Cabinet of the Internet? And mockery of Republicans is therefore also verboten or something? Not getting why Scott Lemieux is “in power” any more than you are.

Neither is everyone who wants to be victimized always confronted with their tormentor.

You. You’re not in power, Lemieux, um, “is” therefore he’s keeping you down. Fight the power!

@139: the far left is pretty free with abuse towards liberals. (see the long “Obama is evil” discussions in this thread.) It’s not surprising that at this point the sentiment is mutual.

I agree with Bruce!

And I also agree with MPAVictoria that Bruce should have a URL attached to his name.

@144:

Some people do better free-form. They might find it more inspiring or more advantageous or more topically relevant or something…

http://whatiswrongwitheconomics.blogspot.com/

Nah, Wilder probably gets his best and largest readership possible here.

Of course, the FP posters, realizing their first-mover advantage, have the discretion over the use and abuse of their space by their parasitical symbiotic commentariat. They mostly handle their awesome power admirably.

LHN is not one thing.

Oh, Loomis is ok, if too nostalgic for big labor and its history.

Lemieux is a Constitutional or Legal scholar for cripes sake, and deeply invested in a theory of politics.

Bspencer is new.

Heavy Metal Farley really really likes battleships.

The occasionals are ok.

“And I forgot Campos”
Well if we are complaining about LGM….

“regards single-payer critics of PPACA as worse than conservative critics”

Assumes facts not in evidence Bruce. I think you should read SL more often. Also, I will note that you still haven’t highlighted any realistic path to single payer in 2008. As for your lesser evil comments, that conversation has already been had at length on this blog so I will just say that I disagree with you.

MPAVictoria: Assumes facts not in evidence

I put the facts into evidence at comment 107, thank you very much. Here’s the money quote: “it must be admitted that the Republican fake-reformers are still being more rational that left-wing opponents of the PPACA”, which is followed by some very heavy slanderous ridicule of said left-wing opponents. It is hardly atypical of Lemieux.

Sorry—posted before I saw BW’s 156.

@ 131

And you’re not going to — not going to waste the time. But just at the most elemental level, you’re comparing the aftermath of Bush I with Bush II. There never was a better time to make major changes, and I really doubt that I’m going to see a greater political opportunity squandered in my lifetime.

But isn’t this far more of a criticism of the lack of regulation/prosecution of the financial sector? There had just been a massive balls up by the financial elites, so if there was a political opportunity for reform it was of Wall Street accompanied by some bankers being prosecuted.

Other criticisms of Obama are his failure to use the powers available to him under the constitution that don’t require approval from Congress (platinum coin, failure to nominate judges below the SCOTUS level, prosecution of Bushies for war crimes). But it doesn’t seem obvious to me that there was an opportunity for better healthcare reform.

“(Although it must be admitted that the Republican fake-reformers are still being more rational that left-wing opponents of the PPACA, who also favor replacing the PPACA with nothing for the foreseeable future, only they prefer to pretend that killing the PPACA would have led to the Magic Ponies and Unicorns Act because…look, Atari brought out a game for the 2600 based on E.T.! It’ll be awesome!”

You both need to read this again. He didn’t say they were worse. He said they were less rational. Not the same thing at all.

My view on all this is that liberals have no power. Social democrats have no power. The only reasonable thing is to tell the truth about that and about what that means in the world.

I fail to see where this diverges from what Lemieux is saying. I think he’s laid out a very strong case that the inherently dysfunctional nature of our political system makes something like single-payer health insurance quite simply impossible. You and he diverge on what conclusions to draw from this, but I really don’t think you’re all that far apart in your premises.

Whoa, you must be crazy! Look at this magical pony guy over here!” followed by the “kook” hand-gesture of twirling my finger near my forehead. And then when other people look at me and say “Whoa, Rich, I don’t know what the problem is” I’ll say “Hey, I didn’t say he was worse than the banksters. He’s only nuttier.”

Strawman much? He isn’t saying that people are irrational for wanting single payer but are irrational if they were willing to see PPACA die in the hope that single payer would pass instead when that wasn’t on the table.

The analogy would be if someone came up to you to say that the minimum wage should be abolished because that would then open the way to a universal basic income.

“Strawman much? He isn’t saying that people are irrational for wanting single payer but are irrational if they were willing to see PPACA die in the hope that single payer would pass instead when that wasn’t on the table.

The analogy would be if someone came up to you to say that the minimum wage should be abolished because that would then open the way to a universal basic income”

I had a response written that was less clear than this one. So I will just repost what bexley wrote.

you have an existing single payer system for 65+ (Medicare) with a ton of popular support, although policy elites are ambivalent about it

The elites aren’t “ambivalent” about Medicare — they’re going all-out to convince the public that it’s bankrupting the country and needs to be scaled back sharply in the name of “entitlement reform.”

And yes, I truly do believe that the structural defects in the system at this point are such that “popular support” doesn’t mean sweet FA if it runs counter to the wishes of the elites.

“no of course not. To be clear, by ‘transforming the debate’ I don’t necessarily mean a leap to single payer/Medicare for all, but a version of health care better than what we got (e.g. a strong public option). Putting a Medicare option for everyone 50+ or 55+ on the table would have made a real difference, and would not have been out of the mainstream with the public. The point is, utterly delegitimizing single payer because you’re terrified of the socialist cooties weakens your bargaining power, it doesn’t strengthen it.”

Would I have liked those things? Yes. Do I think they were politically possible. No.

“Well rich I would oppose someone looking to do that and I would also think they were crazy. So I guess I am just a hippy puncher.”

Yep. You would be going around mocking various powerless people to your left, instead of mocking the banksters, who are actually carrying our their plans. This wouldn’t make you an oppressor, as Substance would have it, but it would make you a complete waste of time to be around, and an annoyance wherever there’s actual political work to be done.

“Yep. You would be going around mocking various powerless people to your left, instead of mocking the banksters, who are actually carrying our their plans. ”

I contain multitudes. I can mock both.

@170

“And yes, I truly do believe that the structural defects in the system at this point are such that “popular support” doesn’t mean sweet FA if it runs counter to the wishes of the elites.”

QFT.

And I’d put “political imagination” that PGD is so fond of to better use than trying to propagate what has become a dysfunction and utterly corrupt system by scoring a point or two on behalf of the hoi poloi. It’d only perpetuate the illusion.

Do you really think that bill would have had no chance of getting simple majorities in the House and Senate?

I think the insurance lobby and other interested parties would have had little difficulty peeling off enough Blue Dogs to defeat it. I could very well be wrong about that, as I’m not much of a Washington wonk. (But Lemieux is, which is why I tend to defer to his knowledge of the inside baseball stuff.)

It was politically impossible to get a public option (much less a single payer) in 2009-10. Obamacare does the next best thing, which is to make a public option, then a single payer, a politically inevitable outcome in 5-10 years. There is no stopping it now. What is remarkable is that some people who characterize themselves as on the left wing, do not understand why and how this will happen.

God bless ya MPAVictoria, for making the case for marginal policy improvements at the day to day level where people actually live their lifes.

finance, health insurance, hmmm . . . could there be any connection?

Well its easier to use a financial crisis brought on by the actions of bankers to drive forward regulation of big banks. Less easy to use it to drive forward healthcare reform.

Earlier in the thread you said “My view on all this is that liberals have no power. Social democrats have no power. The only reasonable thing is to tell the truth about that and about what that means in the world. “.

How have you gone from there to agreeing there was a political opportunity for better healthcare reform?

“How have you gone from there to agreeing there was a political opportunity for better healthcare reform?”

Not to speak for Bruce, but I’m guessing that he doesn’t class Obama as a liberal, or liberals as having power within the Democratic Party. A whole lot of this “But what was the real path to single payer?” amuses me, because it’s like asking “How do we get Social Security through, given that FDR opposes it? It’s impossible, the conservatives will say it’s socialism, the Supreme Court will stop it and there’s no way to put pressure on them, there’s no way to get the party to fall into line… but if you get the votes lined up, the President may go along with it.” Yes, yes, the hero-theory of government is bad, FDR had a much stronger political position than Obama, I think we can take that all as read. But we never got to find out how far we could go, because Obama has always openly said that he just didn’t support it. It was held as a possible threat to get people to go along with Obamacare, but he was careful to sabotage any actual chance of it passing.

And it’s the all-purpose excuse, as with what the Obama administration did with global warming. “Where are the votes?” But then when it came to Keystone, for which there were no votes needed … why, somehow it turned out that the votes weren’t the problem after all. But those stupid hippies, asking for something — what did they ever accomplish?

It’s an interesting experiment in governance.

“If you weren’t being disingenuous, I’d suggest pretending like you were.”

Why? What exactly in my statement do you disagree with?

Marc @ 161: There was enormous backlash to what was achieved in the 2010 election.

Or, there was an enormous demoralization, when nothing changed. (best recheck the list at mpower69 @ 74)

There are competing narratives, here. One of the narratives rests on the idea that politics is not actually about choice, because the only possible course is the one Scott Lemieux identifies as politically possible, and anyone, who doesn’t like that course and support it and the leadership that takes us there, is a fool or worse.

There is something seriously wrong with that way of thinking. It tries to make a virtue out of powerlessness. And, scapegoats out of people, who would try to exercise their power to make things better.

Here’s the truth. Obama is evil. And, we are powerless. And, we become more powerless, if that’s possible, when we follow Scott Lemieux in supporting and legitimating Obama and the evil. And, if you don’t like the “evil” part, fine, just look at the mechanics of political power — there’s none in being penned veal. There’s no power in being good little boys and girls and dutifully voting for whatever supposedly lesser evil is offered; power lies in being able and willing not to go along, not to cooperate.

It is true that the option you want is probably not on the menu, and refusing an option that is on the menu, might mean that you get nothing. I’m sure there’s a clever game-theory name for that circumstance. What it means is that you have no power; the guy, who wrote the menu has the power, and you choosing from the menu is the illusion of power given to you to keep you quiet. Scott likes what it is on the menu, likes the guys who wrote the menu, no matter what else he says; and so, he says, STFU to people, who object to being handed a menu that doesn’t have any of the options they asked for or were promised.

The people who write the menu, write the menu with their own preferences and interests in mind. Asking that the menu be re-written is going to require a threat to not-cooperate, to strike in labor parlance, to resist or to fight. And, the people, who write the menu know this, and it is in their interest to arrange things so that the option to strike is more costly than the option on the menu, which they want you to acquiesce to. To always acquiesce, on cost-benefit grounds, is to ask to be herded into the veal pens. (Scott aspires to be a herder.)

Politics is about writing the menu, and then choosing an option from the menu. Notice the “and”. Both parts are politics. The menu never goes away. It is part of the process, part of the procedure, by which we narrow choice down to the choice we, collectively, make. In a democracy, you can certainly hold politicians responsible for writing the menu. Scott thinks you should not hold Obama, or the Senate and their precious filibuster, responsible for what’s on the menu. What’s on the menu is on the menu, nothing else was ever possible, so STFU.

Most of politics, most of the time, is not about writing the menu, or making choices from the menu, but about throwing up a lot of dust, to disguise the fact of the choice, which has already been made, while the consequences play out. Or, alternatively, putting forth a critique of the choices previously made, highlighting their consequences, to prepare minds and potential political coalitions for making a different choice, at some point in the future. During the long dust cloud periods, the political system just defends or reinforces or reproduces by repetition and elaboration, choices already made; it might look like consensus or stalemate — the dramatic meme is not important. Two-party, parliamentary democracies are very good at it. It is actually a political virtue, a collective version of commitment by an individual. That parliamentary systems are so good at it is one reason why they displaced monarchies from power; you’d think monarchies would be good at commitment — will of one individual and all — but monarchs (and their intriguing courtiers!) are not good at it, in fact, while parliaments are.

But, I digress. Well, not really. It was just my way of saying that we are in a dust cloud period. There was a moment of choice after the 2006 and 2008 when the political system could have responded, given the change in partisan personnel and the heightened expectations of the country, with a change of course. Obama is the most masterful politician I have seen in my lifetime, with the possible exception of LBJ, whom I am too young to remember all that well. He came into the Presidency in the midst of a global financial crisis; the Presidency has all the powers of the Roman Republic’s Dictator, in a crisis; the plutocracy of finance was completely dependent on him, not the other way around, if only in that moment.

Obama took the promised “hope and change” and betrayed the country and the future; he legitimated every thing Bush had put into place. And, then, with the same finesse with which he had won a landslide election, he returned the country to political stalemate, sealing his choices in concrete. All the pseudo-crises in Congress since, over the debt ceiling and the Bush taxcuts, were put on the schedule by Obama, when he had overwhelming majorities in Congress. He’s really good at “writing the menu” or “setting the agenda”.

There’s so much dust in the air, so much cacophony from all the pundits, it can be hard to tell that any choice has been made at all. A lot of my attention is focused on economics, where this confusion is expressed by talking about the economy with a meteorological metaphor, as if there was economic weather, and we’re hoping for sunny economic days to happen spontaneously and mysteriously. And, pretty soon, we’ve got a cargo cult mentality that says that appeasing the gods of “business confidence” with deregulatory reform and low taxes will bring us prosperity.

Ian Welsh has an excellent post up, about the choices that were made, in electing Reagan (and Thatcher), and how society and politics changed as a result. It is all about backing away from the dustcloud a great distance to get some perspective.
http://www.ianwelsh.net/the-decline-and-fall-of-post-war-liberalism/

Did people in 1980 or 1984 or 1987 know what was on the menu? Did it seem that the course chosen was the only one possible?

It is painful, but I think the only realistic option today is to step back and recognize that things are bad and getting worse, and we are powerless. Going along with “lesser evil” or getting bollixed up in political counterfactuals and details of the moment is a useless distraction. It is not clear what is to be done, but getting bogged down building and legitimating the fascist state for Obama isn’t going to help.

MPAVictoria, you’ve “disagreed” several times in this thread, without actually explaining yourself, when we’re trying to have a discussion over a common set of facts. I am fine with you having a differing perspective on facts, but when you simply “disagree” with out further explanation, it is hard to know if you are saying, “I see what you see, but I value it differently” or “I do not see what you see at all; your facts are wrong.” or something else entirely.

The demand for “proof” that single-payer or public option or some other variant was “politically possible”, while “politically possible” is being defined as whatever Obama did, really doesn’t deserve an answer.

Bruce, this discussion has been rehashed so many times that if you want my views in detail I encourage you to look at any of the previous threads in which the “lesser evil” question has been debated on this blog. There are many examples to choose from.

However if you would like a summary of my views I think that Ronan summed it up pretty well with the phrase “marginal policy improvements at the day to day level where people actually live their lifes.”

Bruce I am not your enemy and I am not some neo-liberal squish. In fact, I am a card carrying member of the only major social democratic party in the United States and Canada. I just disagree with you about how bad Obama is and how much worse his opponents are.

“Not being facetious, but wasn’t that coalition built on disenfranchising African Americans?”

I’m not holding up FDR as maximum superhero. I’m just inviting people to imagine doing the New Deal while FDR was opposed to it. There would have been a whole lot of mysterious failures, strangely enough happening both in areas that the President could do directly and in areas where legislative approval was needed. People like bexley would be saying “You can absolutely attack FDR for not declaring a bank holiday, but I don’t see any path to a Banking Act.”

roger nowosielski @ 195

I would say that a lack of agreement on rhyme and reason is insufficient cause to pretend that none exists, or worth trying to establish and explain to potential voters. Context is difficult, but when we try to operate as though there isn’t one, falling prey to panderers like President Obama isn’t the worst that can happen to us, not by a long shot.

Ah okay Rich, I see your point.

” Perhaps I am digressing, but in light of Bruce Wilder’s #192 (and that’s regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with his analysis), not to mention a countless number of likewise pointed comments, I propose that he be allowed to post original articles on CT, if only as a guest contributor/blogger.

What are the qualifications, anyhow? Does one have to teach at a university level?”

Agreed! Though he already said up thread that he wasn’t really interested. Though maybe I misinterpreted him.

Bruce Wilder @ 192:

There was a moment of choice after the 2006 and 2008 when the political system could have responded, given the change in partisan personnel and the heightened expectations of the country, with a change of course.

I would have loved to see substantial “reform” of the financial system as a left-wing implementation of “a crisis is an opportunity”. But the risks were as real as the opportunity: an “independent” Fed, a defiant Congress, a reactionary Court. The left is not institutionally strong: all the institutions through which the Elite work their influence would have power to fan the flames of counter-revolution. I can understand why a committed leftist would’ve shied away from our own version of The Shock Doctrine. Probably major political advances require broad-based democratic support to take root and establish the intended new order. Change is a long hard path, we the People are the ones who will initiate the change. No quick fixes, and no heroic leaders.

It is painful, but I think the only realistic option today is to step back and recognize that things are bad and getting worse, and we are powerless.

Off topic perhaps, but the curious thing about taking a step back is that it can be incredibly inspirational for an atheist. For all the mute brutality of Nature, here we are gaining in health, wealth, pursuing happiness. Taking a step back, we are extremely privileged to enjoy our civilization. Nothing owed us This! Can you not wonder at the myriad marvels born by our dynamic social order? And can this wonder and gratitude be as much as an emotional platform for left-wing politics as depression, despair, and resentment?

When I step back and look at the technology, culture, and opportunities for personal growth afforded most participants in our society, I see the myriad successes of left-wing cultural libertarianism and economic policies that have successfully overwhelmed capitalist, market-based orders. Our victories are everywhere. We were promised none of them by our God, and more yet can be achieved.

Oh, come on, Substance, surely you understand enough about bargaining to understand how Obama (and associated Democrats) could’ve done more to get a stronger version of the reform passed.

I DO actually think they could have done more, personally, but I’d class that as a personal suspicion: the votes for what passed were extremely close. Whatever I think in my heart of hearts about the will of Democrats – weaklings! – or the evil of Obama – evil as every other president! – “politically possible” seems like a good definition of such marginally accepted legislation.

Forget roadmaps, if these people were actually interested in passing a significantly more liberal/progressive version of ACA, they need elementary classes in bargaining.

And I see you agree: I think this sentence means the votes weren’t there.

And I see you agree: I think this sentence means the votes weren’t there.

I have no idea what you’re seeing. I also have no idea what votes there were or were not for any given real or possible policy measure. What I was saying was that there was never a real attempt to bargain for the strongest measure possible. So either they’re a bit stupid and don’t know how to bargain or they didn’t care that much about getting the strongest possible measure passed. (Note that I am making absolutely no speculations about what was or is in anyone’s hearts—mostly I don’t give a fuck. I’m going purely by their publicly known actions.)

That though is the very last I’ll say about the ACA. The studious ignoring of what multiple people are insisting is the important point is not the most fruitful strategy.

I mean, I sympathize with the position, and I too don’t think there was a decent attempt at selling the concept. But there’s a conspicuous absence of more sensible measures making it onto the floor of the house.

Substance: “I too don’t think there was a decent attempt at selling the concept”

Yes, but what does that mean, practically? (1) You have to change the social preferences of the voting public, in the face of big intellectual inertia in favor of freemarket libertarian crapola that includes massive distrust of politicians as well as big business. So you really are talking about two election cycles at least. (2) After that new understanding has been secured, then you have to get the voters to kick out the Senators and Representatives who have taken positions contrary to the new social preference, in the face of massive campaign spending, disinformation, voter forgetfulness, and the states in the country who still don’t accept your new social preference. (3) After that, then and only then do you get to craft your preferred utopia while trying to avoid any additional pitfalls.

I don’t understand why people here think that social preference can be changed purely intellectually. Emotions can be enlisted in support of any preference. Or indeed why people here believe that they are typical of most people. The only way to do this is to take what you can get, make sure it gives a few handholds to push in the proper direction, and then keep pushing. This is exactly what the right does, and it is why they have been winning until now. The idea that it is all for naught because it is not an immediately ideal outcome doesn’t make any sense.

” The idea that it is all for naught because it is not an immediately ideal outcome doesn’t make any sense.”

This is a good point. Obamacare is not perfect (far from it!) but millions of people who didn’t have healthcare will now (or soon) have it. That has to be worth something.

“Social democracy, here we come!”

This is what I’ve been thinking, looking at the US from afar, but I never wanted to say it. (Didn’t seem like it was my place)

I had a fairly trivial post along these lines.

Holy crap substance has a blog! How come I was not notified?

Substance McGravitas @ 199

I do not see what the information content is, of “politically possible”, when someone like Scott Lemieux uses the phrase, as a club to bash people to his Left. If someone needs to explain “politically possible”, then it is Scott. I am not the one, who wants to declare what is “politically possible” instead of respectfully debating what should be done and how to do it.

I do see the rhetorical function of “politically possible”, and it is ugly. It saves Scott from having to explain why he supports proposals, which are counterproductive to what he claims he wants. It shuts down discussion with people to his Left, silencing their critiques and ideas.

I am a liberal, not a radical, not a socialist, not a populist. (OK, maybe a little bit of an idealist.) And, I have some acquaintance with how politics works, both historically and from personal observation. Liberals get what they want, by allying with radicals, bringing the radicals in from the wings, to scare the reactionaries and conservatives. That’s how it is done.

Socialist radicals and populist radicals are the friends of liberalism. Respect them. Love them. Legitimize their protests, their strikes. Get them in the conversation. Make them your primary interlocutors. If you are going to scorn someone, scorn the greedhead conservatives, the authoritarians masquerading as libertarians.

So-called liberals in the U.S. have been hobbling themselves since the Red Scares of the 1950s by habitually doing just the opposite of what makes practical political sense. And, the result has been steady movement toward neo-feudal plutocracy. And, then, they lecture on the “politically possible”?

It’s way past time to get real.

Obamacare is not perfect (far from it!) but millions of people who didn’t have healthcare will now (or soon) have it. That has to be worth something.

“Healthcare” or “health insurance”?

Because “health insurance” is nothing, but another (and very large) bill you have to pay.

And, now you are “mandated” to pay it, and for many people, who already bought insurance in the private market, it turns out that it won’t be cheaper, it will be more expensive. Ooops. Must be one of those minor imperfections, which I am sure were worth it to some insurance executive somewhere.

But, hey, it was politically possible! And, it will remain so, until it isn’t.

Roger @ 223:

Poor people are dis-empowered. All of the things that would create equality of opportunity (equal access to education, equal access to health care, equal access to leisure, equal access to dynamic, responsive government support) dis-empower you if you don’t have them. Having health insurance could empowers one in myriads of ways.

That’s all I mean when I say dis-empowered.

I do not mean to say that better access to health care and PPACA act specifically renders ANY concerns about inequality moot. Not even health care.

& I’m not saying that things are getting better. There’s reasons to hope, but more reasons to act.

But I am saying that things are Good, in a kind of deep way that is trivial but for it’s being under-acknowledged. And that a celebration of this truth is or could be as much as an inspiration to radical left activism as the idea that we are reacting to an injustice, that we are scolding the Evil, that we are mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. We want followers? Let’s throw a party.

Bruce Wilder @ 227:

“I love my iPhone” as a political creed?

I love my clean drinking water as a political creed.

But, yeah, smart phones are pretty amazing.

“If someone needs to explain “politically possible”, then it is Scott.”

He has done this Bruce. At great length.

“for many people, who already bought insurance in the private market, it turns out that it won’t be cheaper, it will be more expensive”

This is actually untrue Bruce.

“A lot of real people – my daughter, for example – have benefited from the Obama health plan in very specific ways”

Sorry Marc, your daughter can’t be real because Obama is the worst president ever times a million.

Look Bruce you are obviously a VERY smart guy and you write very well ( better than I do in fact) but I really think that you misunderstand some truths about the American political system. Specifically about the senate, the differences in party discipline between the democrats and republicans, and exactly how much power the president has.

Thanks for the response Rich, but I don’t get it. If my American family is better off under the health care plans of either Romney or Obama – happy to grant that in a just world both would be in prison – what emotion is the right one to feel?

” unlike MPAVictoria, I’m not trying emotional blackmail”

Not blackmail as I do not need anything from you Rich.

” My daughter was helped by Romney’s plan, so you must not even think she exists.”
Not my daughter, Marc’s daughter. I am glad she has health care though.

Wait so you said that you weren’t referring to your daughter and then immediately referred to your daughter? And hey if you think Romney is fantastic I hope you voted for him.

@239: Some of us, mysteriously, paid attention to what Romney and Obama were actually campaigning on doing in 2012. The 2012 Romney was about all sorts of things, but Mass-style health care was not one of them. What precisely is your point?

@221:

“The part about throwing the baby of possible incremental positive change out with the bathwater of possible revolution.”

Well, I didn’t find the exact quote above, but the standard liberal trope/meme to the effect that small benefits to “ordinary” people are of greater worth than holding out for broader, more basic changes, is old hat. “Love me, love me, I’m a liberal!”, as Phil Ochs sang it, back in the day. It’s utterly condescending and self-regarding, as well as, privileged/entitled. Lotsa people, quite legitimately, would rather endure their continuing suffering, rather than beg for peanuts. That’s something that bog-standard liberals have signally failed to understand, to their intentional detriment least of all. And it’s not actually “irrational”. Because putting band-aids on gaping wounds and holding things together with duct tape and bailing wire is scarcely an inspiring prospect. Though I have no preference between radical reform and “revolution”, as the circumstances may require, at the vanishing-point on the horizon. But remaining captive to the status quo (ante) through piece-meal “reformism” *is* throwing the baby out for the sake of the bath water IMHO for anyone with the capacity to understand the epochal juncture we are at. (ACA is a peculiarly American issue, so I don’t understand why any foreigners should care, but the decline and untenability of left-liberalism/social democracy, as other countries regress toward American standards of neo-liberalism, at the very point of its epochal failure as a “regime of accumulation”, in which it has paradoxically extended its zombie hold, is something that too few of the CT commentariat seem willing to contemplate).

So the “enjoy” scare quotes indicate your implicit adherence to utilitarian hedonic “calculus”, by which pleasure and pain are simply mechanical/”logical” opposites, and care and responsibility (for the world and others in it) are secondary to the “liberality” of one’s own intentions. (Yes, I’m trained up in the tradition of the critique of ideology and dis-intentional hermeneutics). And as to your appeal to the ancient thaumazein, while I suspect that the formalization/specialization of modern science has drained much of it from the world, I also suspect that it should lead in directions quite other than you might want to expect or countenance. I’m all in favor of big bright jazz brass bands, (especially with aggressive tubas), but I haven’t forgotten that they originated in a funeral march tradition and who and what they were playing for.

As for the ACA, (which wasn’t the topic of the OP), the basic case is fairly clear and simple. HEALTH CARE IS A NON-MARKET GOOD. A universal system of coverage is functionally required to contain costs. Any further welfare gains, including equity gains, follow from that. (Every other advanced industrial country has figured that out, by hook or crook). So I basically agree with Lee Arnold, backhandedly, that the ACA will inevitably lead to its replacement by something better, though not because of his surfer dude optimism that it will bring enlightenment to the masses about the bleeding obvious anyway. At least, a law that effectively just codifies prevailing corporate rents would be an exceedingly odd way to bring about such an “enlightenment”. That’s a bit like arguing that the increasing investment costs of increasingly scarce oil resources will eventually guarantee their substitution/replacement by standard economic “principles”. Yeah, whenever, whatever…

I agree with so much of what you write. flattered for the attention. Bruce, likewise.

Here’e the word that closes like a coffin: maybe.

Even then, the dream of a Smokin’ Savior (Barack/Martin) is alive in my soul, an ally on the inside, who screams to the moon Why Aren’t they Organizing ! What happened to Occupy!

I think PPACA is maybe a tool. It’s not reforming the institutions, but it may be a tenderizer. Meanwhile, I say there’s a strong likelihood poor people will materially benefit. and I already do: subsidized coverage when you hit poverty is an emotional security blanket, with probably secondary economic benefits.

& Now for some Tendentious B9 Propaganda: The way most families treat children in the new world is a beautiful amazing evolution. By who nows how many artists and philosophers, we created that. The pride that the medical community and scientific research community take in their institutions. Academics too. Look what humans did. A sort of flower, blooming towards the cold universe. Absolutely incredible. With most institutions, we see how frail and strong the market system is simultaneously: you must have a strong code of ethics to resist it its force and yet institutional health is quite independent of market exchange.

..no point working through the party system rather than political system

And I’m not one of the imaginary pony-people who Scott was talking about who apparently thinks that Obamacare should be cancelled now because that would lead to single payer later. But I don’t tend to mock people who I have to work with, do you?

I think sometimes the both of us do, and in some cases it’s warranted. There’s been a lot of anger over Scott Lemieux in the thread and you have to work with that guy too.

Whenever I read these kinds of threads I am astounded by the level of grass-roots damage Obama has done. So many people who should be enthusiastic liberals are spending their mental energy and shaping their political visions around making excuses for his embrace of an essentially pro-business agenda. It is just naïve in the extreme.

So many people who should be enthusiastic liberals are spending their mental energy and shaping their political visions around making excuses for his embrace of an essentially pro-business agenda. It is just naïve in the extreme.

Can you list the excuses made in the thread?