The recent history of "pragmatic" centrism versus "extremism"

[yurbud]

I do not believe that we should do what this author says in this election, but the observations have the ring of truth.

I don't think the solution is to sit any election out, but to continue the trend started with the Lieberman defeat by Ned Lamont. As much as the DLC corporatist howl like stuck pigs about that and claim that commie vegetarian extremists are trying to purge the party, it is precisely what led to the GOP's present success and the so-called centrism of many Democrats that abandons the New Deal and Great Society in favor of corporate toadying with left wing cultural window dressing led the Democrats to being the Washington Generals to the GOP'S Harlem Globetrotters.

If you stand for something unapologetically (and not just Hallmark platitudes that almost no one would disagree with), people will respect you even if they disagree. And if your ideas are correct, you will eventually win in the long run.

We are seeing that right now with not only the implosion of the neocons here at home, but the rebellion against neoliberalism in South America.

The Democrats may win by default this time, they have to stop the bait and switch--progressive packaging and corporate product. If you don't like Howard Dean, look at Byron Dorgan's economic populism. He doesn't have to finesse his message with Lakoffisms because he is addressing the central reality and facts of our economy--it's not set up to benefit the average American. The things he says are practically self-evidently true. Why is it so hard for so many Democrats, particularly those in leadership positions to do the same?

September 6, 2006

Once More into the Breach, Dear Fools

By NOEL IGNATIEV


Most people who vote Democratic do not do so because they believe what the Democrats say: indeed, one difference between Republican and Democratic voters is that the former hope their candidates mean what they say while the latter hope their candidates do not mean what they say. You have heard the assurances: Kerry or Hilary (or whoever) is going along with the war (or whatever) as an electoral ploy. In the meantime, aren't they less evil than the Republicans?

***

It works like this: In the U.S., lacking proportional representation, both major parties are coalitions, one ranging from the center to the right, the other from the center to the "left". The dickering that takes place in other countries among parties after the election takes place here within each party before the election. Normally, each party takes its core voters for granted--where else can they go? The electoral campaign becomes an effort to occupy the center. As Nixon put it, the path to Republican success was to veer to the right in order to gain the nomination and then scurry to the center in order to win the election. Democratic politics are the mirror image of what Nixon described.

The effect of this process is to establish a "broad consensus" in the center, and to marginalize the "extremists" within each party; once the candidate is selected, they count for nothing--except their votes. But what if the "extremists" in one or the other party refused to be taken for granted--in other words, withheld their votes?

Recent history offers an instructive example of this happening. Despite Goldwater's defeat in 1964, his supporters did not reject "extremism" and return to the "mainstream". Instead, they refused to support the moderate, Rockefeller, wing of the Party. They watched their Party go down to defeat rather than allow it to adopt policies that contradicted what they thought it should stand for -- in the words of C.L.R. James, "the essence of principled politics". (Yes, the Republican Party won the presidential elections of 1968 and 1972, for conjunctural reasons, but the Democrats continued to control Congress, Nixon accepted the Democratic consensus and did not represent the Republican Right.)

Reagan's victory in 1980 was a turning point (one of those "critical elections political scientist James Burnham talks about, like 1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, and 1932), 1992 brought the Gingrich "revolution," and then came the triumph of the neo-cons. The effect of the principled course adopted by the Republican Right after 1964 was to shift the political debate in the country in their direction.



Contrast their behavior with the reaction of the liberals to McGovern's defeat in 1972: Its memory still haunts them and from it they "learned" never again to take a stand on anything that could cost them votes in the "center". Today's Democrats -- Kerry, Clinton and the rest -- stand to the right of Nixon on foreign policy, the economy, civil rights, repression of dissent and virtually every other question (perhaps excepting personal conduct issues). The liberals and pwogwessives have contributed to this outcome by their habit of unconditional, if grumbling, submission to the Democratic establishment. Imagine the effect on politics if the millions of voters who oppose the bipartisan foreign policy, etc. were to say to the Democratic establishment, No, you cannot have my vote, not until you give me something besides a wink to tell me you are better than whatever monster the Republicans have nominated. Yes, it would probably lead to some Republican victories (which may very well happen anyhow), but it would also lead to a reconfiguration of the party system (posing new problems), and perhaps more.

http://counterpunch.com/ignatiev09062006.html

[William769]

1. I went almost a whole day without smelling shit.

Well maybe tomorrow.

[skids]

2. Personally, I never take this argument at face value anymore.

These days, the "sssshhh don't let on that you have any radical ideas" meme I see so often used by people that end up being revealed as trolls, moles, disrupters, and paid mouthpeices I never take it seriously anymore, just as a tactical attempt to try to intimidate progressives into sweeping themselves under the rug. Screw em.

[yurbud]

3. yep. Tragically, if someone had a sincere, useful "centrist" idea...

we might be tempted to dismiss it because it has the stink of the phony centrists, who only occupy the center of some corporations pocket.