Does the simple "go left" argument mirror RW logic about social programs?

[LoZoccolo]

Poll question: Does the simple "go left" argument mirror RW logic about social programs?

NOTE: This is not an accusation that people who advocate "go left" are trolls or FReepers or pushing a right-wing agenda, only a demonstration of how on a very abstract level, the logic could be said to mirror something that I think most people here commonly disagree with.

Every now and then you hear a right-wing argument that goes something like this: there are still poor people, so our social programs or welfare or subsidized housing isn't working, therefore we should eliminate it outright. To me, this sounds like the assertion that we should "go left" simply because we lost this election - any discussion of how to refine the general direction that we're trying now is foregone for a sweeping elimination of it.

Would you agree?

[Radical Activist]

1. Go Left v. Go Middle is overly simplistic

Especially for those who argue for economic populism. We can appeal to the middle by going left on the right issues.

[Ken Burch]

2. Right on!

One of the reasons that the so-called "cultural liberalism"
our party has half-heartedly embraced has been rejected by voters
is that that "cultural liberalism" has been coupled with economic conservatism
(we have to let the corporations have their trade deals, we have to keep unions down, et al) and this has allowed Republicans to paint the "cultural liberalism" as special favors granted to an elite.

The gay marriage and abortion issues would not have had anywhere near the negative impact that they had if our party had been clearly fighting on the working class side of the economic divide.

[stray cat]

3. Agreed

However, what about our foreign policy, defense and budget stance. In America liberal is often associated with a peace at any price mentality and an attitude of weak appeasement coupled with big spending that drives up our national debt. Is this part of going left or is it a wrong portrayal that needs to debunked?

[Ken Burch]

4. We've never had a coherent post-McGovern defense and security policy

And that is a big problem...

I think we need to present a progressive case on foreign
policy and find a way to clearly tie it to security issues.

Something along the lines of "Strength through Justice"
would be a good phrase for it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

5. Even though the Democrats have mostly bought in to all the

Republican war-mongering. One of the reasons I'm so anti-DLC is that two of its early positions during the Reagan administration were going along with the wasteful military build-up (mostly boondoggle weapons programs) and going along with the immoral and cynical interventions in Central America.

The American people have accepted the Republican stereotype of liberals as "soft on defense" because very few Dems have ever questioned the underlying principles of "foreign policy as militarism."

I would love to see every Dem politician go on the road with Ben Cohen's "Oreo cookie" talk about the federal budget, in which each cookie represents a billion dollars. Show people who the American military budget compares to every other military budget in the world. Show how much is spent on the military compared to EVERYTHING else.

[mrgorth]

9. This is right on!

YOu guys are nailing it.

[Warpy]

6. No, turning left makes sense

because turning right hasn't worked!

[LoZoccolo]

12. Actually, this reply is better.

It's even closer to what I'm talking about.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

7. Well, going right certainly hasn't worked.

The DLC/DNC is busy shedding the party of what remaining principles it once had that there's little left to work with.

[LoZoccolo]

11. Everyone: If you're just getting to this thread, read this reply.

It's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

[Zhade]

13. What kind of thing? Honesty and common sense?

Yes, the post does include those things. How do these have anything to do with your false premise?

[LoZoccolo]

14. Why do you hate America?

:eyes:

[Ken Burch]

19. We don't

And it's Republican to equate criticism of conservatives(like the DLC)with "hating America."

America is just as much Walt Whitman, FDR, Martin Luther King, RFK, Jesse Jackson, Cesar Chavez and Harvey Fierstein as it is LBJ, Scoop Jackson, Nixon and Reagan.

[LoZoccolo]

22. I wasn't serious.

I was demonstrating how pointed questions don't necessarily make a good argument.

[Ken Burch]

28. ooops. you got me, dammit.

Shoulda known.

[Zhade]

29. Obviously, for your many freedoms!

:D

[rman]

15. not what you're talking about

you talk about going left "simply because we lost this election".
but it's not "simply because we lost this election".

it is about what is mentioned in the reply you point out: principles.

[LoZoccolo]

16. The poster specifically mentions what "hasn't worked".

Plus there's another reply that takes the practical angle too.

[rman]

17. well, it's true that it hasn't worked

The reason is that the Dem party doesn't represent much of liberal and progressive principals.

[LoZoccolo]

18. I just completely don't get this argument.

This election we stood for:

- universal health coverage
- raising the minimum wage
- only raising taxes on people who make over $200,000 a year
- opposition to tort reform that prevented people from collecting more than a certain amount of damages

These are good things and people didn't even want them! Or, we couldn't articulate what we were going to do enough so that the Republicans couldn't spread rumors about them and all that (which I think is the real problem). If people don't want even these things, I don't know what else we could offer from the left that they'd really go for. I mean, they're willing to give up being insured when they're unemployed, so I don't see how giving them ranked automatic runoff ballots or pulling out of the WTO or repealing NAFTA or whatever-program-people-think-is-the-key-to-the-White-House-yet-most-people-don't-even-know-about-yet will get them to vote for us.

Also, I don't see what other state we could have won by "going left".

[rman]

31. the problem is lack of countering RW spin of those issues,

compounded by a rigged election.

Before making an issue out of WTO, IMF, NAFTA and the likes, the Party would have to make clear what is wrong with those. That's not going to happen any time soon as long as the party is home to so many corporatists.

How many people have ever heard about WTO/globalization whistleblower John Perkins and his "Confessions of an Economic Hitman"?

"Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions"
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251&mode=thread&tid=25

For some reason most people choose to just ignore this.

[Zhade]

8. Thankfully, sanity is winning this poll.

NT!

[gottaB]

10. Ethically, emotionally, politically they are worlds apart

I wouldn't trust reductionists to win elections.

[ulysses]

20. seems to me that

*any* argument that can even remotely be boiled down to a binary choice, whether that binary is particularly valid or not, follows this pattern. Republicans don't like social programs, so they argue for their elimination. Progressives don't like the direction of the party leadership, so they argue for a different direction...just as the DLC argued for a different direction in 1985.

Equating it to right wing logic in order to smear the left by association is a bit facile.

[LoZoccolo]

21. That would be facile, if I did it. But I didn't.

I specifically say that it's at a very abstract level. I use the right-wing argument to demonstrate that there is an application of that logic that we just about all disagree with - if anything, I'm relying on left-wing disagreement with the right-wing argument to demonstrate something.

[ulysses]

23. but that's like saying

that since right wingers fart, any progressive that farts is using a right wing bodily function.

As with most tools, there are applications with which we disagree. That doesn't necessarily mean anything as regards the user.

[LoZoccolo]

24. No.

I'm using an easily recognizable fallacy that most left-wingers can identify, and showing them that some of them are applying it in one of their arguments. It's not left or right wing to come up with bad arguments, I'm just using an example of it that we all agree on to identify it.

[ulysses]

25. if you say so.

A question, though - do centrists never use the same kinds of arguments?

[LoZoccolo]

26. Sure. Here's an example.

I think it's terribly unwise what Al From does in completely discounting the activist community with his rhetoric. He makes it sound as if we should shove them in a closet or something around election time, and gets a lot of people alienated and pissed off. I think this is an overreaction to some things that didn't work in 1972 and 1984 and even in the early nineties. We have a complete discounting of a group within the Democratic Party rather than a refinement in strategy.

I think the problem is more in the rhetoric that activists within identity politics use - "we want X " rather than "X is consistent with the value of Y that we all enjoy". Take same-sex unions for example - X could be "same-sex unions" and Y could be "personal freedoms". Same stand on the issue, yet the former looks to a certain amount of people like a favor doled out to one group of people and the latter looks like a stand on an abstract principle that every American enjoys and participates in.

So yes, it's not a smear of some left-wing people trying to associate them with the right wing; it's more of a relating of how a common human failing, which understandably frustrates them, is being applied by them.

[Dirk39]

27. A NO from Germany...

"you hear a right-wing argument that goes something like this: there are still poor people, so our social programs or welfare or subsidized housing isn't working, therefore we should eliminate it outright."

Yes; the rightwingers follow that brilliant logic that puts every dialectic to shame: We give LITTLE bread to SOME of the poor, but there are still hungry people - so we should stop giving bread to people at all and let the "superfluous" all die. No more hungry people. Don't fight poverty, fight the poor!

The so-called "moderate" democrats say: The rightwingers complain about to much bread given to the poor. If we don't agree to give less bread to the hungry, the rightwingers will win and give no more bread to the hungry. Let's fight the poor and claim them responsible for being poor. (This is exactly what Clinton did).

The evil leftwingers with all their confusing dialectic, strategies and dialectics, no voter will ever understand, say: Give food to all the hungry and enough of it. It has to be the first principle of all politics in a civilized society that everyone has a roof on his or her top and enough to eat and enough money to be be part of society. What capitalism in the so-called developped countries is offering to every cat and dog, but not to human beings.

Everything else has to to be subordinated to that principle.
A society that doesn't offer every member of it that possibilities can't be called human or civilized or democratic in any way.

To use a kind of old fashioned left language: the moderates are "playing their game", they are playing within the rightwingers game without to overcome it's logic and as long as they are doing it, they will just make things worse.
Without Clinton, it would not have been possible for the Republicans to go from BushI to BushII. If within the Clinton-Years, the Democrats would have used their chance - althought I doubt the DLC had any kind of interest, doing this - to explain the Reagan-Years and what Reagan, BushI and Thatcher have started, G. W. Bush couldn't do, what he is doing. But Clinton completey failed.

The worst mistake of the Democrats in the USA - Clinton - and the traditional leftists in Europe - Blair - was going into the trap of Thatcher and Reagan, instead of offending their discourse and revealing the true character of their policies.
This is one of the main reasons for the desperate state we are in.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Guaranteed]

30. The argument isn't "go left." It's "make the argument, stand up

for what's right."

That's all.

You're right- it IS pretty simple, though.

[shiina]

32. No! we didn't "lose" on platform, we lost because of lies and propoganda

First of all, I don't think * really won. Fraud, disenfranchisement, etc...

* got as many votes as he did based on LIES, LIES and more LIES. People who voted for * think Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, for cryin' out loud! There was a survey before the election that found * supporters were much more likely to be misinformed about key issues than Kerry supporters.

I remember a survey where they first asked people whether they thought * was doing a good job, then EXPLAINED some of the things * had done and asked what they thought of that. When people had, for example, certain parts of the Patriot Act explained to them and asked whether or not they thought that was good, they said no.

People do support things on the Democrat platform. They just think they're Republicans because they are pro-life or pro-gun or Christian.