How are we doing on reclaiming "liberal"?

[lwcon]

On our local (Boston) news coverage, one of the talking heads said that Republican gubernatorial candidate Kerry Healey would characterize Democrat Deval Patrick as a "liberal."

The panelists wrestled with how he would defend himself against this "charge," as if he'd been accused of being a puppy molester.

Periodically, one hears proud talk about the liberal tradition. And we've seen how disastrous it is for Democrats to run as Republican Lite.

So, this year, who's going to run, saying "I'm liberal, and I'm damn patriotically proud of it"?

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[MannyGoldstein]

1. About As Well As...

...we're doing on forcing a vote on asking Bush to fire Rumsfeld.

Since many of the best-known "Democrats" (e.g., the DLC) also claim that Liberal is a naughty word, it ain't goin' nowhere real quick.

[lwcon]

6. I think the Rumsfeld thing was purely symbolic

The best case was that Bush would remove one incompetent and replace him with another (and probably less colorful) one.

And that probably isn't a best case, because it would give Bush a chance to wash his hands of some of the outrageous mistakes.

I don't think the Dems really expected or particularly hoped we'd get that new incompetent. It was just a chance to remind people that Bush is absolutely the decider behind what's gone wrong in our global military policy, and as such it was reasonably effective. It also teases people into thinking what could be accomplished if the good guys do get the majority.

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[Stinky The Clown]

2. Yanno ..... even on the international scene ....

..... 'liberal' just doesn't seem to exist. In the UN, the debate is whether 'moderate' countries will prevail or whether 'extremist' countries will prevail. Yeah, I know .... countries are not politcal parties or individual people and that a 'moderate' country might be a nice place to live.

But your point is well taken.

[Armstead]

3. Strange to hear that in Boston

Massachusetts (my home state) is one place where "liberal" is not considered a dirty word. At least not in the other end of the state.

[HereSince1628]

4. I've pretty much given up on "liberal" . . .

Sure, I like the notion of liberal affiliation to intellectual curiosity, open-mindedness and all that. But I'm a bit bothered by how it's connection with the notion of tolerance has become the dominant character.

I percieve that the notion of tolerance as underlying the DCDems inability to mount a fight on anything. I fear this led to the appointment of Bush in 2000, the election fraud in 2004. And the appointment of extremist rightwing judges to SOTUS. And myriad other injustices and immoral practices, such as signing statements to allow the Executive to rise above the Constitution, that shouldn't have been allowed to grow in the past 6 years.

I've more or less given up on liberal and I wouldn't care if it doesn't come back. I see myself as Progressive...and willing to support fights, indeed battles, for improving the nation with respect to the expansion of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for everyone living here.

Some things just shouldn't be tolerated. The nation was started in a violent revolution. Fighting tyranny and injustice are justified.

[lwcon]

5. Personally, I like "liberal"

I think we need to remind people of the proud tradition of liberals like FDR and Bobby Kennedy.

"Conservative" has become such a valuable appellation, that you can run up the largest deficits in history, go hog-wild with nation-building, and madly grab unprecedented governmental powers and, still, you're a good ol' boy in the eyes of the Right.

"Progressive" is good, too, but I hate to rely on it as a euphemism for a venerable word for the likes of us, and something that ought to be widely associated with the best this country has to offer. America's heroes are the Martin Luther Kings, not the Strom Thurmonds.

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[HereSince1628]

7. I wouldn't use Progressive as a euphemism. That's a misunderstanding

of progressivism in my honest opinion.

I've often had this discussion with my son who like you feels liberal should be resurrected as a Democratic banner. I think Liberal and Progressive while certainly overlapping are yet distinguishable, significantly so. They are oranges and apples. Progressive belief and what it supports can be stated in a single sentence. That can't be done with "Liberal." What Liberals are and what they support becomes an extremely long list of causes. Which is to say yes it has the benefit of coalition, but it lacks a focus. (BTW That difference has huge importance on marketing the party during elections and during governance.)

In a sense the way our democratic party evolved into a liberal party was by building coalitions of multiple groups. The resulting diverse liberal party has a structure like an orange with each section supporting it's own seed. And wherein, each section can be wedged away from the others by a Rovian opponent or a party member not sufficiently diligent to the section's cause.

The basic notion of Progressive, as I see it, anyway, is the belief that the nation can and should be made better with respect to Liberty, Freedom, and Equality. That's a pretty simple statement of understandable philosophy. It doesn't require a litany to demonstrate it is comprehensive (it's also assertive, not passive).

Building a progressive party needn't be done by joining together distinct interests. For example, religious freedom, racial equality, gay-rights, women's rights, worker's environmental protection don't need to be distinct interest groups in a progressive party. And people who are farmers and small business operators don't need to be excluded for fear of disrupting the coalition. The interests of all these groups are served by the struggle for Liberty, Freedom, and Justice for ALL. As it grows a progressive party is constructed rather like an apple. One fruit; with the whole fruit in support of all its seeds.

[Armstead]

8. I see it as the opposite

IMO liberal is a more clear-cut and useful label because it's a bigger tent. Liberalism is a spectrum, while progressive (in the left sense) is one end of that spectrum.

My understanding of it (as someone in my 50's) is that liberal is in favor of social tolerance and economic justice. Progressives share those basic goals. But it's more a difference over the extent of change that is necessary to achieve those values. Progressives (in the leftist sense) tend to believe that fundamental change is required than moderate liberals do.

They are not mutually exclusive. Liberalism is a spectrum, from moderate to radical. Liberalism can encompass progressives, but not, IMO, vice versa.

I would call Dick Durbin, for example, a clear liberal. However he is not a progressive in the sense of a Bernie Sanders.

So liberalism can encompass many more people. Ideally, liberals and progressives should be allies because they are rowing in the same direction.

[HereSince1628]

12. IMO you're right about "big tent" but you're wrong about "clear cut"

Of course, because of the way the Liberal movement is defined it surely CAN encompass Progressives, but what does that prove? It can also encompass libertarianism, DLC elitism and corporatism, democratic conservatism, democratic regionalists and, more over, notions of the redistribution of wealth of anti-capitalists.

Indeed, IMO, it's the result of this capacity and desire to be an all encompassing conglomeration housed in one huge tent that prevents an overall Liberal Democratic political agenda from being easily defined, and tends to make the Liberal Democratic movement easy to fracture.

The value of having dominating numbers of members in the big tent is lost when the party's constituent groups are so weakly united and so easily perceive that their issues have been disregarded that it is relatively easy to wedge them away.

The party can and must provide a better, clearer, more compelling reason for coming into and staying in the big tent than merely getting out of the political rain outside. It's my opinion that the Progressive movement does that better than does the Liberal movement.

I've written repeatedly in other places in this thread that Liberals and Progressives share much, and indeed I think they ARE allied within the party. I do think that most progressives have qualities of open-mindedness, tolerance, etc. I do think that liberals believe in equality and justice. But I personally think that the emphasis and priority of the Liberal and the Progressive Democratic Movements are different, and are becoming more and more so, for increasingly important reasons.

The Progressive Movement seems to have defined the limits of tolerance as long passed and has closed its mind to compromise and working with the incipient totalitarianism that is disguised as the Republican party. It has no more patience for cooperation with the existential threat of rising Tyranny within the United States.

[lwcon]

9. Your def. of "progressive" seems a good definition for liberal, too

Why isn't "the belief that the nation can and should be made better with respect to Liberty, Freedom, and Equality" a good definition of "liberal"?

I think you feel "liberal" is more burdened with some sort of baggage, because it's been the more commonly used terms over the years, so it's more directly connected with specific agendas, events, individuals, etc. Hence I think of "progressive" as a euphemism -- a comparable term with less baggage.

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[calimary]

10. Whatever definition you choose - it MUST be simplfied into a one-

sentence, one-phrase capsulation. It HAS TO BE a quick-hit, for all the multitudes of "short-attention-span theater" fans and others who don't have the time to consider long, detailed explanations. It's like being in sparring class - you have to get in and get out - QUICKLY. Hit HARD, hit FAST.

And, by the way, as to the question in the original post, we're NOT doing very well AT ALL. In most cases, it seems, we (or our front-runners, trench-fighters, leaders) aren't doing ANYTHING. This isn't even on the radar as far as an active campaign of any sort, from what I can see. And it's MOST unfortunate. You think the enemy would let it slide for a single day if the term "conservative" were seriously and systematically targeted for ruination?

[lwcon]

11. Sad but true

Conservatives, thanks in no small part to a pliant media, have been totally winning the framing wars.

So, I ask you, what is today's equivalent of "It's the economy, stupid!"?

I've been studying this for some time, but I'm still not sure what that single message is.

Mostly, I'm just depressed that our country is so dumbed down that we have to turn issues of historic importance into shiny little objects, and even then there's the 43% who won't listen to anything short of Pam Anderson delivering free beer to their trailers.

Perhaps that sounds a little elitist. But if being disappointed that 43% of my countrymen don't know the slightest fucking thing about what's happening in this country and this world makes me an elitist, then, I'm a goddamn elitist.

Signed,
Ed Anger, Jr.
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