Kerry and Edwards should not back away from the label of "Liberal"

[Armstead]

In the debate yesterday a reporter cited a survey saying Kerry and Edwards as having the most "liberal" voting records in the Senate, and asked "how can you win with that?" as if it were an insult.

Kertry waffled and hemmed and hawed and said "That's ridiculous" and did all kind of gyrations to get out of it. I don't think he even used the word "liberal" avoiding it like the plague. Edwatds did likewise, although not quite as abjectly.

Kucinich immediately jumped in and said he is a liberal and a progressive, and listed his top five positions and goals as a liberal and progressive.

That moment to me epitomized everything that is wrong.

The fact is that Kerry is alreadyt branded as liberal by the Bushites and the right wing. They are doing everything possible to paint him as far left.

So why the hell not accept that label and embracre it and defend it and explain it?

I think a lot of people -- including moderates -- would have a lot more respect for him if he stopped trying to wear 20 different political hats. Just say it and explain what being liberal and progressive means and defend it.

That's how he could set the terms and play offense instead of defense. And also help to take away the stigma from liberal and progressive positions.

[ALago1]

1. I liked Kerry's answer

He said that such distinctions between "liberal" and "conservative" are mostly useless in U.S. politics and are used solely for ideological warfare and division politics. I pretty much agree with him in that respect.

That being said however, Kucinich's answer was great too because he was proud to stand for what he believed in

[Armstead]

2. Conservatives are proud, liberals are ashamed

That's the impression left by running away from labels.

There two basic ideological pools of thought in the US. Always has been.

kerry can defend liberal and progressive stances, and make it clear that liberal is not the stereotype that conservatives paint liberalism as.

The conservatives already consider Kerry to be liberal. By running away from it, Kerry feeds into the other attack they make of being a waffler.

[jmoss]

13. The conclusion refutes the premise.....

.......do you really think North Carolinians elected a liberal Senator to replace Loch Faircloth in 1998? They simply moved a few steps, left-of-center.

But I believe, with him being from Massachusetts, GE voters WILL be scared, in swing States, that Sen. Kerry is too liberal. He's correct to avoid this label.

And, by the way, experience,and anything negative you want to say aside...Edwards, with the full support of the party, and the media...WILLL STAND AS STRONGER CANDIDATE..come November......

I only hope it's not too late for the voter sin the other 30 States to vote, to see that.

[kher-heb]

3. neither one of them are liberal

why would they embrace a lie?

[Armstead]

5. They're moderate liberal

I believe their instincts are liberal, but they are trying to be "centrists" because they believe that's what will sell.

[Mairead]

18. I've thought that Kerry is prostituting himself, too...but

his prostitution, if he is, is only too real on its own level--a level that harms us--and I think we should make him pay for it.

In any event, the Orlando Report (see my thread) judges him not to be liberal.

[revcarol]

4. "Liberals" got black people the right to vote, and did away with "separate

but equal." For that reason alone, liberal is a badge of honor!!

The craven behavior of Kerry and Edwards should be brought to their attention by their SUPPORTERS. (Maybe they listen to THEM...do they?)

YEAH, running defense against a $200 MILLION Bush campaign with the media arrayed against you is really a winning
strategy...right, "electables?"

[sangh0]

10. Actually, it was black Christians, many are conservatives

Also LBJ, another conservative, did a great deal. Truman and JFK, both whom were not liberals, also contributed.

[no name no slogan]

11. Truman and JFK NOT LIBERAL? WTF?

I think a great number of liberals would take great issue with your definition of liberal if you don't include JFK! Truman was also liberal in many respects: after all, he did propose a form of national health insurance back in the late 40s-early 50s.

Johnson IMHO was NOT conservative. He was from Texas, true, but he signed into law more liberal laws than JFK. The Voting Rights Act, The Civil Rights Act, the Great Society programs, etc.

Not to mention black Christians, who tend to be socially conservative, but are economically VERY liberal: they support a welfare state, good jobs, workers rights and fair wages, which are hallmarks of liberalism since the 1930s.

[salin]

17. so by your definition

who would be indicative of your definition of liberal?

[salin]

19. Guess it all gets down to how one defines "liberal"

or whether one chooses to run from the term:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/35_kennedy/psources/ps_nyliberal.html

[HFishbine]

6. Longing for the days of a straight answer

"If by a liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind … I'm proud to say I'm a liberal. If being liberal means balancing the budget … then you may call me a liberal."

- Howard Dean

[Thrill]

7. If they want to win in the south

they better back away from that label.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Or educate the South on the true meaning of "liberal"

"If you live in a rural area and have electricity, thank a liberal. If you or any member of your family gets Social Security or unemployment or disability benefits, thank a liberal. If you went to school on the GI Bill, thank a liberal. If you bought a house with an FHA loan, thank a liberal. If you've ever received disaster benefits after a flood or tornado, thank a liberal. If your town has a park or athletic field or any other facility built by the WPA, thank a liberal. If you or members of your family are on Medicare, thank a liberal. If you or your children have gone through Head Start or Job Corps, thank a liberal. Because liberals came up with these ideas, and conservatives fought them every single one of them."

That's what Dem candidates ought to say when anyone tries to make "liberal" into an insult.

[Armstead]

9. You got that right

It's not geographic.

[swinney]

12. Liberal=proud progression not regression

I am a Proud Liberal.

We make GOOD things happen.

We make the earth a better environment.

We work for betterment of all mankind not just a few.

We Care.

We are pro-Christ

Conservatives are Anti-Christ.

We have goodness in our hearts.

Conservatives have Evil in their hearts.

Keep Preaching Swinney.

[patricia92243]

14. Uhh- I think you've got them mixed up with somebody with a backbone.......

like - say uhh - Howard Dean.

[RichM]

15. There's an intrinsic reason why liberals are ashamed, timid, & weak.

Liberalism is intrinsically a corrective to a pure brute-force law-of-the-jungle type of capitalism. It takes the position that "Pure capitalism leads to certain deleterious excesses; therefore we'll be better off in the long run, if we apply modest measures of reform to the absolute rule of the market."

This position concedes that the market is rightly the ultimate arbiter; it meekly suggests that, if Your Lordship the Market may permit it, Please pretty please, may we ever-so-humbly-and-slightly modify certain of Your Lordship's harsher judgements???? Contained within liberalism is the tacit acknowledgement that its foes are rightly its superiors.

Rightwing ideology, by contrast, is in deep harmony with the rule of the market. It EMBODIES & EMBRACES the idea that might makes right. Therefore, it is the ideology vastly more in tune with the dominant features of capitalism. It can uninhibitedly be proud of what it is, because it exists without compromise. Liberals are intrinsically compromisers - and compromisers are intrinsically "compromised" - ie, in a subordinate & weaker position. (At least, most people will get that sense, at an emotional level.)

Because liberalism is unwilling to fundamentally challenge the ultimate source of the social system's power - Our Lord the Market - it always exists at the sufferance of Established Power. It is a sort of do-gooder optional luxury. It cannot BE Established Power; it can only be a naive junior partner to Established Power, which the senior partner can easily smack away, whenever Junior becomes inconvenient.

In short, a mesh of corrective band-aids applied to a brutal system is NEVER going have the power of the system itself. It can at best be like charity - an admirable nicey-nice thing in good times, & something easily abandoned or swept away in bad times.

[gottaB]

16. some other perspectives

for the curious


http://www.belmont.edu/lockesmith/timeline.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_von_Humboldt

http://www.dreigliederung.de/gliederung/humboldtsideen.html (German)

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/liberalism/

http://www.cjnetworks.com/~cubsfan/basics.html

http://www.angelfire.com/rebellion/oldwhig4ever/

http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/DETOC/home.html

[Armstead]

21. Here's where we disagree Rich

It may be semantics, but I don't believe that in its basic form capitalism is bad. It is at least better than any real-world alternative anyone has yet come up with. In those terms some form of capitalism is the only system that works

The present form of capitalism sucks. It does imply thatr everyone else in society bow down to the market Gods.

However, there are many flavors and varieties of capitalism. And its' relationship to the state can also be varied. The real trick is to find and cultivate a form that emphasizes its positive qualities while minimizing the negative ones.

I can think of some ideal systems that sound better, like pure socialism. But we eitehr have never seen them on a large scale, or they have been disasters when tried on that basis.

The problem is that pasky thing called human natire, and such factors as laziness, ambition, greed, and a desire to improve one's position in life.

.

[RichM]

22. Tell me where there's a weak link in the following chain of reasoning.

Suppose you start with a capitalist society, even a "nice" one where wealth is initially equitably distributed. After a while, some small businessmen prosper more than others - maybe even by dint of hard work & good ideas. They become big businessmen. Some small companies become large. Inequality grows.

Sooner or later, a class of the most successful businessmen emerges. Inevitably, it will occur to some of them, that if they use their wealth cleverly, they can influence government, to shift all existing rules in their own favor. Once this begins to happen, there's a vicious cycle in place: wealth begets more power, which is used to beget more wealth.

The fact that the "nice" regulated capitalism of the '50's & '60's has given way to today's absolute rule by the top 100 corporations is no accident. It would happen every time.

Furthermore, our "nice" USA of the '50's was something of a fantasy -- built more than most people dreamed on exploitation of the Third World, on the establishment of a permanent war economy, & on the devastation of WWII which temporarily levelled our capitalist rivals. IOW, even the Golden Age high-water mark of US capitalism had very shaky foundations. It was always dependent on aggression, militarism & exploitation -- even if this unpleasant truth was hidden from the view of most Americans. While the Beach Boys sang surfer songs & Anette Funicello frolicked with Frankie Avalon, miserable peasants in Latin America were paying some of the price for our barbecues, split-level houses & self-absorbed cavorting.

A minimum Requirement for Regaining Sanity: - is not necessarily the immediate overthrow of capitalism. (This is the good news - I am sure you will be relieved to hear it! :-) ) Rather, the minimum requirement is what Dennis Kucinich did in the debate the other day: he DARED to directly criticize "predatory capitalism." At least if SOMEONE dares to stand up and say, Look, there are things intrinsic to our system that lead directly to intolerable results -- at least then, there is hope, because it keeps open for examination the place where the problem resides: in the system itself. What is most to be feared is exactly what you see in the Establishment Democrats, who won't dare raise such an issue. They are tacitly cooperating in the fantasy that the system itself is beyond serious questioning.

To return to your initial post - there is a basic difference between the liberalism of DK & the liberalism of the Establishment Democrats. DK is open to fundamentally questioning the system. The other guys already belong to the system; they are agents of it; they will never raise fundamental questions about it. Their silence has unimaginably dangerous consequences -- because with it, vital matters disappear entirely from view.

[Armstead]

24. Here's where I agree with you

Being one of those dreaded Baby Boomers (born 1952) I experienced the "nice" 50's and 60's, the turmoil of the latter 60's and early 70's, and the aftermath up to today.

Capitalism back then was far from perfect too. But it was much better than today. The turmoil of the 60's was largely about challenging the darker side of capitalism. Unfortunately, that got mixed in with a whole host of issues -- civil rights, Vietnam, drugs, sex, etc. And many of us punky kids took it too far, in terms of rejecting the system.

So the basic mainstream critique that was necessary to make capitalism "nicer" never took place on its own. Instead the social issues gave the right-wing corporate elite the opportunity to make it seem that anyone who challenged the corporate status quo was a pot-smoking, screwing arhiestic protestor.

They also used rthe economic dislocation of the 70's to advance the corporate agenda, with lies like "monopolies are necessary for competition" and "underpaying workers is necessary to maintain our standard of living."

But THE BIGGEST PROBLEM was the the Democratic leaders gave up fighting for liberalism and progressive values. They refuased to defend liberalism, refused to seperate out the issues of money and power from the divisive wedge issues.

They became cowardly centrists and bought into the same system themselves. They espoused the same corporate crap the the GOP does.

Right now, IMO, we have a chance to push back. The excesses of corporatism have brought out the dark side of capitalism, and more people are beginning to see it.

Kucinich speaks to that. So did Dean less directly. That's the kind of liberalism we need to revive and defend and explain.

In otehr words, I agree with your "minimum requirement for regaining sanity." In my moind, though, a robust, progressive populist form of liberalism can be effective for that.

[redqueen]

20. Here's a proud liberal!

Who do you want leading the country? Someone who helps further the meme that liberals = bad?!

Not me!

[OHdem10]

23. A while back

someone on this board posted of of JFK's sppeches in which he tackled the Liberal Label head on and it was magnificent. I wish I could remeber it. If -------------------means liberal then am one.
It went on this way for some all encompassing view. If anyone has it, send it Kerry Campaign as a strong suggestion. He is a JFK Liberal(fiscally responsible, socially conscious and reasonable attitude toward business.) He should say i am what I am
why are we so cocerned about liberal. We have a radical conservative for a president. Seriously if anyone know how to get a copy of this Kennedy speech. When is the Media going to start talking about our RW Pres? He would not recognize the Center if it stood up and bit him. I think Geo Bush has tainted Moderate and Centrist. He keeps calling himself moderate and the more people run to the Dems.

[PROGRESSIVE1]

25. They should be damn PROUD of being "Liberals"!!!!! We....

come from a l-o-n-g line of proud liberals.

FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, and Carter.

DO NOT back away from that title! DO NOT give into to the
"Fat" Falwells, Roberston's, Dukes, "Hitler" Hannity's, O'Really's,
KKKoulterkompfs, Weiner Savage "nazis", and Tweety's of the world! They are ALL Conservatives, they are bigots, they are extremists, they are BUSHLER enablers, and they are ALL a threat to our
great nation, AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!!


:kick:


Kerry/Edwards 04'


Liberals for America!

[Armstead]

26. Kick

:kick:

[IndianaGreen]

27. Kerry and Edwards liberals?

Now that's joke! Liberals don't vote to suppress the Bill of Rights, as the two Johns did on PATRIOT. Liberals don't vote for a war of aggression against a sovereign nation, as the two Johns did on IWR. Liberals don't endorse the occupation of Iraq, as Kerry did during the debates.

Newspeak should be banned!

[Armstead]

28. Depends on how one defines liberal I guess

I know what you mean about IWR and Patriot Act.

But on a lot of issues they are basically moderate liberal.

My point was that by not running away6 from that label they at least would be acknowledging it as a legitimate political position.

By making the term radioactive they are continuing to help to marganilize the term. Kerry's gymnastics about it is especially sickening to me.

The whole point of ABB is basically to set the US on a more balanced course and reverse the tide of ultra conservatism. The right wing understands this, and are already using it against kerry. So he has nothing to gain by denying it.