How Reagan Castrated Liberals in His Quest to End Social Justice Programs

[bobbolink]

The following quotes are from Barbara Ehrenreich's book, Fear of Falling. She has a great grasp on what has happened to poor people since the Johnson administration, and how liberals have neglected poor folk. I hope everyone will take this seriously.

p.191 The liberal response to the New Right's--and Reagan's--domestic policies was, for the most part, a shameful silence. Many prominent liberal political figures and intellectuals took a public stand against the administrations's antilabor and antiwelfare policies, but there was no concerted, ideological rebuttal of the right's economic premises, and no challenge to the fundamental hypocrisy of right-wing populism. In fact, many erstwhile liberals of the middle class moved as quickly as possible to distance themselves from the concerns that had defined liberalism since the sixties. Writing shortly after Reagan's election in 1980, Morton Kondracke, now famed for representing the ostensibly liberal end of the spectrum on public-affairs talk shows, warned of the "danger" that "Democrats will be as reflexive in shielding outworn and expensive Great Society programs in the 1980s as the Republicans were in opposing them in the 1960s."

The warning was either unnecessary or well-heeded. The Democrats offered no defense of the War on Poverty and, through most of the Reagan era, no attack on its right-wing counterpart, Reagan's "war on the poor." Taking a cue from the neoconservatives, one influential group of liberals renamed themselves "neoliberals." As Randall Ropthenberg, a leading promoter of the neoliberal label, explained: "The most striking aspect of this new liberalism was its cursory attitude toward the social programs of the Democratic Party's recent past, the programs that, in the eyes of the public, defined liberalism itself." This was, in short, liberalism without the poor or, as it might just as well be put, middle-class liberalism without a conscience.

By the mid-eighties, the neoliberal neologism was barely necessary. There were too few self-proclaimed liberals in public life to make the distinction meaningful, and most of those who remained had edged imperceptibly away from the old goals of equality and social justice anyway. The new, "pragmatic" liberalism of the eighties embraced the right-wing theory that welfare caused poverty, and enthusiastically joined what one reputable liberal termed the "historic bipartisan breakthrough" for a punitive overhaul of the welfare system. But few remaiing liberals took any great interest in the downtrodden--poor or working class. Describing the "repackag," "post-industrial" liberal (with 1988 Democratic candidate Michael Dukakis as the prototype), the Wall Street Journal wrote from the depressed area of western Pennsylvania:
p.192 He is self-contained, measured and, above all,
managerial. He could be some successful
entrepreneur from the pages of Fortune magazine.
The very words he emphasizes--"invest," "partnerships,"
"competitive"--are more appropriate to an exectuve
suite than to this valley of the hulks: mile after mile
of abandoned steel mills along the Monongahela
River, dark and lifeless beneath the greening trees.

The existence of a huge constitutency for liberal programs among the poor and the blue-collar working class was all but forgotten, for the word, at least, remained fastened to the "elite". When Jesse Jackson sought to revive an essentially liberal, working-class populism in the Democratic primaries of 1984 and 1988, he had to employ the fresh (though actually quite venerable) term progressive.

p. 193 But the right's campaign against liberal social policies would hardly have been effective if it had not resonated with the self-doubts of those who were still liberal, middle-class intellectuals. If no one refuted the right's theory of the New Class and its motives in the War on Poverty, it was in part because many liberals now believed, guiltily, that they were part of an isolated elite, and disqualified by past mistakes. Even the ultimately elitist notion that antipoverty efforts were tainted with misguided indulgence toward the poor met little resistance and much grudging acceptance. As economist Sar A. Levitan, an otherwise staunch defender of liberal antipoverty efforts, confessed in 1985:
Ronald Reagan made us realize that in lots
of things, we went too far.....Permissiveness
is the key word. We gave up on old-fashioned
standards ilke punishment for crime, and family
values.

[smiley_glad_hands]

1. And thus the birth of centrism, triangulation, and the DLC.

Which has conceded too much to the right.

[bobbolink]

2. And the point is, who has paid the price? The most vulnerable citizens paid this dearly!

And still do.

YET, all the time I hear on DU, "but the poor don't vote".

BALDERDASH!!!

We turned out collective backs on them!

[smiley_glad_hands]

3. I agree with your sentiments.

And when we turned our backs on them, they started to vote repug on wedge issues. The strategy actually dates back to the 60's. It is all part of a repug frame (one that hill has promoted recently--i'll stop there) to label dems as elitists and out of touch with the working class and to marginalize liberalism/progressivism in the name of corporate profit and white hegemony.

[bobbolink]

5. "And when we turned our backs on them, they started to vote repug on wedge issues."

Exactly! Well, I need to clarify that... SOME did.

As I keep saying, who were the people who stood in line 5, 7, 9 even 11 hours to vote??!! It sure as hell wasn't muddleclass people! And why was that rigged that way? Because they are the very people who vote DEM!!

"to label dems as elitists and out of touch with the working class "

I must say to begin that she is NOT my candidate, but this is actually what has happened. It's high time that "liberals" begin to look at this as reality, rather than a "frame".

It's also time to realign with poor and blue-collar folk!!

Thanks for your input!

:hi:

[smiley_glad_hands]

13. Thankyou for your comments.eom

[nichomachus]

4. This gives Reagan too much credit

There were many other factors at work.

1. People who were the beneficiaries of liberal action prior to WW2 were now "middle class" and forgot how they got where they were. They felt entitled and resented people below them struggling to pull themselves up. The right wing pounced on this and drove deliberate wedges between the groups.

2. The labor movement, vibrant up until WW2, had to lay low during the war. Immediately after WW2, when the Red Scare was in full swing, Congress passed Taft-Hartley, which allowed unions, but forced them to get rid of all the real lefties. The unions did, but these were the organizers and the power base. In the ensuing power vacuum, the crooks and the opportunists moved in, giving unions a sometimes deserved bad image.

This, coupled with the fact that most workers -- because of unions -- had good working conditions and good pay, whether they were union or not, led them to forget their roots and their past. Most people of the 1970s and beyond couldn't tell you squat about the labor movement beyond the right-wing propaganda. I grew up in a mill town (now dead) and went to a Catholic school, where we were required to have a year-long course on the history of the labor movement. Had more schools done that, we might not be in some of the trouble we're in today. We were also taught formal logic in high school, something else that's sadly lacking today.

[intheflow]

6. Very good points!

I took an undergraduate course on labor history about 10 years ago. I was in my early 30's then, so I had a broader world perspective than most of my 18-22 year old classmates. Still, I was shocked how little most of them understood about US labor movements. Most of them had no idea that the 5-day work week and benefit programs like paid vacation and sick time, health care and pension plans were all won courtesy of the labor movement. Honestly, I remember learning that in Junior High! But most of my classmates, having been born right around 1980, grew up under the prevailing social narrative that unions only did two things: make unrealistic wage demands and so drove businesses out of business/competitiveness, and make workers pay exceedingly high dues which only line the pockets of corrupt labor leaders. So most of them went in the course anti-union (though I think a couple of them switched over during the course).

Later, as I was training to be a minister, I preached a pro-labor sermon at a church one Sunday. That congregation (in a very liberal denomination) had a tradition of opening up the service at the end to questions and comments by members. Again I was stunned by people's responses--most disturbingly by affluent, retired whites who had been members of unions--who also took up this anti-union narrative. As if their own wealth accumulation hadn't been made possible by a union, who were living off pension plans that would not have even existed without their union representation! The age demographic was folks, who, as you say, were born in the '30's and early '40's and whose families probably relied to some extend on New Deal programs, again making it possible for them to excel in wealth accumulation.

Sometimes I wonder about humanity's penchant for selective memory. :(

[Hydra]

9. It's pathetic that people won't simply LOOK

My company would be happy to pay me 1/4 of what they do or less(little as it is already) for me to work 7 days, and are quite happy that they can offer me limited and overpriced insurance and no pension.

Corps don't care about people, and they don't back off except in the face of more power. This is BASIC stuff.

The gilded age was not a mistake, and we're back there again because a bunch of fools decided they had made it on their own.

[bobbolink]

14. I will agree that poor people often will look down on others. Sad.

However, I'm not going to agree with your assessment of the labor movement as you've written it.

You're talking about post WWII, and I'm talking about post 60's. So, that doesn't mesh time-wise.

Isn't it interesting what history is left out of our school classes, and our history books?

Labor union movement should certainly be taught, and required reading!

[nichomachus]

18. The seeds of destruction were sown post-WW2 and reaped later on

It's all connected.

[calimary]

7. I think it all boiled down to a PR war that the Dems lost, mostly because they caved

before they even began to consider fighting back.

NOBODY fought back to defend the liberal brand once it came under attack. NOBODY. Our folks just scurried for cover in fear. DISGRACEFUL! Maybe it gave them a little bit of a respite, but it left a huge number of people, especially the needy, out in the cold - with no cover whatsoever (literally, in to many cases, as well as figuratively).

I think they just felt intimidated after Carter (bad PR, nobody liked his "malaise speech", nobody wanted to hear bad news, especially when the economy was turning sour and then we were all beset by the hostage crisis in Iran that he was unable to solve (yeah... and that's another story of scheming coldhearted republi-CON fraud, thank you jim baker...). NOBODY likes to sidle up to, or have to defend, someone else when he/she's down. Unfortunately, that's the baser side of human nature that too many people choose not to admit to OR try to confront and conquer. They took the easy way out, the chicken-shit way out, and ran and hid. NOBODY spoke up. NOBODY hit back. NOBODY tried to interrupt or complain or offer an opposing view. And by the time reagan was through, honest, TRULY balanced broadcasting was royally screwed by deregulation, which meant that most of the microphones disappeared from liberals and were given over to limbaugh and clones.

Another part of our problem - and yes, it's still the PR problem, shallow but true - is that we had nobody "sexy" on our side, attempting to make a power-grab for the mikes and cameras and column inches, for face time, for equal time (beyond the fact that we had no more equal time protections to back us up, ol' ronnie's deregulation sure took care of THAT). Nobody willing or able to get anyone's attention. Nobody with a positive image and high public profile, that is. I keep thinking back to Princess Di. If we'd had somebody like her, here, a darling of the cameras, her smallest burp covered like crazy, everybody adored her, everyone was already favorably pre-disposed to be receptive to ANYTHING she said. If we could have had someone like her - an EXTREMELY sympathetic and wildly popular character who would have outshouted reagan, we could have counter-acted that. If somebody sexy like a John-John (back then, anyway) or Caroline Kennedy maybe, or even Oprah or some such individual might have been willing to stick their necks out, or the Pope, or somebody who drew press coverage like a frickin' magnet and whose every word the media and popular culture hung on like so many industrial-strength suction cups, reagan's "sunny" bait-n-switch, lipstick-on-pig happy-talk schtick would have been dwarfed.

Or perhaps if there was someone who became The Face of Poverty in America - some adorable little kid living in a cardboard box - then reagan and his "Millionaires On Parade" friends could have been transformed, image-wise, into the evil, selfish, short-sighted, cheapskate scrooges they were in actuality. THAT might have helped. It's all PR. It's all advertising. It's all about having become the nation of the sales pitch, by the sales pitch, and for the sales pitch. Was ANYBODY on our side willing or able or courageous or innovative enough to try such an approach?

Sadly, no. reagan had it all to himself, and because he was always smiling and all aw-shucks, with that cutesy crooked smile and the eyebrows that cocked at different angles, everyone only cared what they saw on the surface and didn't give a damn about the truths buried underneath.

As simplistic and superficial as it sounds, we needed someone (still do) who makes liberal COOL. To adjust the thinking and woo back blind-deaf-mute-asleep-comatose America, we need to repackage the liberal brand so that it's perceived as COOL. reagan somehow was perceived as COOL. Plus, he was this movie-star guy who actually seemed like a real-life "cowboy" with his ranch and his cowboy hat and his sidling up to his horse and his very own Dale Evans riding her horse alongside him, into the sunset. And WHATEVER he said was swallowed whole by most of America.

And whatever he said - had NOTHING to do with helping the poor. EVER. It was all, and only, about being rich, and conning Joe Sixpack and Jane Walmart shopper into thinking that if they just kept on voting republi-CON, they, too, would someday become rich.

And the poor simpleton buggers bought it. ALL of it. It sounded SOOOOOOOOO nice, like one of those late-night infomercials, and it was pitched by such a nice-sounding salesman. They couldn't help but fall for it, because they'd already fallen for him, as badly as Nancy had.

The added problem is that once those habits are instilled, they're awfully hard to break. And once someone is convinced that this is, or will be true, that someday the magic mystery formula of being a solid, loyal republi-CON voter will make you wealthy, it's awfully hard to dispossess yourself of. If you REALLY believed it, especially if you REALLY believed him, you'd probably be willing to cling to this belief til you drew your last breath on this earth.

And we didn't offer ANYTHING in rebuttal. NO arguments, NO terrific spokesperson selling those arguments, NOBODY putting a positive, even sexy face on it.

Walter Mondale? Oh criminy.

Michael Dukakis? Forget it.

They weren't sexy and appealing.

And poor hapless Jimmy Carter certainly didn't fill the bill. Mainly because he was too serious and thought-provoking and pondered the nuance and the details and didn't do the simplistic, short, happy-talk thing for dumbed-down, short-attention-span America. Don't get me wrong. I voted for all three of them, willingly and eagerly. But then, I don't mind doing nuance, and I'm not afraid of long arguments and complicated theories and background stuff that informs and impacts the present. Those of us on the Dem/liberal/progressive front are all like that. It's unfortunately not sexy to be smart (not since Mr. Spock, back in the late '60's after we'd already lost John, Bobby, and Martin). THAT concept has been morphed into something to be laughed at and scorned - the "pointy-headed liberal."

Sylvester Stallone once said (sometime back then) that the perfect movie script was one that contained only ONE SINGLE WORD. THAT was the "ideal." Yeah, sure. But that was the mood America was in. And it's taking an awful long time to fade, or die out, as the case may be.

WE have to be able to sex it up about the liberal brand. Unfortunately, it's as stupid and superficial as that. We have to make "liberal" sexy again. Figuratively, mainly. Short-term GREED makes the reagan/CONservative CON JOB sexy - because the non-thinkers out there have been persuaded that they'll get theirs in time, if they only wait and are patient and keep voting republi-CON. We have to outthink and outmaneuver that, and we need some bigtime help from some pretty sexy, appealing, sympathetic people to do it. At the moment, the only person who comes to mind for me is Angelina Jolie or some such person. And that's not enough. Not even the half of it. And nobody prominent seems to be willing or able to come up with something that counter-acts and knocks down the "pointy-headed liberal" label or anything else. Since when is it bad to be a bleeding heart, anyway? Since when is that such a bad thing? Well, reagan and his manipulative, scheming pals sure did a job on that. And we had NOBODY pushing back. NOBODY. 'Cause they were skeeered of the PR avalanche they'd be facing.

It's an absolute disgrace.

In fact, it's a sin.

It's certainly not in the Beatitudes anywhere - to do or believe as reagan and his greedy, selfish, short-sighted CON-jobbers preached.

[Hydra]

10. You make a good case

I think it's something more subtle and deadly. I think most of us are not sure enough of our values to fight for them.

Think that's untrue?

I've advocated for kidnap victims, spoken for eliminating poverty, alternative energy, equal application of the law...

Guess what I get from our group? "Really? I don't think it's workable. I think we should just continue as we are."

Status Fucking Quo. From "Progressives," no less.

Since we aren't willing to fight, the rabid right will continue taking ground from us. End of story.

[bobbolink]

19. I get the same on health care. They all want to tell their sad stories.

But when it actually comes to taking action--standing up and saying BASTA!--well, then it's just too difficult.

I've become a bit tough about it.

I don't want to hear the sob stories from those who aren't wiling to fight for it.

What will it take?

[caseycoon]

8. K&R From a proud bleeding heart LIBERAL. n/t

[Hydra]

11. The abandonment of the poor is nothing new

Our Reps continue to leave us out to dry...while they rake in millions from lobbyists.

We can't count on rich people, or even the middle class to fix the income gap. They simply don't care.

[bobbolink]

12. "They simply don't care." So, what can we do? How do we save ourselves????

While I agree with you, I can't just lay down and quietly die.

Although, come to think of it, that's a comforting thought right about now.

[Hydra]

15. We have to do it ourselves

And to do that, we have to look to each other and educate each other.

It's good that you think that quietly dying is a comforting thought- anything you really believe in has to be worth your life to accomplish...and for me, the idea of equality, socially, economically and legally is worth anything.

What makes us so powerless that we look to the rich to fix things for us? A few worthless pieces of paper?

You can be a slave without ever wearing a chain.

[bobbolink]

16. I agree with you, so please don't put assumptions on me.

I'm looking to NOONE, and that includes other poor folk!

I'm working myself into a real stew, trying to figure it out, and trying to do what I can.

That wasn't an idle question, nor was it an invitation to put me in a slot where I certainly don't belong.

I'll say what others have said to me ..... give me some suggestions. Throw out some ideas.

Don't just put me down.

That hurts, and I don't deserve it.

[Hydra]

17. I'm not putting you down

I'm thinking aloud about why all of us down here at the bottom sit down and shut up in the presence of the people who screw us, and then ask "Can you help me out of this mess you created for me?"

I'm not allowed to talk about the inevitable solution that is needed on this board. I'm just pointing out who aren't our friends for when the inevitable occurs.

[Hannah Bell]

22. I think I know part of the reason, from dealing in small town politics.

If you look at the structure of a small town, it works something like this. There's a thin layer of people who own the biggest businesses & a lot of the property. They're hooked into contacts at the state & national level. They're "respected" in the community, mainly because they're successful. They have the biggest voice, though they're a very small group. They sit on every local charity board. They have tentacles throughout every significant institution in the community.

Below them, a bigger layer of smaller businesspeople & professionals. They do the gruntwork of supervising day-to-day local politics & institutions, e.g. the hospital, the college, the schools & local government. They hobnob with the top level & emulate it.

Below them, a bigger layer of regular working people who work in the businesses & institutions the top controls. They have ambivalent feelings about those above them, but depend on them for jobs & look up to them as well, though they also look down on them in a reactionary way. They're not so involved in local politics, they're not so tied in.

Below them, the sporadically employed & the unemployed, unot involved in politics at all, usually, dependent on employers & welfare institutions to survive. No one wants to fall into this group.

I'd say people fall in line out of economic dependence & status emulation.

[bobbolink]

23. That's profound. Do you see any way out of this gordian knot?

I appreciate your analysis. We need to be doing more of this!

Thanks! :thumbsup:

[Hannah Bell]

24. If the "buffer class" begins to lose its privileges, it will support the tiers

underneath it to push back at the top tier.

If things get really bad, the middle & the bottom start pushing back.

That's what I take from history.

So far, the buffer class is doing very well.

So either things have to get worse, or some serious unpaid organizing work, trying to connect with the 2 lowest tiers through issues that matter to them.

Right now, there's nothing out there for people to hook into, so they sit & stew impotently.

[Hannah Bell]

26. IMO, the right took a significant organizing base when they

infiltrated the churches. "Progressives" stupidly played right into this by demeaning religiousity. In some cases, I think phoney progressives did so deliberately, precisely in order to remove the churches as a base for left-populist challenge.

[bobbolink]

27. Absolutely! Plus, they seceeded in the forming of intellectuals:

p. 194

"The New Right took far better care of its intellectuals than the left or liberals ever had: recruiting them in college, finanancing campus newspapers for them, grooming them in conferences and special retreats, housing them (between other forms of employment) in it's rich, Washington-centered bureaucracy. It is possible for a conservative intellectual to enjoy the life-long munificence of the corporate "milch-cow" so successfully harnessed by the New Right, from his youth as a right-wing campus activist to his declining years in a graciously appointed right-wing think-tank."

We allowed the RW to have a well-formed "army" in a sense, and we were scattered and very mixed-up.

:(

[maryf]

20. Action keeps me alive...

To think, to talk, to speculate that there may be a solution and to act in some manner, even if its just to start talking to some stranger in the grocery store and find out that their religion is different, their outlook is different, politics maybe different, but they have the same concerns down deep, same worries about upcoming disasters, and same feelings about the needs of others: that many are already in dire, dire need. This makes me feel some hope that we can come together... and when a third stranger pops in in the middle of the conversation, while picking up his dozen eggs and exclaims "thats why I have ten guns", I still think, he's a brother too, and the fact that he's talking to strangers, and has dropped his fear of strangers enough for the moment to make that bold statement makes me realize that we really, really, have to start talking, relating, smiling, and being neighborly, and kill this FEAR that is destroying our lives by keeping us from acting.

So I say, when I look hard at all the injustice and poverty, I can't lay down and die, when I might say something, do something little that can make a difference, even if its a smile of comfort for a sad face ... when I can't give materially, I can still give something...

[bobbolink]

21. "just to start talking to some stranger in the grocery store " Beautiful post!

YES! Engaging others, and spreading some sense of reality, and what we can do--THAT is the task!

:applause:

Education is THE most important thing. changing hearts and minds.. really changing them, not just rolling over people.

Everytime I read a post of yours, I"m impressed anew.

:pals:

[maryf]

25. thanks!

:blush: If we all can "talk" to strangers here, share our knowledge, and not be fearful here on the computer, how much of a step can it be to just start talking to a physical person? How much does it take just to smile? So the f*ck what if you get a weird look back? Its a start, and next time you smile and say something. We have to start talking to each other, its the only way I see! We are all starving for comraderie, community, and from an occasional chat with a stranger we can maybe progress to starting to help in a big way? Hope?:hug:

[bobbolink]

28. This is a big part of why I'm trying to get people to start doing some research... writing essays,

etc.

If we can ALL be well-informed, and able to speak on our feet, it will ease the fear, and help us to inform others.

The RW did it in an organized way because they were backed by big$$$$$. We MUST organize it on our own. We MUST do our own research (and Ehrenreich has done so much on this!), and we MUST inform ourselves, and each other.

Then we will feel confident in speaking with others.

I had the experience last week. In a small group, someone was talking about how single-payer health care is impossible in the US. Because I had all my facts in a row, she couldn't defend her position, and it got others to thinking more clearly. Small start, but better than nothing.

Now, get those post counts up!

~~gigglesnort~~

[maryf]

30. kicking post!

Yep, keep sharing that info, its critical!

[calimary]

29. Kicking this.

Imagining I'm kicking "st. ronnie" up one side of the room and down the other.

[bobbolink]

33. Heh... glad I could give you some outlet for rage!

:bounce:

:hug:

[calimary]

36. Shit, bobbolink, I'm so pissed off half time I fear I'm doomed to live inside a Maalox bottle.

I just CANNOT believe what's happened to this country.

It is a DISGRACE. We're not going to Hell. We're already there. And it's a Hell of our own apathetic making.

[struggle4progress]

31. Our real failure has been analytical and organizational, rather than attitudinal

I knew plenty of people during the Reagan era who were concerned about and upset by Republican domestic policies of that period: too many, however, did not think cogently about how to mobilize an effective response. They were often outraged and frequently expressed outrage, but too often felt powerless to do anything about the situation

The organizational failure seems related to a characteristic American political fantasy, that confuses opinion with action. As a group, we are inclined to believe our attitudes towards and beliefs about issues are decisive, although attitudes and beliefs by themselves actually have almost no impact. Americans have largely forgotten how to ask, What are we going to do about this? and when the question is asked, we usually do not have productive conversations about how to organize people for long-term strategic work or how to mobilize them to tactical advantage

The analytic failure appears as a general inability to identify particular interest groups and the ways in which such groups use their resources to promote their own interests. When a handful of corporations control mass media, for example, that media will inevitably promote the interests of those corporations. Most Americans will not commonly discuss these matters, as a general rule, perhaps because they have been thoroughly indoctrinated to believe that only hardline Marxists think about such things. But unless one examines in a practical manner how the existing power structure maintains its power, who it recruits and how, the techniques it uses to intimidate its opponents into silence, and a hundred related issues -- unless one does this, one has no real chance of winning politically against it

[bobbolink]

32. You have stated it accurately and succinctly. Now, how do we get DUers, with their

considerable brain power, to actually take on this task, which would be USEFUL, instead of "DUing this poll" kinda stuff?

Trying to get a real, intellectual, discussion going here is like Sisyphus pushing the rock up the hill.

There are so many goood books that even give a lot of the pertinent information... one doesn't even have to start with nothing!

How to do this?

How to build the fires?

How to start peoples' engines?

[G_j]

34. Kick

The "left" has adpted so many RW distortions and memes it's truly frightening.
Yes it is cowardly.

[bobbolink]

35. We still have a "left"? Who knew.....

:cry: