Henry thank you so much for leading the discussion today, it’s much appreciated.

Note: as usual I’m going to request that people stay on the topic of the book for this particular thread. If you are interested in discussing other issues please feel free do so in the previous thread, which you can access here.

Let me just check in and tell everyone how thrilled I am to be here.

I want to take this where you all want to take it. It’s lonely work here on my brown leather coach in Chicago telling stories about history, and the chance to meet my readers is rare and precious.

I also quickly want to call attention to my new website at http://rickperlstein.org. My email’s there. Never hesitate to use it, friends.

Thanks, Jane. more like this please.

I sympathize greatly with those who see a historical parallel between Goldwater 1964 and Dean 2004.

What troubles me is that “16 years in the wilderness” phrase.

If we have 16 more years of Republican rule, there might not even be elections, let alone Constitutional government as we have known it.

So I’m really torn. The Goldwater parallel leads to a much more principled view of organizing. (I suppose it’s the infrastructure underneath the infrastructure — Dean’s 50 state strategy.

OTOH, the Kos idea of “win now (and get that subpoena power)” might just have a shot at restoring Constitutional government. I’m afraid that after 16 years of the Republicans training us how to be ruled, there might be no going back to a time when we were citizens instead of subjects.

So, help, I’m torn!

Jane, Harry and Rick — not to jump right to the end of the discussion posting — but truly, I think #5 gets to the heart of the divide between the “Beltway/consultant” class and the universe that I like to call “real people with real problems.” (Which, I think, is why the progressive blogosphere is enjoying so much interaction of late — these are all people who want a voice, who want to participate and to be able to help themselves and their families. But so often are ignored or feel alienated from the folks in Washington who are supposed to represent their interests.)

I think this also goes back, somewhat, to what Jerome and Markos also hit in Crashing the Gate. The Goldwater success within the Republican party came from a strong core of issues that his supporters hammered over and over. How do we take that lesson to a more disperate, less open Democratic party now — and make it work? That’s the big question that I have coming out of this fantastic read. (Excellent book, btw, Rick, truly excellent work.)

Rick it’s such a fabulous book. One of the things, as you know, that inspired me to ask Henry to join us was his post last week about how the instant gratification demanded by the netroots was often at odds with the need for long-term infrastructure building that the GOP did so successfully starting in the 60’s. Do you think that’s a fair assessment?

OK, so who else caught the 1948 letter from Goldwater to his daughter on page 510:

Dearest Joanne:

Those beautiful quaking aspens you have seen in the forests as we have driving along have one purpose in life…

What is it with these people and aspens?!?

Thanks to Jane for having us in again to discuss this book, and hello to Henry. Rick, you’ve really written a tremendous aid in understanding the “silent” scream percolating underneath the liberal fireworks that got all the attention in the 1960s. Terrific book. I’ve researched this era deeply for creative projects I’ve done, but found your book an amazing tool I wish I’d had earlier, because I’d not read it until now.

One of the things that slipped into my history memory hole, so to speak, was the deep antipathy the Goldwater mafia had for Ike. I don’t think many people appreciate how many Republicans turned their back on the general.

EDIT: “complaisant” sb “complacent”.

Is the original perhaps a French spelling? LOL

There may be other misspellings.

With regard to what happened to George Bush’s favorite Democrat this week I think that we are seeing what can happen when the “common riff-raff” get organized and take a bit of power back from the overly cautious consultants who play not to lose instead of playing to win.

This wasn’t like going after some obscure senator from Wyoming. There is every reason for the well known entrenched candidates to ponder a slightly different game plan now when there is the risk of the people in the stands rushing the field.

Let me let a few more questions unfold and role them up in a single thought.

Great post- superbly written.

I am a bit confuse, however, about the 16 year wait. Goldwater ran in 64. Nixon was elected in 68.

One could argue that Nixon was not a conservative- and that the true spawn of the movement didn’t occur until later.

If one takes that tack- then the message might be in favor of a dual track- the mainstream democratic party keeps on trucking and wins some elections- while the new wave is busy creating itself in the wings.

All right, let me swing the bat. Interest is congealing around what academic historians would (sniffily) call “presentist” concerns. No problem with that. I’ll be writing a short book next year for academic historians about the demands of citizenship for historians.

Some blogger somewhere has written about the “self-identity of the wingnut function”: no matter what the time or the issue, conservative arguments and actions seem to take on a similar structure. So it is with what bloggers–and myself–love to call “the Heathers”: the cool, inside-the-beltway congeries of pundits and politicians and their hanger ons.

They are, tempermentally, a very conservative bunch. Readers of Before the Storm can find all kinds of examples in which they ignored the evidence in front of their noses that unsettled habitual ways of thinking. Especially evidence that wafted up from the rabble.

An important point: the establishment then was center-left. The establishment now is center right.

But the structures are the same.

I get the shock of recognition every single day in the face of beltway insiders calling bloggers children. [I’m going to hit post then write some more…]

None yet? Then I’ll be Fitzed!

Good afternoon, Mr. Perlstein. As you are one who knows something about talking to the other side - I’ve seen your occasional ventures into FReeperland - I’m curious on your take on the following question:

How does the progressive movement talk to the other side, on one hand, and neutralize the incredible volume of the right wing noise machine, on the other? Do you think it is possible to peel enough rational conservatives away from such tenacious adherence to the ‘choosing of sides’ mentality to diminish the power of the noisemakers and marginalize them in the process?

tbogg - I was thinking exactly of that - and in particular of the successes of Chris Bowers and others who ran for office within the Democratic Party when I wrote the post. The riff-raff are getting organized, and it’s a good thing. The German sociologist Max Weber wrote an essay “Politics as a vocation,” which has some wonderful insights buried in sometimes turgid prose. Among them is that politics is “the slow boring of hard boards” - that it takes grit, determination and a certain kind of heroism to commit to the day-to-day hard, thankless work that successful organized politics involves. We’re seeing people beginning to take up that burden.

In the early 1960s grassroots conservatives were called children. They were called nuts. They were called shrill.

And yes, they often were all these things–moreso than any of our crowd could ever be!

But they also represented legitimate ideological aspirations that weren’t being aired in the establishment discourse.

Maybe this is obvious to people. tell me if it isn’t, and I’ll elaborate…

Here’s a question for Rick: Is this really a story of true-believing grassroots activists retaking their party, or of how moneyed interests with an ax to grind found a way to tap into the passions of true believers, and the anxieties of the unpolitical middle, in order to eventually game the system to their benefit?

rw at 13: I had the same question, but was going to add that this country and the world can’t afford for conservatives to be in power any longer than they have. Dems have to win the 08 election, or the balance in all three branches of gvt will tip so far to the right that it might never come back. So I’d like to ask the mods: is there a short term strategy dems can follow while building the movement? Sort of like (ew, holding nose), nixon in the short term, reagan in the long term?

tbogg 9 — I was just looking over p. 181 and what Frederick White (of the Southern Strategy) was looking for in his bid to takeover the party (and thought about it a lot in terms of the Lieberman/Lamont episode this week):

[M]ost delegates were chosen not in voting booths but in hotel ballrooms at state party conventions. The old saw was thtat state delegates were highly susceptible to manipulation by congressmen, senators, governors, and mayors — now danging, now withholding patronage to delegates to get them to agree to run for a berth at the national convention “uncommitted,” whence power brokers could cash them in for a candidate desperate to go over the top in exchange for handsome consideration. But bosses only controlled delegats if their bate was taken, and White’s plotters would search for conservatives who were more intersted in saving Western civilization than in gaining a spot on the streets and sanitationn comission.

This week when I had Lamont campaign supporters calling me on the phone shrieking with joy when Ned went over the top, who had nothing personal to gain from such a victory, it was clear that this was going to be awfully difficult for machine politics to beat (much as it was in Goldwater’s time).
The ability to translate that into a national movement, and not simply a candidate nominated by the party’s extremes and doomed to failure, seems to be contingent upon much of what Henry is talking about — a long-term commitment to ideals.

I read Rick’s book last summer. It’s a great work.
With regard to Henry’s point 3 (talking to the other side) I think we as a movement are going to have to “re-sell” these folks on the inherent benefits of a socially responsible form of government. A government with a “conscience” to balance and keep in check the amoral premise of capitalism.

What about those of us who are so disillusioned that little short of a new party with new committments seems likely to satisfy. (I regret that I have not yet read your book.) It seems to me that the Dems could go out on a limb and be really progressive if it’s going to take that long–16 years is long enough to make a new party or to remake a dysfunctional old one. By then, we will need new solutions as the sh*t that will have hit the fan by the end of another 16 years (if the collapse takes that long) will require nothing that looks like what we have now.

Quickly, about the 16 year wait. History is very complicated. It moves like a battleship. That’s why I’m telling this story in three volumes. Before the Storm covers 1958-1964. Nixonland, which I’ll finish this summer, covers 1965-1972. A third volume will take the story to 1980.

The short answer is: Nixon sucks the oxygen out of any simple argument about ideology. He definitely cemented the “social conservative” part of the right-wing agenda: the idea that “liberal elites” should be fought tooth and nail.

But he also hated Goldwater conservatism on things like the budget, because at bottom he was hungry for power, and if building a dam or putting in wage and price controls could help his political fortunes, he wouldn’t hestitate to do it.

but one of the things he did–and this is very relevant for today–was to start mau-mauing reporters into second-guessing their “liberal” instincts–made them ashamed to be latte-sippers.

There seems to be a general theme (”role models”) that we should emulate Goldwater’s strategies and tactics. And the Democratic Party could sure take a heaping spoonful of “Stop doing what doesn’t work” medicine.

Now, the rest of this comment may be a little Tinfoil-Hat-ish, so please, readers-more-expert-than-I-am, add the needed nuance and historical background.

But there’s something that concerns me about following the Goldwater model too closely, that is that the Bush administration has ended up being driven by a revolutionary faction within the Republican Party who are busily constructing an all-powerful executive with an “accountability moment” every four years (backstopped by Deibold and a Supreme Court capable of producing Bush v. Gore.

That revolutionary faction (1) being run out of Cheney’s office and including the neo-cons, and (2) being what we hope is the final flowering of the Goldwater movement.

Now, many have commented on the similarity between the Birchers, and the YAFers, and the Communist parties of the day. Their cellular nature, their ability to shift as one to the new Party line, their sense of having discovered the laws of history, etc. All of which we see in the VRWC of today. (Conservatives don’t allow commenters on their blogs any more than the Stalinists of the 30s would have.) And anyone who remembers “The Trots” from college days in the 60s and 70s — the way they would subvert any institution they couldn’t control, or set up parallel and competing institutions–sees the Bush administration’s tactics writ small. (Which makes sense when you remember than many of the neo-cons were Trots.)

So, what I would like to ask is this:

Do the horrible fates of the Communist parties, and of the Republican party, hold any lessons for us as we contruct new organizations?

What does it profit a party if it gains power and loses the ability to become reality based?

Suppose, say, we adopt a cellular organization like the Birchers. Does such an organizational structure condemn us to wear ideological blinders?

Do pigs always become men?

NOTE I suppose one parallel that had a good outcome would be the “Committees of Correspondence” (not EP Thompson’s but our own before 1776). Does anyone know how they were set up?

Bertrand #15: that’s simple (but not easy). Wedge issues. I’ll refer you to my web site. My thoughts here are in the piece called “Unfucking the Donkey.”

The netroots, if I understand Jerome and Kos’s book right, are more interested in winning elections and letting battles over ideas sort themselves out afterwards.

When one considers the amount of damage done to the country in the last six years, we don’t have the time to spend sweating over manifestos and statements of principle. Elections are primarily local and ideas should cater to the local elements in order to get the people we need in place to control the agenda. It is important to stop the bleeding and then we can worry about how we are going to live afterward. Call it liberal triage.

One of the problems with “liberal” ideas is that they aren’t easily stated and rely so much on nuance and grey areas that the electorate who are, let’s face it, more inclined to simple black and white soundbites aren’t going to spend near as much time pondering them as they would what TV shows they are going to watch on any given evening.

There will come a point when the “Heathers” will wake up and smell the coffee because they don’t have a choice. There always does. Then, they’ll say they knew it all along.

Let me put it this way. In one of my Nixonland chapters I desribe Evans and Novak as “self-conscious defenders of the sensible center against extremists of all descriptions.”

Well, that was where it was at back then. I don’t think you’d describe Novak that way now. He went with the main chance.

For me reading this book explains so much of the daily talking shows, and people saying they have no idea of what dems stand for. Any dem when challenged tries Clinton’s method of triangulating (beginning to dislike the word intensely) an answer. And the dem moves off his own idea and reason and tries to incorporate the republican idea — and hence loses the whole blessed argument and issue.

Holding ones own issues inspite of loss, or slam, or attack is difficult. Just look at Bush going about their ‘plan’ inspite of low numbers. People will follow the one most assured of the path and the public dems that I see have ideas, but are afraid to stick to them.

For me the book gives example after example of just a few guys, taking a stand, printing a letter, talking to folks, and repeating over and over — for years and never giving up. When Kerry lost, all we heard was the dems need to move to the ‘center.’

Thanks to the authors for giving this 60 yr old information I should have known long before. I am new to the politically aware generation but am learning.

Tbogg #26: bullshit.

Read the New York Post in the 1940s. Both black and white as all get-out, and liberal as hell. We’ve fallen for that myth–a myth that itself has a complicated history, largely having to do with the battle between Richard Nixon and Adlai Stevenson in the 1950s.

I write about this in Nixonland.

cdj - “complaisant” isn’t a commonly used word, but I used it because it gets across exactly what I wanted to say. It means “willing to please in a slightly creepy way” - the first Google search for “complaisant definition” comes up with the following phrase “”to close one’s eyes like a complaisant husband whose wife has taken a lover.” This seems to me to be a pretty good description of the Heathers and Joe Liebermans in the Democratic party’s upper reaches.

lambert - the “16 years” thing is certainly troubling. And there has always been a faction in the Republican party (cf David Frum’s 1990’s book, Dead Right) who might actually prefer being in the wilderness to preserve ideological purity. But there may be ways to bridge the divide. The exact historical analogy isn’t with a situation where the Democrats are out of power for 16 years, but one where the Democrats could win elections and lose them over that period, but in which the more populist elements within the Democratic party would gradually come to assume greater control and ability to set the agenda.

…what part of “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains” don’t you understand?

Old Sow #22: you’ve picked the wrong time to be disallusioned. Studying history, I find the netroots/grassroots wing of the Democratic Party on a stronger movement footing than any comparable time I can think of.

Swopa 18 — I think that’s a very interesting question. And I think wescpg (an economist) was going to ask something along those same lines today — when did the interests of big money formally begin to align with the social/political conservatives? The seeds were always certainly nascent, Eisenhower’s fear of the military industrial complex and its natural alliance with McCarthyism. But at some point the small government, low debt conservatives like Grover Norquist got pushed to the back as their conflicts with big money grew more pronounced. It’s funny to read that now, see what a lynchpin of the movement those values were and how thoroughly they’ve been abandoned as a matter of policy.

tbogg 26 - Amen. Our ideas don’t get a chance if we don’t win. Besides, our ideas are not the problem. People like our ideas, minus the people still promoting “stay the course” in Iraq. They are mostly turned off by the messenger. The Democratic politicians standing behind the microphone who can’t say a declarative sentence without a focus group, a consultant, or before checking the weather report.

There may be a major difference between now and 1964. The Republican Party and the ideology it supports may be self-destructing before our eyes- creating an immense ideological vacuum- into which SOMETHING will be drawn. I believe that this is the case. The conservative agenda has now been tested and has been found wanting. It may be impossible to put lipstick on that pig ever again.

In Hegelian terms- the process of dialectic has become short circuited- and the thesis has eaten itself- there will be no antithesis and no synthesis.

Swopa #18: an important issue. The scholar of the right-wing Sara Diamon (”Roads to Dominion,” useful book) points out that right-wing ideology is “system supportive”–it helps the powers that be.

But much of liberal ideology helps the powers that be. Keynesianism–the idea that putting money into workers’ pockets grows the economy–for example.

Listen to LBJ on his Oval Office tapes telling business executives to back him to the hilt on the War on Poverty. They listened. He made a convincing case. That’s not to downplay the power of “capital.” But lucky for us there are more “workers” than “capitalists.” That’s the calculation Democrats used to make: speak truth to power about the bosses and you’ll lose some of the bosses’ contributions, but you’ll gain enough of the rabble’s vote to offset that.

Democrats have learned to stop making that calculation.

Henry -

Thanks! And here I thought it was just the french for the English “complacent”, coming from “comply”.

Learn something new everyday!

through my 53 year old eyes there is only center-right these days. That’s how skewed the historical political pendulum has swung. This is what Rick’s book is historically illustrating.

The netroots can reclaim the party and get that pendulum swinging the way it’s supposed to. Ideas happen within the movement. Deals get cut in the center. There has to be a “left-wing” again. Here’s where it starts.

Let me tell a story. I spoke at the retreat of Senate Democrats last June. They didn’t pay much attention to ANY of the speakers. Until Tom Mattzie from MoveOn.org. Then, they all started taking notes. MoveOn=money.

People power. It feeds a politician’s greed. Use that greed. Use their greed for netroots cash to help create an ideological wave for them to surf.

This pieceby Trapper John on Tim Russert is one of the best things I have seen on the mentality of the Heathers, and makes the same popint about the migration from the center-left to the center-right (go with the winners).

One difference, of course, is that progressive ideas aren’t as wacko as the ideas of the Goldwater Right. In fact, many of them are still what most people believe, except that the 40 year drumbeat from the Right has made people think that Democrats are still the party of welfare queens and excessively high taxes, and that they don’t know how to govern.

I really like the idea of sticking with a few basic principles from election to election. If the Dems just went back with conviction to basic common-good ideas and abandoned all the too-clever-by-half “triangulations,” they’d be better off. Universal, probably single-payer
health care is the biggest undone idea, but we need to repoint retirement security and put education on a former footing.

I agree that a solid vision is the foundation of really winning. That is the chief shortcoming of Kos’ book. I suspect that they left it out partly because they didn’t want to see fights about ideology suck up all the oxygen to the detriment of party-building and winning. But it is also a reaction of the under-40s to the Boomers’excessive grandiosity and moral abslolutism. Ironically, the twain could meet on competence, accountability and the common good without much strain.

Rick 32:

So when we say that liberal ideas are nuanced, full of grey areas, and hard to understand, that is itself yet another internalized bit of Republican abuse?

I’m with tbogg on looking at Lamont’s successful (to this point) challenge to Lieberman. I see it as an example of both issues folks and movement politics folks coming together.

Atrios pointed to a column by a former Republican CT state lawmaker in the Hartfort Courant that describes the pains that some establishment Dems in CT faced at the convention. http://www.courant.com/news/op.....857.column

Money quotes: “Lieberman ought to be grateful it was not a secret ballot. If it had been, some of the 100 missing delegates might have found the backbone to vote.” . . . “A curiosity in January, the Lamont campaign has become a growing army that could overthrow the incumbent in the Aug. 8 primary. For 90 minutes, party loyalists who have known Joe Lieberman for decades rose and turned their backs on him in favor of an engaging stranger.”

Both the movement and the issues folks are angry with Joe for his comments on rape victims and hospitals, for his backing of Dubya (and Dubya’s war and Dubya’s judges and Dubya’s . . . you get the idea), and for his lack of attention to his own people (one town commented that they have been waiting six months for Lieberman to visit, and haven’t even gotten a reply to their invitaion - and so they happily cast their votes for Ned). The movement folks don’t like what Joe’s doing to the party; the issues folks think he’s 180 degrees wrong on too many of the issues. Result: an unprecedented (for CT) primary, with all the momentum swinging to Ned.

What does all this have to do with Barry G and his movement? It’s perhaps a sign that if there is a parallel to be drawn here, it’s that the battle in the Democratic party to merge ideas and movement politics bagan a while back, and only now is beginning to show some victories.

tbogg - what Rick says. There’s no necessary reason why left of center positions have to be complicated and fudgy. A straightforward commitment, say to economic liberalism (in the American sense of the word liberalism), doesn’t have to be wishy washy or nuanced. I think we’ve gotten so used to liberal position papers that are a hodge-podge of bits and pieces tailored to please various interest groups that we’ve forgotten that there are other possibilities out there.

Let me give a historical example from 1968. The Republican senate whip was a liberal named Tom Kuchel. Conservatives hated him. They tried to run people against him, destroy his reputation, everything. But a Republican consultant (sound familiar) told him not to worry:

“The state gets 25% of its gross product from the Federal Government. Conservative businessmen are realists. They understand that Kuchel works well with the powers in the Senate and knows his way around the Federal Establishment.”

Well, conservative businessmen didn’t give Kuchel’s incredibly insane wingnut challenger Max Rafferty any money. The grassroots did–73,000 donations of an average thirteen bucks each.

Kuchel lost in an upset

(Then Rafferty lost the general because, tho’ a vietnam hawk, a newspaper disocvered he’d dodged the draft during World War II!!! “On V-J day he threw away his cane,” was the joke. Some things never change. Like I said, the self-identity of the wingnut funcction.)

Hmmm. Reposting my previous question from last week: I don’t see any evidence that Goldwater pandered to racists and theocrats the way that, say, George W Bush did in 2000. Goldwater may have kicked off the whole conservative “storm”, but I don’t think he’d approve of what it looks like today.

Rick - Very interesting about the Tom Mattzie story. Some of the bigger blogs with real clout seem sensitive to candidates and Democratic hot shots “using” them as “cash registers.” I think your comment illustrates that it’s a way powerful blogs like Jane’s can demand attention to their issues through the cash they can provide.

I should have said this already - but I’m incredibly grateful to Jane for inviting me to participate in this. I’m really enjoying this discussion.

lambert #41. Partly. Mostly our own fault. We love to flatter ourselves. It’s good to feel superior. I could give examples. but you all know them.

It is, however, a myth. Explain to me why tax cuts help poor people. Do it in 25 words or less. (If you can do it, it’s because conservatives have been working on this soundbite for 35 years.)

Okay, Rick. I’ll take you up on that.

Abortion.

The right wing claims Pro-Life. Case closed and we can ignore the women because we’re talking about the cuddly little fetal-Americans.

We get Pro-Choice which suddenly calls on people to consider all the options of which tri-mester, which procedure, and the usual waffling that comes out as “Well, I think that abortions should rare yadda yadda yadda” which, in the end becomes waffling and one from column A one from column B. Sorry, but I think the mushy middle is called mushy for a reason. It beats having to make a philosophical decision and then living with it.

One could either accept the way the conservatives have drawn the boundries- and edit them- or try to redraw them again from scratch.

An example of the former approach is “Conservatives were right to say that putting money in the hands of the people helps the economy- but they put the money in the hands of the wrong people”

“Republicans were right to say that govt. can’t solve all problems- but they were wrong in thinking that govt. doesn’t need to solve any problems at all”

“Republicans ignored the key role that competent govt. plays in making life safe and secure- and just- they threw out the baby with the bathwater”

Jane 33

I think “big money” is somewhat of blunt instrument. OTOH, there’s the Coors and the Kochs and the Dominionists. On the other, there’s George Soros and heck, Ned Lamont.

Makes me think of FDR, who saved capitalism from the capitalists. (There are other emotions than greed.)

I’m old enough–and then some–to remember watching, and understanding, when the Goldwater conservatives began their unholy program to change America. They succeeded beyond even Goldwater’s wildest dreams and thus the nightmarish scenario we have today. At some point very soon we on the left really need to decide if we believe Democracy as we once knew it is worth saving.

Unraveling the damage done to it already will be a mighty, long-term endeavor,and the longer this administration and its progeny continue to spawn national dissent and international destruction, the less likely it will be that a democratic form of American government can be salvaged.

It’s futile to attempt to build a new dam in the middle of a life-threatening flood. First stop the destruction. I’m not at all sure that constructing long-range ideology AND winning elections need to be mutually exclusive.

Frank #45, have you read the book? It’s a quirk of history that Goldwater didn’t pander to racists in 1964. He didn’t want to. But he didn’t have to. He was naive enough–he was a naive man, one of the reason’s he’s fascinating–to believe that it was enought to say he wasn’t personally racist (he wasn’t) for his success not to be based on racism.

But his success was based on racism.

He voted against the landmark 1964 civil rights act. Most Republicans voted for it. That was the act that outlawed public segregation. He said it was unconstitutional (it wasn’t).

87 percent of Mississippians then voted for him, the same year they were also burning dozens of churches that were voter registration headquarters.

Talk to a conservative now, and they’ll say 87 percent of Mississippians switched from Democrat to Republican because they suddenly became constiutional scholars.

And Goldwater did plenty of dog whistle politics in the home stretch. He appeared on the platform with one guy in Louisiana who was so racist he was excommunicated from the Catholic Church for it!

(Leander Perez, look it up, wingnuts cite him as the precedent for why pro-choice Democrats should be excommunicated).

lambert #51, back in the fall of 2004 I liked to fantasize that since Kerry was something of an American aristocrat like Roosevelt, he wouldn’t have any scruples about becoming a class traitor, too.

A natural experiement we never got to see come to pass.

Remember Roosevelt ran in 1932 on a conservative balanced-budget platform.

Rick 14 and other alert readers:

It’s the self-similarity of the wingnut function.

Kinda like one of those beautiful fractals? That look the same no matter at what scale they are viewed?

It’s futile to attempt to build a new dam in the middle of a life-threatening flood. First stop the destruction. I’m not at all sure that constructing long-range ideology AND winning elections need to be mutually exclusive.

I like to compare it to sitting on the side of the bed all night talking about how great the sex is going to be.

This may be because I’m not architecturally inclined.

Tbogg:

Government shouldn’t force people to have children.

Jeez, I guess I’m just not as in touch with Fundamental Problems, but I’m not sure I see a categorical difference between Big Ideas and the strategies and tactics necessary to win elections.

For example, solving the health insurance crisis (note, not the health CARE crisis, but the INSURANCE crisis) that has left over 40 million Americans without health insurance and has nearly impoverished many millions more who technically have it, and has contributed to loss of access to health care to the point that the top third of Americans have health worse than the lower third of Britons.

That, it seems to me, is smart policy AND smart politics, and it contrasts very nicely with the laissez-faire, let-them-eat-cake, pro-business-all-the-time attitude of the Republicans.

Ditto, let us say, a commitment to investment in technology to reduce consumption of foreign oil by 50% over 10 years, paid for by sharply reducing our spending on the pointless war in Iraq, which currently is running us about $1.5 billion a WEEK.

Seems to me that perhaps the reason the Goldwater Republicans wandered so long in the wilderness, and that there was such a divide between their Big Ideas and what they had to do to win elections, was that their Big Ideas were, and are, seriously out of touch. Even today, they don’t run on their ideas; they run on division, deception, and lockstep repetition, because by and large, a lot of their ideas are NOT supported by the public. For example, the public supports environmental protection, a woman’s right to choose, diplomacy before militarism, an independent and co-equal Judiciary, etc., and they distrust big business, secretive government, and snake-oil theocrats.

Theory and practice aren’t entirely aligned, of course, but I wouldn’t want us to create problems for ourselves unnecessarily.

To which they will reply:

Government shouldn’t let parents kill their children.

rwcole @ 50

One could also take the republican rhetoric, and turn it on its head:

“A party of fiscal conservatism does not triple the national debt.”

“A party that is wary of governmental power does not give the government carte blanche to eavesdrop without warrants.”

“A party that wants government to stay out of our pivate lives ought not to put the government in our bedrooms.”

Feel free to add your own examples.

rwcole #50–that’s my favorite debating trick with wingnuts. Listen to the radio interviews on “Beyond the Beltway” on my website. I’ll say something like, you know, the reason I respect conservatism so much is that it taught us during the welfare debates that severing reward from work is immoral. Well, it’s just as immoral when Americans are working harder than ever but their bosses aren’t sharing the productivity gains with them. It teaches people to disdain work–just like conservatives say welfare did.

Henry’s questions are very intriguing. The first is probably the most important: should we try to win first and ask questions later?

In my opinion, we have no choice but to do both and that requires a sophisticated strategy that builds upon itself. We cannot afford to write off elections in the hopes that we can convince people down the road to vote for us. You’ll notice that the republicans did no such thing — they bounced back from the worst electoral defeat in history to win the presidency with a previously failed candidate — all the while keeping the movement percolating within the party. Nixon may not have been a true “Movement Conservative” but he was good enough for government work and he advanced the ball.

No political party can afford to not win if it’s possible— as the late great JK Galbraith and the lamently not late great GW Bush both said: “In the long run we’ll all be dead.” We have to live in the now.

But we also cannot build a progressive movement simply by winning the next election by hook or by crook and starting over from scratch each time. As the 60s conservative movement did, we need to start turning around convenitonal wisdom on a whole host of issues and political values if we hope to advance our agenda. This means that we have to use each election, win or lose, as an opportunity to talk to the people and create a new consensus. All the time, every time, talking about what we believe, what we want, where we’re going.

Which brings up the big ugly question: what is it we want to accomplish?

As Rick’s book amply shows, the Republicans of 1964 had a very good idea of what they wanted to undo. Make no mistake; they had fancy rhetoric about individualism and the evils of big government, but their practical goal was to reverse the hated New Deal — the social conservatism was part of that reactionary impulse. The GOP still wins by running against modernism in whatever form is most convenient. In the end they’ve managed to change things, but in opposition to the things that went before.

So, let’s asume that we are building a movement out of the ashes of the Bush years. What are we trying to undo? And what are we trying to advance?

I would just throw out the idea of “trust in government” is an essential first step in anything we do. Without that, progressivism is meaningless.

How do we build that? Big ideas are important, but it is also necessary that we win elections and govern well, making explicit the fact that we believe in the government’s ability to help not hinder. That’s a tall order after 40 years of the GOP mau-mauing the very concept of government, but it may be impossible for us to advance anything until we do. The fact is, we are the party of government. We have to start by making the simple case that government is not inherently evil.

It was Nixon who finally took advantage of outraged southerners and created the southeren strategy- but Goldwater’s experience probably paved the way.

It doesn’t take much intellectual ability to see that when you have millions of outraged people- you have potential votes. The civil rights movement and the Viet Nam war protests created today’s conservative movement. Goldwater just gave blind hatred some talking points to latch onto.

It would be a mistake to dig too deeply into the ideological underpinnings and history of the conservative movement without looking that fact squarely in the face. Social Conservatives were created by the fear of the rapid social changes they saw in the sixties. Conservativism is a reactionary movement. One can’t recreate the momentum without the profound fear they rode on.

“Government shouldn’t force people to have children”

Why not make this “Point 1″ of the new manifesto ?

It’s certainly 25 words or less and I can imagine people still saying it 16 years from now. Bravo.

Rick Perlstein 53 — did he really not “pander to racists” in ‘64? I suppose you could argue he didn’t know what he was doing, but I was struck by this:

Goldwater had given a speech to Georgia Republican activists proclaiming he “would bend every muscle to see that the South has a voice in everything that affects the life of the South,” and that since the GOP was never going to win back the Negro vote, the party “ought to go hunitng where the ducks are” - that is, among white “states’ rights” audiences like the one he was presently addressing. (p. 190)

Did he really think he was pandering to their passion for the constitution?

Right. And we have an argument. A succesful slogan makes it hard to see it possible for there to BE an argument.

We have to get rid of the notion that we can convince 100% of peopel to agree with us. Crucial to respect the fact that there ARE conservatives (at birth, I would argue) and there ARE liberals (at birth, I would argue). The trick is to get enough people in the middle to believe that what we think is common sense is common sense, and that what the conservatives believe is common sense is nonsense.

That’s the soul of politics: what some French theorist once called “poltiics beyond politics.”

The comment about Goldwater being naive, struck as really true to me. Naive in that ‘big money’ way in believing it is one’s due to succeed mightly. The same contradictions in his life — hated ‘big’ gov’t, yet his family and business made much at the government trough.

Recently some pundit declared that hypocrsy was out of favor in D.C. and was not even recognized as a big deal. We should make it a big deal.

The other item that struck me in the book was the many ways of buying the opposition out. They perfected running a conservative dem with a republican (often on similar platforms) — thereby moving the debate. They have supported many dems like Lieberman and the dem liked the easy money coming in. They probably liked the issue too.

Part of his naivete was pandering to racists without himself believing he was pandering to racists, Jane. He was not a sophisticated man.

Nixon was a sohpisticated man.

Rick P 57 - perfect, true, kickass, and understandable by a ten-year-old. Why on earth have we been so inept at this kind of simple, powerful phrasemaking, for freakin decades?! To me their skill and our ineptitude at this one aspect is 90% of their success and our failure right there.

Rick Perlstein says:
May 21st, 2006 at 2:51 pm
Frank #45, have you read the book? It’s a quirk of history that Goldwater didn’t pander to racists in 1964. He didn’t want to. But he didn’t have to. He was naive enough–he was a naive man, one of the reason’s he’s fascinating–to believe that it was enought to say he wasn’t personally racist (he wasn’t) for his success not to be based on racism.

But his success was based on racism.

He voted against the landmark 1964 civil rights act. Most Republicans voted for it. That was the act that outlawed public segregation. He said it was unconstitutional (it wasn’t).
———————————————————-
Being racist, pandering to racists, and being supported by racists are all different things. From what I read, Goldwater was only the 3rd. Bush is the 2nd and the 3rd, and therefore much worse in my book. Goldwater wasn’t willing to pander to racists in the ’60s, but Bush is still willing to do it today. Goldwater may have been a right-wing nutjob, but at least he was an honest one.

Henry 47 — thanks for being here, this is a great discussion.

BTW sorry I beat up the wingnut on your site. He (I’m assuming as a Ben Domenech fan it’s a “he” — they all are) wants the thread to be deleted but I’m pretty happy with the way it played out myself.

Though I may have gone over the top when I started screaming “WOLVERINES!!!”

I would just throw out the idea of “trust in government” is an essential first step in anything we do. Without that, progressivism is meaningless.

This is an interesting point in light of Katrina. The Administartion hires incompetents who let government agencies fail and now they talk about breaking up FEMA. It’s a termite approach to deconstructing the social safety net. I was stunned a few weeks ago when a spokesperson said, in the case of the bird flu, “You folks are on your own.”

On 9/11 the CIA failed, the FBI failed, the NSA failed. But they don’t carry the whole burden. Nobody in the executive suite cared to look at their work.

Let me give an example of “politics beyond politics” from the book. In the 1950s conservatives would say all the time that MOST Americans agreed with them, and that the reason the Republican Party ran liberals was some kind of conspisracy (the argument of Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo).

In my book I quote Brent Bozell, the father of the current Brent Bozell, as the first person to figure out how false and self-defeating that was, after he himself lost a state legislative election in 1958. He said “a conservative electorate has to be created out of that vast uncommitted middle–the great majority of the American people who, though today they bvote for Democratic and modern Republican candidates, are not ideologically wedded to their progtrams or, for that matter, to any program. The problem is to reach them and organize them.”

Everything else, in the next forty years, is only commentary. They reached them and organized them.

We can do it too. We’re finally learning how to do it. Take a book like Glenn Greenwald’s. It REMINDS me of Conscience of a Conservative or Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo in that it isn’t written for other liberals–it’s written for your uncommitted uncle, who might even think he’s conservative, but hasn’t checked his presumtpions for a decade or so.

digby wrote “We have to start by making the simple case that government is not inherently evil.” Nor, let me add, is it inherently good. What makes the difference is accountability; a structure and a practice of governing filled with checks and balances. Warrants issued by a court, to check the power of the executive. Vetos - not signing statements - to check the impulses of the legislative branch. Overrides, to prevent the executive from becoming a monarchy. Check, check, and check again.

Slogan time: “Checks and balances made our country great - let’s try them again.”

(Remember “Trust, but verify”?)

The Right may have won, but they sure ain’t happy about it.

Rick P. @ 66: Amen.

Rick P. @ 66: Amen.

I don’t believe that conserevatives have ever been successful in convincing people that govt is intrinsically evil.

The very notion is self contradictory. People expect regulatory agencies to regulate- they expect service agencies to serve- and they expect it all to be done competently..and with a mind towards common sense and economy.

Competent Govt. is a concept to obvious that it will sell itself- particularly after the experience of the last few years.

Digby 62 asks:

What is it we want to accomplish?

My anwser:

Restore Constitutional government.

If we can’t get that done, nothing else can be done.

To me this ties it all together: the lawbreaking, the corruption, the surveillance, the lies, the lack of oversight, the lack for checks and balances.

It’s all there in Federalist 47, and the nice thing is that this position lets us paint the Republicans as the radicals they are.

Digby 62 - the fact is, we are the party of government. We have to start by making the simple case that government is not inherently evil.

Worth repeating - though we could lose the defensive language!

Those bumperstickers and emails - thank a liberal for: 40 hour work week, etc etc, basically everything that has made our society civilized, livable, and prosperous for the many.

As they have assaulted and demonized the very notion of government for the past 30 years at least, we have done nothing to push back. God I wish Eleanor Roosevelt was still around, she wouldn’t put up for a second with this slander of government, she’d be kicking Norquistian ass into next week.

Competent government would be nice, wouldn’t it?

“Do pigs always become men.” Ah. I missed that one. Well put:

Do the horrible fates of the Communist parties, and of the Republican party, hold any lessons for us as we contruct new organizations?

Yes. But I would argue that we’re already halfway there. Look at