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 Kos. The most powerful force on the Internet, bar none. And powerful because it ISN’T authoritarian–it’s open. It takes work to build something like that. But such an organization has an inborn advantage over a brittle, top-down one.

#62 Digby’s question is an incredibly important one. Goldwater’s crew had a very clear set of ideological goals – my sense is that the left on the Net at the moment doesn’t have the same, beyond the urgent desire to see the Republicans defeated. I’m not as sure as Digby is that trust in government is at the core – government is a means to an end, not an end to itself. An alternative might be security, borrowing from FDR’s proposal of a Second Bill of Rights. Quoting from FDR …

We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

A lot of the problems that America faces can be described in terms of economic insecurity. Jacob Hacker (a political scientist) has been doing important work setting out the ways in which Americans are far more economically insecure than they used to be, and in which conservatives have successfully undermined institutions that might provide them with a safety net. I think that providing economic security is pretty close to the core of progressivism – and could form the basis of a alternative vision of politics.

Lambert 78 — Restore Constitutional government.

So simple and obvious it is easily overlooked but a very good slogan.

So many great comments, so little time to write pithy follow ups — thanks to everyone for their thoughts.

Two quick points –

Interest is congealing around what academic historians would (sniffily) call “presentist” concerns.

Point # 1 –

To some extent, this entire history is “presentist” in nature — in that it does not take into account the broader scope of political movements, and their association with party identification and agendas.

The Republican Party was created by radical abolitionists, out of the muddled wreckage of the Whig party. After the Civil War, the radicalism was replaced by corporatism, while the Democrats became the party of aggrieved Southerners and Western reformers.

It’s no accident that McKinley and Hanna are Karl Rove’s role models — their Gilded Age divide and conquer manipulations advanced the corporate agenda, and kept the reformers at bay. Had McKinley recognized Teddy Roosevelt’s Progressive impulses, he would never have been on the ticket.

Through the Post-Reconstruction to WWI era, the Progressives were generally Republicans, while the Populists were generally Democrats. After the GOP-Bull Moose rift of the 1912 election, the GOP became the Conservative party, while the Democrats embraced both the Populists and the Progressives.

Wilson’s betrayal of the Progressive Movement led to Conservative backlash of the 1920’s — the economic managerial incompetence of the Hoover Administration (not the crash of 1929) led to the Great Depression, and the election of Franklin Roosevelt.

The re-alignment of the 1932 lasted until 1968, but even when FDR carried all but two states in 1936, the serpent remained under the table. His victories depended on the Dixiecrat Solid South, which stayed Democratic until LBJ embraced the Civil Rights movement. It was then that the great re-alignment began to happen: the reactionaries and racists moved to the GOP, and the Democrats became the other party.

Point # 2 –

In the post-New Deal, post-Nixon era, the Democratic Party has behaved like the Nationalists in the 1945-1949 Chinese Revolution. They have defended the cites (New Deal / Great Society status quo) while surrendering the countryside to the right wing Maoist hearts-and-minds campaign (everything the right wing has — the MSM, talk radio, the CW, etc).

The DC Democrats don’t get it — they don’t understand why they lose, they don’t understand why the GOoPer’s win. Rove’s realignment strategy is the apotheosis of McKinley’s divide and conquer — con the rubes, and succeed by building on small successes.

One last thought — the GOoPers have succeeded by adopting the political style and strategy of FDR and New Dealers. My parents were life long Republicans, and they despised FDR for the smear campaign against Hoover. The difference between Democratic smears and the Rove GOoPer smears? Ours are honest — the GOoPers really are lying scumbags.

I think progressives can clean up on a three-pronged attack.

1. Restore the Constitution as the law of the land, not a ” goddamned piece of paper.” The rights to due process, privacy, etc. Separation of co-equal branches of government. The duty of Congress to regulate commerce in the public interest. That’s a lifetime of work right there! Plus, it reveals the Repugs as destroyers, not the guardians they claim to be, of Founder intent.

2. Toleration. Ricochet ID back on the goopers. They use ID to deduce a Creator, and then skip to the Bible. Why shouldn’t we deduce more before the skip? We have a variety of races, creeds, choices, and nary a lightning bolt to smite us! Obviously, even if the Creator does not approve of our shenanigans, She tolerates them. Who closer reflects God’s readily apparent nature – Dems or Reps?

3. Government by the people, for the people. Transparency, accountability, integrity.

I spoke very briefly yesterday at our congressional district conference, using those three points. It was well received.

If we just win, and the DLC still runs things, we’re going to be here a year from now, pissed! Jane has correctly pointed out the Lamont phenomenon trumps Fitz. Fitz is one time only; Lamontism is a life’s work.

Not to say Fitz can’t clear out a bunch of underbrush – it just doesn’t end with him.

brittle, top-down organizations: Just look at Lieberman’s in Connecticut. When you rely on personal charisma and threats to get your way politically, people won’t do anything for you unless you issue threats. That’s why it was so dramatic when the last township to vote at the convention said they weren’t voting for him because he never returned their invitation.

If you have to go to war to get anything done, people will always be calling your bluff.

Why should we do what you say, Mr. Bush? You haven’t invaded us like you invaded Iraq.

Oh! You say you can’t invade us because you’re tied down in Iraq? Well, I guess we’ll just do what we want, then. You might have once convinced us with your moral authority. But you’ve squandered that, so f— off.

tbogg 72:

You write:

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.

Yes. We’ve got to stop talking about Republican incompetence, and start talking about Republican sabotage. Since they view government as the enemy — right back to the social roots of the Goldwater movement — it’s only natural that they’d try to destroy it. After they’ve sucked the money teat for themselves, of course.

If you want a broken government, vote Republican

If you want to force women to have children, vote Republican

Etc.

Jane – yeah – no worries – I’m glad that he(?) finally appreciated that he was acting like a jerk and apologized.

Henry 82 — Very interesting. Which of Hacker’s books would you recommend?

Digby 62 – Lambert 78: When I hear slogans for us to consider, or ideas for us to launch, I hear a couple of things. First, how will it sound screaming back at us on wingnut radio? Second, will it need defending?

As you rightly ask, Digby, it’s important to know what we want. As Lambert answers, restoring Constitutional America or government, whatever the exact wording, sends a message that not even Rush can twist and we will not have to defend. That’s when you know you’ve got a winner.

tbogg: “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.”

The trustworthiness of any government is only as credible as the trustworthiness of the person who leads an administration at any given point. In this regard Democrats have been lax in chosing candidates who do not radiate LEADERSHIP, and leadership which can be trusted. Our love affair with senators as candidates is a death wish fulfilled.

Jane 83:

Correction:

Restore Constitutional government–vote Democrat!

Lambert @ 78 — I think the answer is even simpler.

We want government to be reality-based again.

We want it to address real problems with real solutions, instead of being in hock to the interests of corporate contributors, ideological fanatics, or personal greed.

One can get some mileage out of “The Free Enterprise System” and the social darwinism that underpins it.

Make the Free Enterprise System truly Free.

Free Enterprise assumes free competition.

Competition is not free when government supports some competitors- like oil companies- at the expense of others.

Competition is not free when entry to the market is blocked to many potential competitors by the barrier of low education.

Competition is not free when monopolies are created which are unrestrained by the very governmental bodies created to keep them in check.

Competition is not free if government allows some competitors to escape the expense of their methods of doing busines on the environment.

Competition is not free when govt. allows political donations to create a favored class who has unbridled access to contracts and natural resources.

Jane, Hacker has a book I blurbed, Off Center. Everyone here should read it. It totally shreds the idea that conservatives won by presenting ideas openly, in a fair fight. They hide their policies and their costs like termites beneath a rock.

He’s got another book on the politics of income inequality coming out. Check his articles in the New Republic–the most eocnomically liberal stuff they’ve ever run.

“Restore constitutional government” is lovely but still over the heads of most Joes and Janes. How about specifics, e.g., “we pay more for health care than any other country, and get far less. Had enough [hi TeddySF!] of being screwed by insurance companies and big pharma?”

Things seem to be dying down. Without objection, I’m off to take a nap?

One thing I seem to remember from the Goldwater supporters was a sense that perhaps he was honest and would tell it like it was.- One example was that Johnson was lying about the reality of his war. Who knew if Goldwater would really push the button. The establishment is good at radicalizing it’s oposition. But I think the parrallel of that and our time is that citizens really do want someone who will be honest with them, and someone that won’t tolerate corruption as a part of business and government. That is why Bush numbers are down, readers/writers here like Fiengold taking on the establishment and resent politicians that have to talk to consultants before they can tell you what they think. Will a new Mr. Smith go to Washington? -the urgency here doesn’t seem to be in question.

Rick 94 — Off Center: The Republican Revolution and the Erosion of American Democracy? Sounds Hacker may be a good future Sunday afternoon candidate.

Regarding the “Restore Constitutional Government” bumper sticker … isn’t it entirely likely that a lot of Goldwater supporters would have considered that an excellent bumper sticker as well?

Henry,

I’m for all those things, but I think we are going to have to step back a bit from specifics and undo decades of successful rightwing cant about “nanny states” and “the scariest words in the English language are “we’re the government and we’re here to help you.” The goals are correct, but FDR’s words sound foreign to the modern ear.

I think one of the ways to bridge that gap is to say that liberals believe that government should help you through trying economic times or unforseen disruptions when nobody else will. That we don’t believe in trying to regulate your personal lives — the government is too impersonal for that. But we can help you with your economic lives and protect you from the exploitation of powerful interests.

Once we cam make a case that government is good for something, which is mitigate the micro effects of the market, then maybe we can start agitating for guarantees.

But then, perhaps I’m just thinking too small…

Swopa 98

Probably. There was a little dust-up somewhere around 1860 that settled the matter, though.

We need to illuminate and demonize the creeping (hell, roaring) corporate feudalism of today with the same focused relentless energy as the Goldwaterites, Reaganites, Newters, etc. so successfully did toward “government.”

Lambert at 91 — oooh, love that. I’m going to start using that a LOT. (With proper credit, of course.)

Swopa 98 — yes but that may actually be a selling point.

Sounds like a bit of the “West Wing” debate between Arnold Vinick (R-CA) and Matt Santos (D-TX) might fit in here . . . script segment follows:

VINICK
I know Democrats think liberal is a bad word. So bad you had to change it. What do you call yourselves now, progressives? Is that it?

SANTOS
It’s true. Republicans have tried to turn liberal into a bad word. Well, liberals ended slavery in this country.

VINICK
A Republican President ended slavery.

SANTOS
Yes, a liberal Republican, Senator. What happened to them? They got run out of your party. What did liberals do that was so offensive to the liberal party? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things – every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, Senator, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor.

Jane – as Rick says, Hacker’s book with Paul Pierson, Off Center is great. Its discussion of how the Republicans got tax cuts for the rich through is unparalleled. I have a review of it here if you’re interested. A lot of Hacker’s work on risk is available on his website – this article gives a pretty good overview of what he’s saying about economic risk. His work is essential reading.

Christy 103

[Lambert blushes modestly]

And the beauty part? It’s true!

ck @84 – excellent history! You could see the switch in the South (there was no Republican party at the local level when I was a lad!) post- Civil Rights. Church (segregated) schools sprang up as intergration spread. Next thing you know, lifelong Democrat chuch members are voting R.

rwcole @ 93 – Yes! I think sports is an excellent metaphor. UNC basketball and UNCW basketball have access to the same talent pool, can offer the same basic incentives, both goals are ten feet tall, and the refs call the game the same at both ends of the court.

Regulated competition, yes? Just like the Constitution says!

Rick: naps are always always correct. Rest and steal away, blissfully drool on the pillow for us all.

digby 99 – I think that’s right. It’s going to take a lot of work to overturn those myths. My favored reply to the Reagan quip – wouldn’t you be more scared if I said that I was from your HMO and I was here to help?

Thanks everyone.

Rick, thanks for Before the Storm.

…and, of course, thank you Jane. See you in Vegas.

There’s a tough guy in every american who wants to get out.

There’s also a realist in every american who is whispering “bullshit”.

The tough guy says- “I’ll compete all on my own- I’ll succeed- and I don’t need a bit of help to do it.”

The realist says “yeah- but remember yer Uncle Frank who lost his legs at age forty and could never work again- what would you do if that happened.”

In fact- despite the bravado- most americans favor some level of safety net. They want to know that their parents will be OK in their old age without having to “move in”. They want to know that there will always be free public education for their kids. They want to know that if disaster strikes- someone will take care of things.

It’s all a matter of getting them to put themselves into the picture instead of some nameless faceless “loser”.

Nuts, I’m finally done with my meeting and I haven’t yet gone through the entire thread, very sorry…but…

One of the things that struck me, besides the parallel between Goldwater and Dean as lightning rods of movements, is the degree of consciousness exercised in the propulsion of those movements. As a Deaniac who was part and parcel of the Dean campaign and later DFA, having had conversations with other activists in my state with Dean about the DNC chair, I’m entirely aware of the deliberation, the conscious attention invested in creating a progressive movement.

By contrast, the Goldwater movement only set in motion what would later gain consciousness of its own under Nixon and become “aware” of itself under Reagan. The most conscious elements are those that are split between the Club-for-Growth small government faction and the neo-conservative Pax Americana faction, but they are entirely aware of where they have come from and where they wanted to go, fueled by the monies of Scaife, Olin, Coors, et al.

This very thread — this very blog — gives evidence to an open source intelligence that is continually at work to define itself, as opposition and as a force for progressivist populism. How do we intensify the degree of consciousness, the lack of awareness of this movement being manifest in Old Sow’s comment (22) above; do we actively promote this? Have we risen to a point where we are an entity without name within the ranks of the Party, a shadow party?

We are already obvious, as so many races have already shown (Hackett-Brown, Cegelis-Duckworth, Ciro-Rodriguez, Lamont-Lieberman and more); is it time to use the weight of organized awareness as an endorsement tool? Are we farther along the road than movement conservatives were under Goldwater?

Digby 99 –

Henry is citing FDR’s 1944 State of the Union address, delivered to the nation as a fireside chat. While the language might be dated, the concepts have resonance.

This is the most important factoid our team doesn’t get –

Sound Bites Win Elections –

If our narratives cannot be encapsulated in a 1.2 second sound bite, if the essence of what we are cannot be expressed in a well turned phrase on the nightly news, we will lose.

Bush “won” the 2000 election on “Compassionate Conservatism” — it is a Bolshevik Big Lie, of course — but with the help of the MSM Ministry of Propaganda, it was enough.

The good news — the entire GOP right wing machine is being exposed for the corrupt incompetent thieves that they are.

The Bad News — The DC Democratic establishment is more incompetent at politics than the GOoPers are at governance.

Digby 99 — it’s always a hard argument to fight those right wing talking points about government because they’ve basically taken everyone’s experience standing in line at the DMV and extrapolated it to make generalizations about anything the government touches. There has to be some delineation between “things that are appropriate for government to get involved in” and “things that aren’t.” How do you walk back 20 years of steady propaganda leading people to believe that the appropriate role of government is to regulate the decisions you make in your personal life? It’s certainly not going to be easy.

OT~
Don’t forget – Christy will be on Laura Flanders in a few minutes.

Also 60 Minutes will be on with the Mike Wallace interview at 7:00 EDT, 6:00 Central

By the way–the gooper tough guy argument fell flat on it’s face when the PINO tried it with social security.

“Here’s a real good deal- give up the social security plan and I’ll let ya put all yer money into the stock market tax free and ya can keep everything you make”

Americans said “bullshit” loud and clear!

Rick,

I know you will come back here to check on any stragglers after you’ve had your little beauty nap. Just wanted to also say thanks for BTS.

One of the most fascinating things about it is that I doubt you were aware that it would become something of a primer for movement politics when you wrote it. It is now essential reading for all of us who are trying to change things from the outside in.

The conservatives felt the same post war intoxicating zeitgeist we all did in the 60s. “Make it happen.” They just took the long view and worked the system while the Left went the revolutionary path. Both had success in certain ways; the left had enduring success in enacting social change but there can be no doubt that the Republicans ended up dominating electoral politics. I’ll look forward to your rendering of this whole 50 year sweep when I’m in my dotage.

cheers–

(Now get back to work.)

ck 115 — yes soundbites do win elections.

And I’ve rarely had a more sinking feeling than when on a call with Harry Reid and he started to defend “together we can do better” or whatever that horrible thing is as a really great slogan.

I thought then, “we’re doomed.”

Rick Perlstein #94: “Check [Hacker’s] articles in the New Republic–the most eocnomically liberal stuff they’ve ever run.”

I assume you mean since the magazine was bought by Marty Peretz?

If Clusterfuck won in 2000, it was because people were in a no stress mood and figured- what the hell- give me a tax cut.

He was able to stay so vague on every issue that Gore couldn’t differentiate. The only point of differentiation turned out to be the stupid tax cuts.

I could not find the Flanders show on Air America? Did I miss it?

Rick — what Digby said, 119 — I probably didn’t mention that the inspiration for this virtual book group came from BtS too, so many thanks on that front as well.

Jane 121 – Worst slogan ever.

Thanks for this conversation. And Rick, when you check back, thanks for the book. I look forward to “Nixonland.”

Ciao, everyone.

Off Center is an easy read and would be an excellent choice for a future FDL Sunday afternoon salon.

EDITED BY SITE OWNER

Please keep book threads on topic. Thanks very much.

Rick,

Thanks for writing BTS…and for doing these book salons!

I’m very much looking forward to Nixonland…and even more to the third volume in your series.

Conservatives have frequently told the story of the ‘76 GOP primary race as if it simply pit conservatives backing Reagan against moderates backing Ford. In fact, an important chunk of the conservative wing of the party stuck with the President, including of course Rumsfeld and Cheney (who together were in many ways the right wing of the Ford White House).

I’m an historian myself and as part of a rather different project have been doing a lot of thinking about the Ford administration, and particular the place of Rumsfeld and Cheney within it. I’ll be fascinated to see your take on Ford, his staff, and the history of conservatism since the mid-1970s.

I’ll also look forward to your take on the historian as citizen, a topic that’s also of great interest to me (at this point, I should put in a plug for Historians Against the War, a group whose steering committee I co-chair).

One more thought coming out of the discussion above: I continue to feel that 1972 was much closer to the Democrats’ 1964 than 2004 was. Like the GOP in ‘64, the Dems nominated a candidate widely perceived as being from their fringe. Like the GOP in ‘64, they lost in a landslide. Of course, the leftwing of the Democratic Party (which was bolder and more clearly defined in ‘72 than in ‘04) responded to its electoral thrashing very differently from the way the GOP right did after ‘64. Now, decades later, the right lauds Goldwater and looks back at ‘64 as the start of its rise to power, while everybody still wants to avoid being in any way associated with McGovern.

I was wondering whether you had any thoughts about the comparison between the aftermath of Goldwater for the right and the aftermath of McGovern for the left.

Rick,

Now that the book is done and you have time on your hands….

I’d like to see someone describe the process by which the Right has squandered everything they worked so hard to acheive by handing the car keys to Bush/Cheney/Rove. Seems to me that given their posture of incredible political strength (they are sitting on gobs of cash and own the White House, Senate, House of Reps., SCOTUS, and much of the media), the GOP is failing miserably to advance any coherent agenda beyond senseless war and tax cuts. If I was a wingnut who had been in the trenches for the past 30 years helping to create their glorious revolution, I’d be mighty pissed at where the leadership has taken the ‘conservative’ movement. Come to think of it, I’m not even sure what the word conservative means anymore….

It won’t take as long to win elections as it took Goldwater Republicans. Goldwater got, what, 34% of the votes in 1964? Kerry/Edwards did much, much better than that. We’re not as bad off as you might think.

This belongs more in last week, but I wasn’t there. Anyway I was also a Goldwaterite, was Goldwater in my fifth grade mock election. Devoured dad’s National Reviews as I was learning to think and write. Around junior high I got exposed to the serious liberalism around me, tried to defend anti-civil rights act Goldwaterism by parroting individual rights crap I’d read in NR and heard dad say at the dinner table. The real break/epiphany came with “women’s lib” (god what a wonderful quaintism) and the absolute didn’t-get-the-first-bit-of nothin condescension of NR towards the women’s movement. On top of that I fell totally for Mary Ann the alto sax player, pivotal life event. None of these beautifully spoken/written privileged conservative women’s-rights-mocking male assholes with whose seemingly lofty intellectualism I had identified and aspired to ever had a thing to say to me again.

I turned out honest, Hillary, wtf happened to you.

Jane 121 –

As a narrative theme “together we can do better” is great — as a sound bite, it is HORRIBLE.

In fact, it’s not even a soundbite. A concept, maybe — but just like Howard Dean’s “Confederate Flags and Pickup Trucks” gaffe was spot on as concept, it was a self-destructive soundbite.

The problem with the DC Dems is that they don’t understand the difference between the concepts and soundbites.

When Kos was in town for CtG, I was pitching the idea that what the Democrats need is short sharp soundbites that answer the question:

What does the Democratic Party stand for?

Kos suggested I post a diary on the ideas I had at the time, but dKos is a daunting medium — would FDL like to take up the cause? Your experience in Hollywood narrative development has honed your instincts, and FDL might have a more focused reach.

Fascinating discussion. I’m probably too late to add anything to it, but I thought I’d mention that I have a sign on my computer: It’s the Liberty, stupid.

Liberals are genetically predisposed towards defending and expanding liberty. Even to using the same latin root word liber. The thumbnail history is this — the Founding Fathers were the first liberals, fighting against a aristocratic conservatism that is much more like what we see in the Bush administration than what Goldwater championed.

In fact, Goldwater conservatism is just a longing look back to when liberalism split apart, with small-goverment, low-tax libertarians on one side and those liberals who saw expanding goverment as a means of staving off the far worse extremes of Communism on the one hand and unfettered capitalism on the other.

Conservatism today is an incoherent mix of a libertarianism ideal based on liberalism, and an aristocratic conservatrism based on conserving power to those organizations that already have it, like the church, the state, corporations and the rich. That has too many inherent contradictions to hold together forever, if even for another election cycle.

But at our deepest core, liberals are committed to liberty. It makes us a fractious, opnionated bunch since we also like to exercize it. But as the netroots phenom shows, that is a feature, not a bug when used as a strength rather than lamented as a weakness

I think there’s a tendancy to give conservatives a little more credit than they deserve for political success.

Carter won because Ford pardoned Nixon.

Reagan won because Carter waded into an economic meltdown and suffered an international embarassment.

Clusterfuck Sr. won because his opponent committed sepuku.

Clinton won because Clusterfuck Sr. was forced to raise taxes in the throes of voodoo economics.

Clusterfuck Jr. didn’t really win- but made it close enough to get tagged by the supremes not because of his agenda but in spite of it- he hid most of it.

Since then- elections have all been decided based on 9/11 and who will protect us from terrorists. The conservative mumbo jumbo hasn’t had much to do with it.

If there is a permanent message in this- it’s that the public trusts goopers to respond to threats more forcefully than dems- which really has nothing at all to do with gooperism per se- although it may have something to do with the psychological association with macho personalities.

Looking at goopers to learn what one can is a fine thing to do.

Looking at them as a model of poltical proficiency way overstates the case.

They didn’t win those elections with sound bites.

By the way. Way back when–the religious conservatives were in Carter’s camp. They can be a fickle bunch.

GRandmaJ @ 124~
the show is just starting now. And I couldn’t get it on the radio. So I have it on airamericaradio.com
To begin, Laura Flanders is talking about the election in New Orleans.
The first person she will interview is Jean Rohe, the valedictorian at the New School who “fronted” McCain at her graduation.
Christy will be on later in a roundtable discussion.
Don’t know quite when that will be. But not now… (now there’s a couple of commercials.)

Sharkbabe 133 — grew up reading NR too and then got bit by the feminist bug. No Mary Ann, though.

rwcole –

Bush “won” in 2000 because the MSM media whores serviced his myths, while actively destroying Al Gore.

Of course, Bush didn’t win — Al Gore got 40,000 more votes in Florida, but the RW-SCOTUS installed him, doing their part in the Right Wing Coup.

rw at 135: according to this article by Rick, they won it with money: http://www.villagevoice.com/ne…..272,1.html

If he’s correct, than the whole “GOP turned out conservative rural voters who voted for morals” is just the supreme Rove ratfuck, not the gospel that even the left has bought into.

But…I hear middle of the roaders tell me over and over again that they can’t vote for dems because we “don’t realize that the world is a dangerous place and some people are bad.” That covers a lot of ground: terrorism, entitlement programs, crime, even morals.

All I can do is answer, “yes, we do know the world is dangerous, but we’re more secure because we’re not afraid of the fact.”

I’m a little late to the table, but I wanted to thank Jane for hosting this talk and Rick for coming in to participate.

I’m glad Henry emphasized the book’s subtitle, because that’s really what resonates for me in this book: the way conservatism really became about rejecting the longstanding power-sharing agreement between mainstream liberals and conservatives, and seizing power wholly for themselves.

You don’t have to look far for examples of this: the constant demonization of liberals by right-wing talkers on both radio and TV is only the tip of the iceberg. It extends into every aspect of policy, notably Supreme Court selections, as well as Tom DeLay’s reapportionment schemes and Congress’ roll-over-and-play-dead routine in the face of Bush’s executive-branch power grab. They’re all geared at consolidating conservative power for the long term, essentially creating a one-party state.

The most disturbing aspect of this is what happens as the conservative appeal starts to falter and its power is threatened, as it is presently. This where what I call the right’s “soft white underbelly” — its underlying, and root extremism, illuminated so well by Before the Storm — really comes into play.

Because in order to hold onto power, the right — having rejected the left as acceptable partners in power — is forced increasingly to appeal to, and become beholden to, the extremist right.

This is, I think, exactly the dynamic we’re seeing play out today with the immigration debate: the racist right is becoming extraordinarily activated by this debate, and no wonder — so many of its longtime talking points are now being mainstreamed. (Take, for instance, the whole “English as an official language” issue, which has been a pet issue of white supremacists for some time. Likewise, the militia concept has become legitimized by the rise of the Minutemen.

So the result is a conservative movement that’s being forced to embrace its extremist roots. I’m not sure that the outcome is going to be a good one, considering how large the conservative movement has become.

swopa, 18; Jane, 33:
I think you’ll find the roots of this is the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) all out war on labor. For details, see Elizabeth Fonz-Wolf’s book Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-60, one book in the History of Communication series. For the graphically-entertained, she includes anti-labor posters of the period.

-ralphinlex

130 BenA – Rick’s that’s a very interesting observation. It’s fascinating to me how readily centrists in the Democratic party still reach for the McGovernite label when they want to marginalize people to their left; cf this recent example from Jonathan Chait. It’s also worth reading some of the snippy responses to Rick’s Super Jumbo pamphlet from DLCers like Elaine Kamarck (there’s a provisional version of the debate available here but I’d recommend buying the pamphlet which has updated versions of the essays). Their anti-ideological managerialism seems to me to be a busted strategy – but again, it relies on a mythologized history of the Democratic party in which the grown-ups have rescued it from the lefty firebrands.

ck–Yeah the media certainly kept McClusterfuck in the game. Remember all those glowing reports from reporters about how personable Clusterfuck was? Even Pelosi’s daughter added fuel to that fire.

They thought that his nickname act was “cute”. Little did they know.

Rick

If you come back on-line, I’d like to hear your thoughts on the possibility of Democratic organising success in a time of militarism and terror. It’s clear that a significant part of the Republican’s election strategy is based on threat escalation and overseas military deployments in the Middle East to maintain a broad nationalist backing for their domestic coalition. Cf Anatol Lieven in America Right or Wrong, you might call this Kaiser Wilhelm’s re-election strategy. If the Republicans continue with this option (whether cynically or as driven by overseas events or both) it will really be difficult to mobilise against them, for many reasons, including the basic nationalism and to some degree militarism of US society as well as the fact that many in the Democratic party want to maintain US hegemony in the Middle East, which limits the range of policies which can be advocated without a revolution in the Democratic party.

I’d appreciate your thoughts on this issue.

David Neiwert 142 — they do seem to be lashing out/governing at the moment from a wounded animal perspective. I think it also reflects the character of those who constitute the holdouts, and we’re watching their motivations become transparent as their numbers condense.

But you’re absolutely right, in that what they’re capable of doing in defense of that power seems quite limitless.

The conservatives had their greatest success INSIDE the gooper party. The once populous Gooper moderates now meet in a phone booth for a Christmas party. They took over the party machinery and killed every moderate in sight. This may prove to have been a mistake as a new century unfolds.

I supported Goldwater (in 8th grade) subscribed to National Review (and TransAction Magazine — liberal social sciences) in High School, but started to lose faith in the GOP in 1967 — after Tet, I came over to the bright side of the road, and have been here ever since.

Also as a HS Junior in 1967 — I bought a collection of LIFE Magazines from 1936-45 — as a history major, I wanted to analyze the changes in America from before Pearl Harbor to it’s aftermath. The hysteria subsided within months — but then again, we had an honest President who didn’t use it for personal political advantage.

But the LIFE Magazines had a much more profound effect — the mood of the times was impressed on me, in a way that no book could ever do. In fact, I may be one of the last FDR Democratic Activists.

Restore Constitutional government–vote Democrat!
is on target, short, easy to remember and difficult to argue against. imho

Of course,
“Restore honest government – Vote Democrat!”
might also be effective.
Sorry to be so late to the party – again.

rwcole (137) – hmm. I don’t think the Christo-fundies are fickle; I think they’re easily co-opted and manipulated, go whereever their single-minded agenda “appears” to be.

Hence Abramoff’s buddy Scanlon’s comments about them: “The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees,” Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. “Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them.”

It’s important right now to keep one’s ear to the ground. There’s a change coming- and it’s going to be revolutionary. Chimpy McClusterfuck has tubed the conservative movement- and the conservatives know it. Things will never be quite the same again.

It’s important right now to keep one’s ear to the ground. There’s a change coming- and it’s going to be revolutionary. Chimpy McClusterfuck has tubed the conservative movement- and the conservatives know it. Things will never be quite the same again.

ck (149) — funny, Life magazine had an enormous impact on me, may have been the single biggest influence in becoming a lifelong Dem. The issue that covered My Lai when I was in early grade school is still seared into my retinas…those children and babies lying on the ground like broken toys looked like my siblings.

Geez Neiwert, that’s really frightening. But it’s true. Look at how Ann Coulter is completely going off the deep end now, even for her.

It may come to pass that the only thing holding the radical right fringe back has been the big business wing of the party. That’s the wing that Bush really represents and it’s the faction that’s being discredited right now. All that’s left with any energy is the extreme religious and racist right. They aren’t going to roll over and play dead. Things could get very unpleasant, which could lead to another round of “law and order” crackdowns. They are very good at creating the illusion that someone other than they are creating the violence they advocate with their eliminationist rhetoric.

ck (149) — funny, Life magazine had an enormous impact on me, may have been the single biggest influence in becoming a lifelong Dem. The issue that covered My Lai when I was in early grade school is still seared into my retinas…those children and babies lying on the ground like broken toys looked like my siblings.

[problem with posting comments…anybody else having issues?]

Which makes me wonder, in regards to media: at what point did the right actively and consciously decide to buy control? Was this the Rove-Cheney-Rumsfeld elements, nursing at Nixon’s breast who thought that the media would be essential to a Republican majority? I don’t see a level of consciousness about the media during Goldwater’s rise…

Digby #66 and following discussion for simple first belief — “Take America back from the corporations!” The right has successfully said that government is what constrains you — it takes your money as taxes and drives up the costs through regulation of those fine businesses who are forced to pass the costs on to you. But now people have enough experience with insurance companies, corporate looting of pensions and failure to raise wages, and the like, that we can go back to “government protects you from corporate predators.”

Political ideas are about social organization. Political movements are about the actualization of those ideas. The right-wing movement is organized along a right-wing top-down structure and so the power it builds is reactionary in nature. The power we are building is progressive in nature and therefore the power we create will push the country to the left.

There is NO difference between a movement and an idea. One is the theory and one is the practice.

lambert strether @ 24 –

Umm . . . the blogs are our open source “committees of correspondence” — or at least, our open source think tanks.

We don’t need to adopt the Goldwater/Right Wing approach to politics — but we have to re-learn the FDR approach, which is the model the wingers are using.

=====

From the Powells blurb on “The Stock Ticker and Super Jumbo” –

A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more government intervention to reduce the gap between high- and lower-income citizens, and less than one-third consider high taxes to be a problem. Yet conservative Republicanism currently controls the political discourse. Why?

Rick Perlstein probes this central paradox of today’s political scene in his penetrating pamphlet. Perlstein explains how the Democrats’ obsessive short-term focus on winning “swing voters,” instead of cultivating loyal party-liners, has relegated Democrats to political stagnation. Perlstein offers a vigorous critique and far-reaching vision that is a thirty-year plan for Democratic victory.
A majority of Americans tell pollsters they want more fuel efficient cars, and then go out and buy SUV’s. Why?

Triune brain, baby — triune brain. The cerebral cortex (higher brain analitical functions) says “buy the Pruis” — the reptilian brain (basic survival instincts and emotions) says “Give Me POWER!!!” Guess which one wins?

Guess who wins elections? The party that appeals to the gut level emotional instincts. Frank Luntz doesn’t even bother with content — anger point words are enough to convey the GOoPer message.

Does this mean the Democrats are doomed? Only if they ignore the importance of gut level anger politics, in favor of the 10,000 word position papers.

Democrats win when they give people Hope, and hang the blame around the necks of the GOoPers. In fact, the zeitgeist has shifted so much, the Dems might win despite their political incompetence.

But think what could happen with REAL leadership, and REAL soundbite word-smithing on the Dems side.

Matt Stoller 157 — and that is where the comparison breaks down. The structural models of the right have certain limited applicabilities to a movement that is not top-down, and the challenge then becomes finding ways to build them up from th bottom. It’s something we’re very sensitive to as we try to develop the Roots project, attempting to make it responsive to the base rather than authoritarian in nature (yet still providing enough leadership that it doesn’t seem too chaotic to function). It’s a fine balance.

I, too, am having trouble posting, writing (so I’m pasting from a doc.) and even refreshing…
Earlier in the afternoon, I couldn’t even access the site.
FYI: Christy will be on AAR in a few more minutes. They are now doing the news.

First to Rick and Henry — Thank you so much for this thread.

and to Jane, oh Jane — a million “thank you”s for sending me a copy. I was really hassled the last two weeks, but I have been obsessed with Before the Storm.

I was one of those people who, as described by Digby last week, was a child in this amazing and relatively innocent era. I remember my first political moment was when I was riding my bike — a gold one speed with butterfly handle bars and silver vinyl banna seat sears special — in my neighbohood. Longish hair, burt ears showing (of course) I had strapped my transistor radio to my handle bars and was riding down Verna Street when the Monkees’ Pleasant Valley Sunday came on the radio. It stopped me in the my tracks — I looked around (I was wearing amber aviator sunglasses — it is like an out of body experience) and I realized I was living in that song. They were singing about me and my family and my neighbors and it wasn’t good.

Now, I had lived through Sputnick as an infant and the Cuban Missile Crisis as a wee one and the assasination of Kennedy as a little boy (I remember my brothers’ boy scout meeting was cancelled the night he was shot). But the whole of my parents (and my) place in the world didn’t come to me until that late summer afternoon in 1967….

Because of my particular history — which includes a good dose of working in the south on anti-death penalty and anti-Klan work — I was particularly interested in the many mentioons of George Wallace in the book. I was wondering, if Rick is still in the house, whether he could comment on the relationship between Goldwater and Wallace.

I am not so certain that “movement politics” is the answer to this equation. I understand the thesis, but something else was going on as well. There was the residual and continual drum beat of the “other.” Communist, Black, Immigrant (yes that was a big issue then as well) — even Catholic. Although there was in Goldwater a set of (potentially) unwavering principles, there was also a promise of belonging to one group or side. Wallace carried the same message but was, in my oppinion, a much more powerful purveyor of the local authority and States’ Rights viewpoint. Although Goldwater railed, Wallace acted….

Anyway, I would love to hear any thoughts on this Janus coin relationship….

Another Pleasant Valley Sunday
Here in status symbol land
Mothers complain about how hard life is
And the kids just don’t understand

Politics has been a part of my life since I was a teenager, having attented Communist Martyrs High aka. The High School of Music and Art (Class of ‘64) when it was up on Morningside heights in New York. We were rife with Red Diaper Babies, thus my opposition to the Vietnam Invasion (note: it wasn’t a war between an artificially created “North” and “South”) began in my sophomore year. In 1969 right after Stonewalll, I joined the Gay Rights movement and have been part of it ever since in multifarious ways. Therefore Howard Dean going on the 700 Club sickens me as much as Mary Cheney.

Long story short: I do not trust any professional politician to do anything for me or anyone else. Ever.

I’m a 59 year-old gay man who has lived to see three-quarters of his nearest and dearest friends die in merciless agony in a health epidemic that no politician gave a single solitary shit about.

So what have you got for me?

Matt 157 -Not so. Yes – there are ideas embedded in bottom-up organization. But bottom-up organization on its own doesn’t necessarily push the country to the left. Look at Rick’s book – it’s all about how a bunch of bottom-up activists got organized and (eventually) took over the Republican party and the country. They surely didn’t push it to the left. I don’t buy that any form of political organizing is necessarily progressive in nature, except in the minimal sense that it brings people into the political process who might have been excluded otherwise. The extent to which a movement is genuinely progressive is going to depend on the goals it wants to pursue as well as whether it opens up the political process. I could pretty easily imagine netroots-type organizations pursuing goals that were anything but progressive. I think it’s a real mistake to elevate the netroots into an end in themselves, rather than a means to an end. Decentralized organizing can do a lot of good, by upsetting a lot of the cosy bargains among the powerful that shape the Democratic party’s hierarchy, and politics more general. But unless it’s wedded to a clear program of reversing some of the other major inequalities in American society, I just don’t think it’s going to deliver on its promise.

I’m travelling in Ireland at the moment, where it’s 1am, so I’m going to call it a night. Thank you all for your comments – it’s just been a great discussion for me – and thanks in particular to Jane for inviting me to do this. I’ll check in again tomorrow morning Irish time to see what people have been saying in the meantime …

So the result is a conservative movement that’s being forced to embrace its extremist roots. I’m not sure that the outcome is going to be a good one, considering how large the conservative movement has become.

I agree.

So what do we do when the forces the Karl Roves etc. are playing with get beyond their ability to manage?

Matt 157 & Jane 159 –

The Elephant in the room — from the beginning, the right wing activists have been exploited by the corporatists. Rove’s use of McKinley as a model is nothing new — his only crime is in revealing the road map.

As for the cultural conservatives voting against their economic interests — it is we on the Left that are clueless.

Americans will ALWAYS vote their cultural (i.e., racist) values before their economic self interest. FDR succeeded because he supported the Civil Rights Agenda with dog whistle politics, and under the radar employment policies — like Harold Ickes desegregating the Hoover Dam project.

Clearly netroots can create a mini-powerbase of sorts. But something far more drastic needs to be done to topple the power structure that has us all by the throat.

On top down vs bottom up.

If you read the history of the social conservative movement- you’ll see that it started at the bottom. Way at the bottom. It was a few pissed off moms who decided to make a fuss about sex education in California. Eventually, some goopers decided they could co-opt the sentiment- and they did.

There is a good model for this in the corporate world. The most successful companies are usually not the innovators. They are the companies that recognize a trend that’s already commercially viable and jump on it.

Attempts at inventing trends rarely succeed- find the hula hoops when they’re already selling and add muscle.

Comment updating problems here, too; so, I’m just going to jump in and then finish catching up with them:

About Henry’s question on core values, and also about movement vs. idea politics…

I would really love to see voting rights be a real plank in any Democratic platform:

Everyone gets to vote– All the votes get counted. Period.
Without that principle in place first, the rest of it doesn’t really matter, as we’ve seen in the last two elections, three, if you count ‘02.

And I think it might be a bridge between “ideas” and “movement” politics. (?)

For one thing, the other side has so far used that issue both coming and going. They fight dirty and then label those who call them on it whiners or conspiracy theorists. Worse, so-called “moderates” and even some liberals do the same. We have to wrest that issue away by taking the high ground with it.

The next political hula hoop is staring us in the face- health care. Many states are already out in front of this. Romney will sell it from the right. Hillary- or someone- will sell it from the left. It will be a centerpiece for 08.

It’s probably a mistake to project today’s political situation too far into the future. Eventually, IRaq will not be an issue- and neither will Clusterfuck. Conservatives are about to be badly damaged. Look at where the puck is going- not at where it’s been.

nihil obstet (157) — yes, I personally believe that a major objective progressives should embrace is the restoration of the rights of individuals and inherent protections, over the rights of corporations. I don’t really understand how this country every came to believe that a social and economic construct could command more power and rights than an individual; Goldwater’s (and before him Manion’s, and before them Ayn Rand et al) libertarian bent is founded not only on the liberty of the individual to act, but the corporation as an extension of an individual. No individual should be able to BUY access over that of his fellow citizens; corporations under current law allow corporate owners greater access and influence than any Joe SixPack. Further, what commons we have should be shared among human citizens — not among corporations.

I think I said last week that I thought this was a major flaw in Goldwater’s persona, more or less his drive to support business — supporting business over workers, while business itself pitted worker (white) against worker (black).

top down vs bottom up –

The GOP succeeds because the movers and shakers — Nixon, the people behind Reagan, and Rove — know how to use the ferment bubbling up from the bottom.

The DC Democrats are an impediment — because they see the netroots as an ATM for their incumbent protection racket, and radicals who threaten their racket.

Which is why Ned Lamont is the earthquake tsunami of our cause . . .

As an individual who frequently uses negative recontextualization in my ‘art’, I would put forth the argument that fretting about the ability of Neoconservatives to use progressive concepts and soundbites tactically, is suspiciously close to the apocryphal statement (attributed to LBJ)…”Let’s make the bastard deny it.”

The majority populace is predisposed to hear a factual (as opposed to a feel-good) message, if one attributes any underlying meaning to polling whatsoever…Those who uncritically believe what is proffered on NeoCon talk radio and TV are lost to any progressive/centrist ideas now and forevermore, unless and until the Plague visits their unbloodied doorstep…Thus, pandering to their narrow intellects should not be a concern.

Since we have established that the opposing ideologues and their media minions cannot win the battle of ideas without resorting to mendacity, misrepresentation of their own and others policies, ad hominem attacks, etc., a proper fight means going and staying on the offense, and, as others have stated, ‘Playing to win, not playing to not lose’….Staking out the ground of ‘rational hero’, and strongly resisting attempts to be demonised or cast in a pitiful role, using confrontationally factual exposes of misdeeds and misprision, matched with clearly articulated statements of principle (e.g., ‘What will we do/Why is it essential/How will we pay for it’) that speak positively to the dissatisfied zeitgeist.

And while we’re at it…Take a long and critical look at the role of the current class of advisors within the system…are they commited to rationally progressive principles, or merely carpetbaggers who trifle with situationally ethical compromise?

Otherwise, like a aging boxer with one bad eye who only knows one combination…’3rd round canvasback, one way ticket to Palookaville.’

The majority populace is predisposed to hear a factual (as opposed to a feel-good) message, if one attributes any underlying meaning to polling whatsoever…

Umm . . . sorta, but not quite. The majority populace is predisposed to hear whatever message best confirms their internal perceptions.

Gas at $3 per gallon? BushCo are incompetent crooks, who don’t care about our values.

Iraq is a clusterfuck? Bush lied, thousands died — and where’s my cheap gas and good job?

Reality has intruded on the Right Wing Big Lie Machine — will the Democrats seize the opportunity?

“The Constitution: more than a piece of parchment”

I think that maybe the failure of conservatism was inevitable in its realization — like “communism, it is best dreamed of and never actualized because, ultimately it cannot be.

The great challenge for liberals — in order to return to a societal concensus regarding the path of enlightenment in the Emerson sense — is to demonstrate that “conservatism” is the same, functiuonally, as “communism.”

By that I mean a system that craves power but is unable to effect leadership or rule, because it is based, ultimately, on a system in which the elites/haves/leaders “rule” on behalf of those they consider inferior. All such systems are doomed. Only the very messy self-actualized consensus leader can sustain power by dispersing it.

I absolutely believe that hammering out a new liberal platform is essential to the country’s long-term health. But I don’t believe for an instant that doing so must necessarily get in the way of winning now.

Look at the last presidential election. Kerry, in spite of his best efforts, got ~ 48% of the popular vote. All the Dems need to accomplish in 2008 is two things:

1. Hold onto their 2004 voters.
2. Convert one (1) out of every 12 Bush voters.

Doing so would give the Dem candidate a 60/40 margin, so big that even Diebold couldn’t steal it back for the GOP.

After what’s happened already, and given that (according to some wingnut I read yeasterday), W has more time remaining in office than JFK actually served – oh, the FUBARs to come! -is that really so frickin’ hard?

Do you want your vote counted? Vote Democrat!

It occurred to me that one might accuse the Republicans of not having studied their Hayek–Because what is the VRWC but a planned marketplace of ideas? Top down, and in a word, “brittle.”

i wonder how thorough an analysis of the HUGE number of non-voters has been:

1. who they are

2. why they aren’t voting

3. what would bring them to the table

???????????

i believe that we don’t need to even think in terms of liberal or conservative. we just need to think about the essentials, in specific actions, legislation, investigation or implementation, of what needs to be done to get this country back to health, to get it functioning again for the vast majority of people, for the common good. we need a government that functions in the way it should.

fahrender 181 –

That’s how Rove won in 2004 — Who is there on his side that doesn’t vote?

How does he mobilize them? Short answer (for Rove) — evangelical churches.

For our side — the big unanswered question

“Romney will sell it from the right. Hillary- or someone- will sell it from the left. It will be a centerpiece for 08.”

Chance of an EPU here but if these are the two “extremes” vis-a-vis a left vs. right discussion of a “hula-hoop” issue, there ‘aint gonna be a lot of light shed on the matter.

I repeat: deals get cut in the middle. The middle is not where ideas germinate.

I apologize for being late to this, but I’d like to ask, do you think it’s actually possible to organize the Left in the same way as the Right?

Some people have already pointed out the ways the conservative and liberal blogospheres are structured differently: (top-down, no comments, heirarchical (sp?), vs. free-wheeling, comments allowed, somewhat heirarchical but allowing for more grey area.) These designs weren’t foisted on the online community by movement strategists, they just evolved this way organically. Can you really use Before the Storm as a how-to guide for liberals if their minds are just incolned to work differently? As you point out in your book, the Democrats a functioning political machine in the ’60s. But the New Left participated in destroying it with as much passion as the New Right.

Another question: You said earlier that the liberal wing of the party is on a stronger footing now than at any time you’ve seen it. Could you elaborate on that? To use the Lieberman/Lamont example, everyone is counting it as a tremendous victory that Lamont exceeded expectations and got a third of the convention vote. But in 1970, the liberal, anti-war faction of the CT Democratic Party won outright at their party’s convention, nominating Joe Duffey, who was considerably to the left of Lamont, over conservative Democratic incumbent Tom Dodd. (Joe Lieberman was a volunteer on Duffey’s campaign, IIRC). Insurgent candidates like Bella Abzug and Ron Dellums and Robert Drinan were getting elected in significant numbers. And, of course, in 1972, George McGovern captured the Democratic nomination. You wrote once in The Nation about Democrats hypothetically running on a platform further to the left than the American people were, losing the immediate election, but building a base to win on long-term like Goldwater. Didn’t the Democrats already have the moment with McGovern in ‘72? What do you think went wrong, long term?

Finally, it just seems to me that the proposal to choose a program and stick to it through thick and thin is something much more suited to a right-wingers mindset. The definition of liberalism has gone through several makeovers through the years. In 1992, you saw a lot of liberals enthusiastically supporting Paul Tsongas, who ran on a very conservative, “pain caucus” platform. Liberals just seem congenitally unable to stick with something long term, much perferring to reevaualte and rethink and reinvent the wheel. Do you agree with this interpretation? If so, can these traits be incorporated into a successful politcal movement, or are they an obstacle to be overcome?

Sorry about the misspellings.

I held off commenting while the discussion was active because I haven’t bought Before the Storm, but I had a few thoughts:

1) In a way, Eisenhower played the same role that Bill Clinton did. Eisenhower, as a Republican, consolidated the gains of the New Deal in his eight years as President, defining a bipartisan consensus. Clinton, as a Democrat, similarly consolidated the gains of the Reagan Revolution, though the savagery he inspired among conservative Republicans, leading to a political impeachment, had no ’50s parallel that I’m aware of. Now the current Bush administration seems to be pushing on to new conservative gains, like a mirror image of the JFK-LBJ administration in the ’60s. Vietnam and Iraq add a further parallel. This symmetry, rough as it is, suggests a devastating popular backlash against conservatism, similar to the one against liberalism beginning in 1968, will be the next phase of American politics. The lack of a fully developed progressive ideology, like the lack of a full-blown “Reaganism” in 1968, will likely make the resulting government resemble the Nixon-Ford administration: The existing ideology, but rethought from the new perspective. The Pat Buchanan-Minutemen crowd might then play the part of the post-’68 New Left, though no doubt with better bombs.

The problem here is Watergate. Watergate, like the Clinton impeachment and the Kennedy assassination, isn’t the kind of event that recurs. Hunter S. Thompson wrote convincingly about a post-Watergate “vacuum” (which he tried to fill with the unsuccessful “Elko conference”); likewise, I get the impression that the New Right got their big break by taking advantage of this vacuum.

2) Damn, point one was long, wasn’t it? It seemed like such a compact thought before I wrote it down. Anyway, I’ll suggest that the movement the Goldwater campaign started didn’t grow into the “Reagan Revolution” by itself, but that “Reaganism” was a coalition of several movements, that all that held it together was anti-Communism and the Cold War, and that the “War on Terror” as we know it is mainly an attempt to recreate this environment so that “Reaganism” may continue.

3) I shouldn’t drink coffee at night. Also, I recommend The Dream Life by J. Hoberman, a colorful skim through ’60s popular culture, mainly movies, that shows how New Left and New Right interacted in that volatile era. (”Nixonland” sounds like one of Hoberman’s coinages.)

I sure as hell hope it isn’t Hillary selling health care from the left.

ck (183) — not the entire solution, but a start: DNC’s 50-State Strategy.

We need to dual-track here, not just work the bleeding-edge here, but do what worked. Unions organized over kitchen tables, one-on-one. It worked…and hey, kitchen tables may not be what they were, but work the kitchen island instead.

TBOGG: 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

Some Dem pol said that the GOP can state their platform in 30 seconds but we need 30 minutes.

TBOGG: 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.

And we should’ve pounded that into the public’s awareness.

One thing I meant to include before getting caught up in the Minesweeper-like challenge of composing online with something like a 60-second lag, is this quote from Susan Sontag’s “What’s Happening in America (1966)” (Answers to a Partisan Review symposium, collected in Styles of Radical Will:

“If there is a conspiracy, it is (or was) that of the more enlightened national leaders hitherto largely selected by the Eastern-seaboard plutocracy. They engineered the precarious acquiescence to liberal goals that has prevailed in this country for over a generation — a superficial consensus made possible by the strongly apolitical character of a decentralized electorate mainly preoccupied by local issues. If the Bill of Rights were put to a national referendum as a new piece of legislation, it would meet the same fate as New York City’s Civilian Review Board. Most of the people in this country believe what Goldwater believes, and always have. But most of them don’t know it. Let’s hope they don’t find out.”

By the way, I disagree with her conclusion, at least in a it’s-more-complicated-than-that way. (I’m down with Digby’s electoral strategy of appealing to Southwestern libertarianism.) But it seems relevent to Perlstein’s narrative.

Chris 185 writes:

Liberals just seem congenitally unable to stick with something long term, much perferring to reevaualte and rethink and reinvent the wheel. Do you agree with this interpretation?

“When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” — John Maynard Keynes

Steve J (190)

TBOGG: 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

Some Dem pol said that the GOP can state their platform in 30 seconds but we need 30 minutes.
_______

Then maybe we need to put our messages on CDs or DVDs, using the charismatic and principled messengers that we already have: Obama, Edwards, Feingold, Conyers, Boxer, etc? Maybe some folks from The West Wing? Or people like Jane and Christy and others from the blogging world?

Netflix has shown us how mail-friendly DVDs are. No printing required. Just disks and time. Volunteers can be anywhere. Wonder what the postage and the mailers cost.

Yeah, I see that argument, lambert. My point is that it seems somewhat at odds with the strategy Mr. Perlstein favors. I believe that in The Stock Ticker and the Superjumbo, he says Democrats must focus on a message for 2018. Can that work if the message’s architects are inclined towards questioning their own assumptions constantly?

If I wasn’t clear, I think that the ability to question one’s assumptions is a good thing, and a sign of an intelligent, open mind. As a governing strategy, it makes sense. Otherwise, you end up with disasters like we’re in now. But as a long-term campaigning/sales strategy? I think that would present some obvious problems.

QUISH -

I think Sontag exaggerates but in the late 70s I came to the realization that its a good thing most people don’t vote because too many are like Sean Hannity. I think the GOP took advantage of the conservative side of populism.

Swopa 18 & Jane 33 –

In addition to the Fones-Wolf book, a terrific book that gets to the issue of when big business started to ally with conservatives is Ferguson and Rogers’ Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics.

Basically, they argue that turning point was the early 1970s, when increasing global competition led to a profit squeeze for US corporations, who restored their profitability through deregulation, deunionization, and so forth.

Between the 1930s and that time, business was divided – important segments of it like big oil or the small, internationally-oriented investment banks were actually part of the New Deal coalition.

With respect to point #2, it seems to be that at least some aspects of “social” liberalism–particularly commitments to civil rights and reproductive freedom–should be part of the core of what it means to be a Democrat. (I don’t think that this means excommunicating people per se; as long as people are closer to the typical Democratic position that the Republican one, they should be a part of the coalition.)

Another thing to note is that while things are worse for progressives than it was for conservatives in 1964, in at least one way it’s better: Republican government has largely been conservative (albeit an irresponsible and statist conservatism) as opposed to reactionary in both cases. On a lot of issues of both economic and social liberalism, the GOP has abandoned the positions advocated in 1964, and has to pursue its goals in under-the-radar and/or dishonest ways like undermining enforcement of laws they can’t repeal and passing tax cuts without commensurate spending cuts. What progressives are advocating is much less radical with respect to median public opinion that what Goldwater and his supporters were advocating in 1964. (Even with respect to socialized medicine, business interests and Madisonian institutions will be a much more formidable barrier than public opinion.) This difference may permit the reconciling of the tension idenftified in Henry’s first point; the Dems may be able to improvetheir electoral outcomes while shifting the consensus to the left.

Along the lines of “what we stand for,” I agree with all the comments about economic security and political reform, but I’m surprised nobody has brought up (1) environmental sustainability (alternative energy, global warming, etc.) and (2) defense and foreign policy.

On foreign policy I think G. John Ikenberry’s Grand Strategy as Order Building is agood place to start, although I have no clue how to put it on a bumper sticker.

I’m VERY right-wing and very strong on law-and-order. Life means life and three strikes and your out. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

1) Watergate
2) Iran/contragate
3) Yellowgate

Go directly to jail – do not pass go – do not collect $200.

Super discussion thread, really. It seems to me that alot of folks are searching for key concepts to translate into a politically viable movement. What about back to the basics (not as slogan, as concept!): health, education, jobs = life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? This order of social “goods” follows that in which they are required as humans begin life, grow to maturity, and assume their places as adults in society. Accordingly, each is a prerequisite for what follows – without one’s health, education is difficult; without an educatiion, getting a decent job is difficult; without them both, the pursuit of happiness is difficult. Well, just a thought early this morning Greek time!

Henry thanks for hanging in there so long. And have a really good trip in Ireland. It was a fabulous discussion, thanks so much to everyone for participating, my appreciation for the book is even more profound after reading all these wonderful comments.

To follow up on my earlier comment (#135), and to riff on Deborah’s point (#201), where she says:

It seems to me that alot of folks are searching for key concepts to translate into a politically viable movement. What about back to the basics (not as slogan, as concept!): health, education, jobs = life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?

I think she sort of hits the nail on the head. And it’s a propos to what the modern conservative movement has done by using Goldwater as it’s historical touchstone, even though he wouldn’t recognize what they’ve done with his legacy.

A while back I posted an entry on dkos and my own blog in response to a post by Mark Schmitt on his excellent blog The Decembrist as part of a discussion of liberal ideas, or lack thereof.

Forgive the long post, but as I said in that diary, I’m not a political guy; I come out of brand development and marketing. From that perspective, this seems so much easier than the liberal gliterati seems to want to make it. As one of its brightest lights, Mark puts it this way:

The old ideas that shaped liberalism– the social safety net, a strong government role in health care and economic security, regulatory protection of the environment– have been discredited by the right and progressives defend them too half-heartedly to form an agenda. The next generation framework for progress is not yet born.

In the brand development processes that I’ve worked through, there is a simple yet surprisingly effective way to understand one’s brand in such a way that the requirements for future success become much clearer. Three simple questions are the key:

1) Where does this brand come from?
2) Where is it now in it’s growth trajectory?
3) Where do we want it to go?

What most organizations get wrong is #1. Read that again, because it is important. And I think that Dems are getting that wrong now too. As Mark says, Dems policy wonks and leaders see liberalism as “the social safety net, a strong government role in health care and economic security, regulatory protection of the environment.” But is that really what liberalism really is, or is that more accurately a set of policies supported by liberals? It’s a key question, and IMHO eliding that difference is part of what creates the disconnect that underlies the recent failures of liberals to succeed at electoral politics.

Anyway, as I’ve already done a few times on a few sites, if I go to the wikipedia I read that liberalism is:

Liberalism is a political current embracing several historical and present-day ideologies that claim defense of individual liberty as the purpose of government. It typically favors the right to dissent from orthodox tenets or established authorities in political or religious matters. In this respect, it is sometimes held in contrast to conservatism. Since liberalism also focuses on the ability of individuals to structure their own society, it is almost always opposed to totalitarianism, and often to collectivist ideologies, particularly communism.

The word “liberal” derives from the Latin “liber” (”free”) and liberals of all stripes tend to view themselves as friends of freedom, particularly freedom from the shackles of tradition. The origins of liberalism in the Enlightenment era contrasted this philosophy to feudalism and mercantilism. Later, as more radical philosophies articulated their thoughts in the course of the French Revolution and through the nineteenth century, liberalism equally defined itself in contrast to socialism and communism, although some adherents of liberalism sympathize with some of the aims and methods of social democracy.

There’s lots to unpack there, but I’ll just emphasize a couple of key points. First of all, liberalism predates liberals. That seems obvious, but it leads me to my second point. Mark’s quick list of liberalism’s highlights are really liberals’ greatest hits. But liberalism is more fundamental–it is the foundation of modern democracy. What Mark and most establishment Dems refer to when they say liberalism seems to actually mean the landmark policies implemented by liberals beginning in the FDR era. But what if getting question #1 right means that liberals retrace their steps back even farther? Back, say, to the founding of this nation? In that definition of liberalism, can’t liberals claim the Founding Fathers as the first American liberals? I think they can.

And that leads to question #2, where we are today. Mark is right when he says that the right has discredited much of the old liberal agenda. But they also have an underlying weakness built into that attack — namely that they have come to where they are now, where the ongoing demonization of liberals has taken a stark turn and become an attack on liberalism itself. Because, to reiterate, liberalism isn’t just for liberals. Liberalism is the organizing principle of western democracy. As such liberalism is even the underlying premise of modern day conservatism, or at least it’s libertarian aspects. But as faithful readers have heard me say before, that has changed with the merging of the Republican Party with Christian fundamentalism. The Christian fundamentalists of the Republican Party want the same thing that Islamic fundamentalists want– for everyone else to abide by thier belief system, whether everyone else wants to or not. In effect this is the attempted overthrow of the Enlightenment, the dismantling of modernity, and with it the eradication of individual freedom that is the foundation of liberalism.

All of the other things that flow from individual liberty–equality, rights, fairness, the free association of communities, control of your own body and property–are under threat as well. I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist, but with the fundamental principles of our democracy under attack by religious fundamentalists, I think this is a very dangerous time.

But it is also a time of opportunity. While we yammer on and on about abortion and gay marriage and even the War on Terror, most recent polls that I’ve read indicate that Americans don’t want to reverse course on rights that relate to personal freedom. By reconnecting with old school notions of liberalism, today’s liberals actually have the means to make a more effective counter-argument that can give liberalism a much more clearer path to future success. Not to be trite, but what I would tell all Dems is that it’s about the liberty, stupid. Put another way, liberty leads to liberalism leads to liberals. Abortion, gay rights, financial freedom (my term for economic security), why we fight the fundamentalists– these are incidental to liberty itself, which is the foundation for liberal ideas. And that starts to answer #3.

It also explains how George Bush has put liberals in such a pickle over the Iraq War. He has essentially usurped liberal ideas as the basis for it. All of this freedom and liberty stuff he spouts would not suit a true conservative but it is the mother’s milk of liberalism, the mythos behind our national origin and a truly liberal raison d’etre. But since the Democratic leaders only connect back as far as FDR, they predictably retreat to the 1950s version of what liberals believe, a sort of bland precursor to realpolitik. As you can see, that’s working for us real well. The right comes across as chickenhawk, we come across as chickenshit. If we went back to liberalism as our foundation, then it tells us that the way for a liberal to really attack Bush on Iraq is to make him mean it, to out “freedom is on the march” him, to sound less like Dean Acheson and more like Patrick Henry.

So as I said in my comment at #135, it’s the Liberty Stupid. Or more elegantly, Give Me Liberty… and you know the rest. Under that organizing principle, the rather scattershot Dems can be united, and messages can be tailor made using Deborah’s point — that the message of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness can be the Dems selling tool on everything from the right approach to the War on Terror, health care, choice, a living wage — you name it.

The storm rages twice?
Ike see’s the need for peace and a breather after the big red one. The Goldwater Bircher crowd hate Ike because they are on a crusade against the godless commies. From cowboys and Indians to Merkins and reds.
This crusade peaks under Reagan zap and is an accidental empire with all the built up stuff they bought off the Military industrial complex.
The Mil/ind complex is a harsh mistress and so we see Watergate then Iran Contra then today’s scenes. Yellowgate worse than both of them.
Basically the enemy is the same for 100 years and it’s corporate fascism. Combined with Imperialist colonialism its a killer.
You can’t appease it – you have to outlaw and contain it. If no one local can do the job we can bring in outside people – it will take a bit longer and cost you a bit more thats all.

A few points, West Coast Reagan conservatism was able to sweep the Republican party because the Nixon Watergate debacle eviscerated the East Coast big business wing of the party.

Point 2 it doesn’t take X years to effect change in American politics. It takes one charismatic candidate with a resonant message.

We’d better have some core principles, a message, some kind of framing for soundbites.
Otherwise the Repubs will define us as they’ve
always done. It’s not enough to build a 50 state strategy or organize from the bottom up. Without a message independents can easily grasp and embrace all the rest of it will have limited appeal and go to waste.

Hate to think I’m leaving this in the EPU Zone, but it doesn’t fit anywhere else but in this post.

While meditating on the parallels between Goldwater and Dean as lightning rods for movements, I thought about the dramatic collapse of cycle time due in no small part to the internet and collaborative communications it facilitates. We’ve shrunk more than 10 years out of the process, reduced the time by more than 2/3rds depending on the measures one uses. We are more on message, tighter than the messages that the Goldwater folks used (see the myriad listed in BTS).

The single biggest concept that fuels the speed and the very change itself is the notion of direct representation in an open community. I don’t rely on anyone else to convey this to the party; I am the party when I participate in this and other conversations, one of those “angry anti-war far-left Dems” to use a label coined by the right. I’m also a co-developer, a hacker helping to write this new public code, just as other “angry left” folks also helped develop an energy policy draft (see Energize America at YearlyKos). We are the bazaar model of democracy to the right’s cathedral, to use Eric Raymond’s terminology (see The Bazaar and The Cathedral by same, text online); we can work fast, all bugs are shallow, we can address our own needs. By comparison the Goldwater movement could really only use him as an icon, and a flawed one at that since the bulk of the movement’s members could only subscribe to the concept of Goldwater and not the actual man; he was not really accessible to them, nor could they fully represent themselves in their top-down and deep cathedral system.

How will becoming an open source democracy change our world? Could the right ever migrate to that model? Would Goldwater have succeeded if he could have used the internet to mediate (or disintermediate) his message?

Whoa, some great posts there. A few random contributions:

1) Way back in 19th century industrializing England, Liberalism and Libertarianism started out as the same thing. Liberals ceased to be Libertarian (leaving Libertarianism to be revived in the 20th century) when they perceived that government, despite its monopoly on force, wasn’t the only form of coercion. People could be oppressed economically and by traditional authorities like religion as well, and people could co-opt government from below and use it to regulate these other forms of coercion and create individual freedom. Liberalism is Libertarianism adapted for the real world by the recognition that coercion comes from a whole range of interwoven institutions and not just “Statism.”

Conservatives are defenders of these institutions. They have no fixed position on government. If government is reinforcing these institutions, it can’t be authoritarian enough. If it’s regulating these institutions on behalf of individual freedom, it’s evil, and you start hearing about the virtues of “small government.” (There’s another situation, where a runaway government is regulating for its own sake and oppressing without limit, but history shows that this can evolve as easily out of Conservatism as from Liberalism.) Conservative use of Liberal-Libertarian rhetoric about freedom and democracy is opportunistic sleaze and needs to be busted, but to recapture this language, I suggest, Liberalism needs to accept Libertarianism as an embarrassing yearbook photo of itself. Shrillness in the pursuit of liberty is no vice, triangulation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue. (Does Perlstein mention Karl Hess? I must read his book.)

2) Okay, the density of capitalized abstractions in point one is so high that even my own bullshit detector is going off. Back to Goldwater and history. If you take away Watergate and the resulting Carter presidency, the period of Republican rule from Nixon to Clinton is exactly as long as the period of Democratic rule from FDR to Eisenhower. Maybe that’s just how long it takes for a governing ideology to run out of gas, or to advance to the point where it needs to consolidate its gains by bringing in the other side before proceeding further. Or for one governing ideology to push forward and get pushed back by its original enemy.

3) I suspect that Watergate and Iran-Contra-gate and the current mess are not discrete events, but accidental (the accident being getting caught) cross-sections of an ongoing situation (BCCI probably belongs here too, but I never really understood that story). Which, incidentally, brings us to Glenn Greenwald and next week’s discussion.

4) “(A) return to bargaining rights, progressive tax scales, voting transparency.” An inspiring vision. For example, there’s a glimmering possibility that the immigration issue might be resolved if North American labor can get together with the new South American populism.

5) Maybe coffee in the morning isn’t such a great idea either.

ccobb 204 –

Your point about liberals needing to recapture the idea of freedom or liberty is right on.

Not to imply that you believe otherwise, but this focus on freedom is totally consistent with an emphasis on economic security, as FDR himself noted in his “Economic Bill of Rights” speech:

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

So we should make the case for the economic bill of rights as fundamental to securing real individual freedom for all.

That’s not to say that rationales based on equality, justice, and community-based solutions to economic and social problems are not valid, but we should not allow the issues to be posed as a trade-off of less liberty for more equality and community:

Deliberative Democracy and Poverty in America:

Philosophers . . . have argued that everyone has a moral right to do what is necessary to survive. Thus the most solid, if not the most inpsiring, defense of the welfare state may be among the most simple: welfare is a way of ensuring that no one should ever be in such abject need that he would be driven to violate otherwise enforceable rules of property.

Beyond that rather modest justification, champions of the welfare state might add Joseph Raz’s “autonomy principle,” which requires, as a cost of freedom, making efforts to secure the conditions of autonomy for all people.

Together these principles provide a rationale for welfare that does not require altruism or a commitment to equality as a higher priority than liberty. . . . Viewed in this light, the welfare state can be defended not as a form of soft-hearted humanitarianism, but as nothing more (or less) than a manifestation of a thoroughgoing commitment to autonomy for all citizens.

i.e. the welfare state does not create dependence, it is a fundamental prerequisite for true independence just as much as for equality and social justice.

Tom 209 -

Exactly right and better put than my attempt, especially this simple sentence:

we should make the case for the economic bill of rights as fundamental to securing real individual freedom for all.

Liberty is hard to argue against in the good old USA. And used as a filter through which to structure a Democratic rationale and message on all of the issues that are important to us, it could be a unifying force. Plus I’d like to see the right try to fight over it, especially when the’ve had this kind of response to it as of late:

“Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us.”

- Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican

“’I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties. But you have no civil liberties if you are dead.”

- Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican

“None of your civil liberties matter much after you’re dead.”

- Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican

As compared to, say…

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

-Founding Father Patrick Henry, an American Patriot

After which the crowd jumped up and shouted “To Arms! To Arms!”.

Ouish (208) — re: 2) — wow, you just described Francis Fukuyama’s swing of the pendulum from his work The Great Disruption, as well as Beck’s and Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics. (I’ve never understood how Fukuyama could have subscribed to the PNAC’s vision of the Pax Americana simply because he understood that a movement would have reciprocal push backwards…) We have reached the far zenith of the so-called conservative movement and are now approaching a swing backwards; is there some way to soften the returning swing when it moves towards conservatism again?

I’d like Rick Perlstein to address the following thoughts:

(proviso: I have unfortunately not yet read the book, so if my questions are answered there, simply ignore them)

My own understanding of conservatism comes at it from a global perspective. The USA doesn’t appear to have been a particular global leader in world conservatism – indeed, Australia elected one of the first “new conservatives” in 1975, long before American conservatism elected Reagan. Thatcher made her first big splash by accusing the Labour Party of being Communist in 1966. Begin was elected in 1977, and Kohl and Mulroney (though both more moderate than the rest) were elected shortly after Reagan was.

I think there was something going on more structurally than something limited solely to the USA. I’m positing that new conservatism was a very common response in Western democracies to the crises of the late 1960s and 1970s.

Does this make sense, and how could this change Rick’s thesis?

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