What is Left?

[cali]

I was not surprised by the substance of Harold Meyerson’s criticisms of my recent Harper’s essay (“Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals,” March 2014). I have known for some time that he and I disagree fundamentally on the reasonable scope of a political left in the United States and, correspondingly, whether one actually exists and/or how to go about building one as an effective social and political force. I was somewhat disappointed, however, at the tired hook to which he tethered his criticism. He characterizes me as viewing the political scene “from space” or a “stratospheric height" which leads me to miss crucial details on the ground. That’s just dismissiveness masquerading as evaluation. I could characterize him as limited by the myopic perspective of the inside-the-Beltway crowd, which renders him incapable of seeing the patterns that those details form and reflect. No doubt, each of us would be to some extent correct about the other, but that doesn’t tell anyone who’s interested in progressive politics anything worth noting. We both probably would prefer to see much the same sort of society. What’s significant about our disagreement is not whether one of us may be a pie-in-the-sky, naïve old-school radical or the other a narrow-minded Democratic apologist. So, assuming that I have some ability to notice details and he has some to see patterns, the significant issue, rather, is the different assumptions about politics that account for our different perspectives and foci. Those differences and their strategic entailments are worth exploring for American Prospect readers.

The core difference between us is that Meyerson has no patience for notions that there can, much less should, be a serious left politics that is not articulated relative to the Democratic Party. I argue the need for building an extra-electoral left that is independent of the Democrats because the party’s dominant political orientation has become less and less responsive to labor and other constituencies concerned with egalitarian economic policies, and more committed to placating the financial interests whose economic priorities intensify inequality and economic insecurity. He does not acknowledge that difference in discussing my article. Instead, he sidesteps it by allowing that, while my contention about neoliberal dominance may have been plausible at some point in the past, it is no longer. In Meyerson’s view, in addition to being in the stratosphere, my perspective is also “frozen in time” and thus misses the party’s important shifts away from Clintonite neoliberalism.

However, the factoids Meyerson adduces to demonstrate that the Democratic center of gravity has shifted sharply to the left are not as persuasive as he asserts. The “popularity of Elizabeth Warren and Bill de Blasio within the Democratic base” may or may not translate into any significant change in the national party’s orientation down the road. Paul Wellstone was very popular with the party’s base his entire time in the Senate, most of which was during the Clinton presidency—the years when the Wall Street wing of the party became dominant. We’ll see what sort of modus vivendi de Blasio has to establish with Wall Street interests in New York, and how much and on what issues he has to accommodate it. Pundits have begun already to hype an Elizabeth Warren wing of the party as a progressive alternative to a Hillary Clinton wing. At this point all such talk is empty chatter, and it is a very familiar sort of empty chatter. It falls into a category of evasion I discuss in my article: proclamation of great change on the horizon, based on extrapolation from rudimentary or fragmentary phenomena in the present. We’ve been through this before, many times—including, dare I remind, with Barack Obama. One might as easily speculate, based on experience, that should a groundswell of support for Warren materialize as we approach 2016, the likely outcome would be that Clinton or some similarly connected and heavily funded equivalent will nonetheless secure the nomination and that the insurgents would be exhorted to fall in line behind the Wall Street/Clintonite minion without equivocation in deference to the paramount imperative to protect civilization by defeating the Republican.

Similarly, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi did, as Meyerson writes, respond to heavy lobbying from the party’s progressive institutional base to stop “Obama’s bid to resurrect fast-track” on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). That’s certainly a good thing, and it does indicate that progressive tendencies still have some capacity to stop really terrible initiatives within the party. But that’s all it is—stopping some horrible things and occasionally winning incremental moderations of others. The other side still sets the policy agenda. (On this see my response to Michelle Goldberg in The Nation.) In addition, the final verdict is by no means in on the TPP; we also know from experience that the powerful interests backing it aren’t going away and that it won’t be the last such initiative or the last showdown on this one.

<snip>
http://prospect.org/article/what-left

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

1. "...the insurgents would be exhorted to fall in line.." with the usual "not as bad" exhortations.

"Always vote for principle, though you may vote alone, you may cherish the sweetest reflection that your vote is never lost." John Quincy Adams

[geek tragedy]

2. Reed has been publishing the same column for several decades

Back in 2000 it was how Bush=Gore.

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45c/271.html

He didn't vote for Humphrey in 1968 (thanks for helping Nixon, asshole), didn't vote for Carter in 1976, and has voted third party in every election since 1992 (thanks for Bush, asshole).

So, who cares what he thinks? He and everyone who thinks and acts like him are irrelevant to the political system.

[Maedhros]

3. I'm fully in favor of a Leftist movement that is separate from the Democratic Party.

Ideally, such a movement would be able to demand concessions from the Democrats before surrendering our vote to them.

I don't think I've witnessed anything quite so fundamentally pathetic as the April 2011 "protest" at an Obama fundraiser in San Francisco. As reported here (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/04/21/135604863/protesters-interrupt-obama-with-song-wheres-our-change-they-ask):

"We'll vote for you in 2012, yes that's true
"Look at the Republicans — what else can we do

A "protest" in which ostensible Liberals declare that they'd like Obama to change some things, but go out of their way to assure him that there would be no consequences if he chose not to do so.

The only way the Democrats will respond to demands from the Left is if the Left makes them pay for ignoring us.