Rebels On Left And Right Are Sick Of Compromise
ED KILGORE – MARCH 18, 2014, 1:29 PM EDT
As progressives look with trepidation toward the midterm elections, there is naturally a renewed upsurge of complaints that the Obama administration — like the Clinton administration — has represented at best a series of pyrrhic victories for the left, and at worst a betrayal of the progressive cause. There’s been a tendency among left-leaning thinkers and writers to lump these arguments together and dismiss them as unrealistic or counterproductive. But in fairness, it is worth sorting them out, and also comparing them to similar grousing about the GOP on the right.
The most publicized recent leftist cri de couer was penned by Adolph Reed at Harpers (subscription only!), with the provocative title: “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of American Liberals.” Reed’s basic argument is that the age-old policy objectives of the historic left have been sacrificed on the altar of Democratic electoral prospects, leading to a “neoliberal conservative” consensus hidden by the regular exaggeration of Republican menace and Democratic accomplishments. Reed’s “not a dime’s worth of difference” judgments (reminiscent of the 2000 Nader campaign) on the two parties — particularly during the Obama administration — have been roundly criticized in liberal circles from the moment they appeared (notably by Michelle Goldberg at The Nation and Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect).
But his broader arguments that (1) progressives must view their political engagements from the perspective of actual policy achievements, not just electoral victories, and (2) that progressivism as a social movement must remain independent of and occasionally in conflict with Democratic politics was not really challenged. Meyerson’s judgement that Reed shows it is “possible to get the big picture right when you can see the small pictures at all” appears broadly shared on the Democratic left.
A different argument has been made — actually for years — by Reed’s comrade-in-arms Thomas Frank, author of the famous 2004 book on the success of Republicans in co-opting working-class rage against “elites,” What’s the Matter With Kansas? While Frank shares Reed’s fury towards liberal “surrender” to conservatives on the policy issues that most matter to him (and also shares Reed’s thinly-veiled contempt for the culture-war skirmishes that distract liberals from the economic fights they need to be waging), he places considerable stock in the potential for a left-bent Democratic “populist” message to change the electoral equation and win back the white working class voters who have defected in recent years — if only Democratic “centrists” with their smug demography-is-destiny route to political supremacy can be overthrown.
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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/the-price-of-compromise-dissenters-left-and-right
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