Who EXACTLY is the "liberal base", concretely, what people & what is their accountability?

[patrice]

I don't understand why all of us are assuming that every time someone uses certain labels, left, liberal, progressive, that they are referring to something that all of us more or less have concretely identified and that we agree upon that identification, it is shared, more or less.

What precise concrete persons are we referring to?

What are they concretely doing that is something that we can agree upon as being left/liberal/progressive?

How do we know that those "liberal" persons are doing those concrete "liberal" behaviors? What is their accountability, so others can substantiate whether they are in fact left/liberal/progressive?

Is that too much to ask for when so many lives are at stake?

[AlabamaLibrul]

1. The people who volunteered for Obama when he

wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, quit busting medical pot users, end the wars, end the BUSH tax cuts, etc.

[patrice]

3. Thanks for that. Is that all? What are they DOING now? Is there any overlap with the people who

are actually in the trenches doing the ACTUAL WORK of social and economic justice and have been most of their working lives?

[AlabamaLibrul]

5. Dupe

[AlabamaLibrul]

6. We're standing up for the nation when nobody else will

I for one faxed the shit out of my Senators and heard Jeff Fucking Sessions of all people saying we need to go ahead and get this done this morning on MJ.

That's working towards something real. What have the 84%ers done lately?

[patrice]

17. Contacting them, especially the Republicans, is one of the best things you can do. Thank you!

[AlabamaLibrul]

31. Just doin' my job, ma'am

Fired off another one today to Sessions, thanking him for his comments on MoJo.

Positive and negative reinforcement. It's fun to play with Washington from home.

[JDPriestly]

28. Yes. Although some of us are retired and less active now.

I have not only been active in political campaigns over the years but also worked for quite some time working to help the homeless in Los Angeles.

I have also volunteered in my community quite a bit. Most liberals are like me I think.

My church is very liberal. It works on quite a few social justice projects.

[mmonk]

32. Absolutely.

Many operate and work in non profits, organizations that try to preserve constitutional liberties, orgainzations trying to preserve our social safety nets, etc. They do more than many politicians today that claim "progressivism". That is why there is a backlash from the left.

[Enrique]

2. it's the people that a democratic politician can count on

the base of support that is there for them and they don't have to go out and win over. The ones that motivate themselves. The ones that will vote and vote reliably Democratic.

[patrice]

8. I agree that Liberals are self motivators. They don't need the internet to be Liberal. It's who they

are and have always been.

They vote more or less reliably Democratic, because real honest to god Liberals almost never put anything politically effective enough together to get into office, so we vote Democratic to block the worst shit rising up in the opposition. Some Democratic candidates can/COULD be Liberal, but they don't often get the opportunity, because unlike Conservatives, there's no accountability amongst their liberal constituencies. This makes "liberals" just more cannon fodder, used in various forms of bait 'n' switch.

We throw ourselves under the bus and then blame others. Test this hypothesis? Let's try asking how many of these big liberals on this board are going to a Public Education rally near them this weekend. Or are they only going to go to their own rally in October, so they can threaten everything that everyone else IS working for, especially Labor, by giving Mitch McConnell his happiest dream and making PO a one term president?

[Enrique]

18. none of these terms mean "better" people

none of them, liberal, conservative, centrists, the base, none of them mean a group of people that's better than the people in other groups. If it did, then it would be useless because everyone would just define them to be whatever group they themselves are in.

I don't think "the base" has to be activists. It could include slobs that sit around on their asses watching sports 24hrs a day, but who always vote for democrats on election day. I doubt there's just one definition but I think mine is a pretty good one from the way I've heard the term used.

[county worker]

4. I like John Kennedy's acceptance address to the New York Liberal Party

Acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination
September 14, 1960

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.

Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.

Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.

In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."

[patrice]

11. Thank you for that, county worker! I will share it on FaceBook & put it in my Journal here.

I was eleven years old at the time, so I missed it, but I was Catholic schooled all of the way, at a time when Social & Economic Justice & Peace were taken much more seriously, in Holy Mother the Church, than they are now.

:hi:

[county worker]

23. There is a bit more too the speach google Kennedy what is a liberal

[JDPriestly]

29. There is a correlation between certain religious groups and liberal

viewpoints. Jews, Catholics, Unitarians, traditional Methodists, Quakers, Church of Christ, some Episcopal groups and certain others are more socially conscious than other religious groups.

Those of us raised in one of those groups are likely to be liberal. Hillary Clinton, for example, was raised Methodist. I think she has lost a lot of her liberal ideals. Too bad.

[Armstead]

7. Some examples on my own chart

Varying degrees and different styles, and may vary on certain issues but some of the Congresspeople I feel comfortable with, in terms of representing liberal values and principles reliably:

(and pardon my spelling...)

#1 Bernie Sanders (not a Dem but....)

Honorary Mention: Paul Wellstione

Others: Sen. Tom Harkin, Rep.Pete DeFazio, Marcy Kaptur, Jan Schiakowski, Sen Sherrod Brown, Barbara Lee, John Conyers, Dennis the K...

Numerous others but those are what comes to mind riught now

[patrice]

9. Thank you! But I was wondering about the grassroots working relationships. Us, people to people,here

and elsewhere, but most especially on the internet, where we see constant posturing from and about something that is supposed to be "the liberal base", but from where I sit, it may be persons, though I don't know whom, and I sure as heck have absolutely no idea what their LIBERAL behaviors/work/what-they-are-doing other than typing stuff on the internet.

This appears to me to be very like the Tea Party, whose behavior constantly shows that they think just saying something makes it so.

Just referring to something left/liberal/progressive in the grassroots does NOT MAKE IT SO.

Who are these liberal grassroots and what are they actually doing that is liberal?

Everyone is pretending that we know the answers to both of those questions and we don't. What is the rhetorical purpose of pretending that we do?

[Armstead]

19. Well I could give you examples of peope and actions here, but...

it wouldn't mean a heck of a lot elsewhere.

I'd suggest looking around your own sphere and your community and you'll find examples.

(but of course that probably depends on where you live. It might be a lot easier in New England than in some sections of the country...)

[patrice]

20. I live in Cupcake Land. But I do know a lot of the counter-culture around Kansas City.

Old hippie here, from a huge family with it's own hippie sub-culture.

Cupcake Land gets a little hard to take sometimes. Sitting this a.m. in local restaurant, reading & finishing my coffee. A couple of young mothers were sitting with, apparently, their father and 4 little boys, 4-7 years old (?), and one of the young mothers went on and on at some length and in detail, in a voice that was unavoidable, about her sons' problems with bullying in day-care and at school !!!! This in a part of the country in which church is almost absolutely everything. They are everywhere sucking up taxes and not paying any. And I have so often heard so many other stories about child bullies. It makes me recall talking to one of our County Commissioners after a meeting about a Sex Ed grant, in which he voted wrong, so I chatted him up all nice and friendly, gave him some examples of things I learned as a high school teacher, and he made the point a couple of times, "The problem is always the parents across the street. My constituents say everything would be okay if it weren't for those OTHER parents." Listening to those young mothers this morning was just so discouraging! "Christianity" is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fucking powerful politically and, in it's purported role, what it SAYS it is doing, IT'S A TOTAL FUCKING FAILURE.

I just wish we'd get it clear on this board who the REAL opposition is.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Stop stressing, just call everyone a 'centrist' and all is well!

Because the 'moderates' have no Party, no nothing, yet apparently the entire world hinges on this group. They have no known principles at all.

[patrice]

13. I agree with you about moderates, but centrists, at least in theory, would occupy a more

synthetic position, they have to functionally connect the opposite extremes in order to be in the center, something that is kind of hard to do and which can happen, but often with some tendency to lean one way or the other, usually to the right in current socio-economic times.

[WilliamPitt]

12. Those who say, don't know.

Those who know, don't say.

[patrice]

15. I can settle for that, because it involves knowing SOMETHING tangible & therein is the

actual life of a thing.

And I do hope we agree what the word "know" means.

Thanks for your help.

[treestar]

14. Unfortunately people insist on using the labels to make their points

And refuse to just agree on a grid. Conservatives call me a Marxist and insist that if I am for the government having a safety net, it's the same thing as saying the government should be something like the USSR's was.

Nobody will just agree to the label. They insist on labeling from their own perspective. This is how Obama can be called a "Republican" and a "Socialist." People to his right insist on labeling anyone to the left a socialist and people on his left insist on calling him a Republican.

It's like the theory of relativity. Or something.

[patrice]

16. It's what Chomsky has been trying to tell us about. We have to apply it to ourselves as well as

those others, otherwise we miss the point.

[Riftaxe]

21. So your suggesting we need to form our own KGB

to enforce and determine political loyalties...that should go over well.

[patrice]

22. It's mischaracterizations such as this that I am referring to as throwing ourselves under the

bus, on purpose, so we can bitch and complain about how fucked up everyone else is.

"KGB" indeed! Is it okay if I imply that you are a rat-fucker, without asking one exploratory detail question to test my hypothesis a little before I make that assertion?

You ARE either the oppressor or its fool.

[U4ikLefty]

24. I see, now that Obama's "liberal base" is criticizing him

the question arises.

[Creideiki]

25. Per Norman Goldman, who recently ran a series of shows on this topic:

http://normangoldman.com/blog/blog-details.asp?BID=202


1) Tax Fairness - A Progressive Tax on the Koch Bros. and their top 2% buddies;

2) No corporate welfare - end the tax subsidies and write-offs;

3) Protect Social Security;

4) Protect Medicare;

5) Stop Outsourcing American jobs and punish those who do with higher taxes;

6) Clean energy and environmental protection;

7) No illegal wiretapping/Patriot Act "big government";

8) Personal privacy - like a woman's right to choose; legalize gay marriage and end the ridiculous "war on drugs" by starting with legalized marijuana;

9) Public financing of campaigns and clean elections with voter verifiable paper trails and no "voter i.d." disenfranchisement;

10) A right to health care, and;

11) A right to a free, quality public education.

[patrice]

26. Very good list! Thanks. I think Liberals agree on these. I am concerned about who is doing what abou

t anything on this list. I wouldn't be so concerned about that except for all of the shit-stirring we see around here by god knows whom, for what motive that has anything at all to do with this definitive list that you provided.

[FarLeftFist]

27. Alot of people are doing things about that list

Every single item on that list has its own movement or interest group. You can start here for example: http://www.aflcio.org/

[Rex]

30. No idea, met very few actual liberals.

I've met some confused libertarians.