OK, since we're talking about this again, let me make one thing clear:
If you think that not having beaten the Republicans means that you have to join them, then please do so.
[flame on]
Look, I'm sure that Michael Lind is a nice guy, but this post over at TPM Cafe only shows that he doesn't understand the significance of the data he's handling, rendering his entire 'analysis' an exercise in freshman frothery.
Can the Democratic Party regain the kind of majority enjoyed by the New Deal Democrats between the 1930s and the 1960s? Not an occasional bare majority, but the kind of solid, enduring majority that permits the passage of major legislation?
The answer is yes--but only if the Democratic Party ceases to be defined by social liberalism. As a social liberal party with economic liberal and economic conservative wings, the Democrats are doomed to perpetual minority status. As an economic liberal party with social conservative and social liberal wings, the Democrats might have a chance--but only if the social conservative Democrats outnumber the social liberal Democrats in the Democratic Party itself.
He then goes on to play with statistics, but it's a false premise anyway, and thus a waste of time.
What Lind overlooks is
- The Dem.'s don't have to win all of America's mushy middle. Please acquaint yourself with the "electoral college," and the concept of "base."
- Ignoring the base in favor of the middle has been the DLC's calling card of failure for over a decade. If someone is in the middle NOW, they're there for a reason. Give up on Zombie-Town and come back home, Lind. We miss you.
- The Dem.'s are losing the culture war, yes, but in case you didn't notice they haven't even been fighting it, thanks in large part to people like Lind.
- Elections turn on image, not issues. Bush's supporters were those least likely to know his positions or, indeed, anything about the outside world at all.
You might as well "triangulate" on Fairyland.
The author furthermore demolishes his own premise in his third paragraph:
First, a word about definitions. By liberal and conservative I mean center-left and center-right, not far-left and far-right. An economic liberal supports welfare-state capitalism, not far-left democratic socialism. A social conservative is a moderate traditionalist with qualms about abortion and gay marriage, not a far-right Christian fundamentalist who thinks that Satan controls the UN and that every unimplanted embryo is a child.
If the far right has been successful ruling this country from outside its political center of gravity, then the rest of Lind's "argument" is an utterly obvious non-sequitur.
Citing polls on how many 2004 voters self-identified as 'liberal' or 'conservative' is an exercise so pointless (and so nearly misses the point) that the reader wants to bash his head against a wall. The GOP learned how to smear the word 'liberal,' thereby enabling it as a smear itself, from a man who recently went up north to get legally married to his gay partner. Here, in microcosm, the lie is given. Please let me know when you find it.
Furthermore, none of this happens in a vacuum. Remember the opponent? They one Lind wants us all to ape?
The GOP's
- extremism on social matters
- war on the middle class
- fumbling on national security
all make it very vulnerable,
which is why the GOP relies so heavily on the DLC not to exploit the former's weakness. Most of the 53% who oppose gay marriage (not much of a majority) for instance aren't going to vote for the Democrats anyway. Wasting time on them is what the GOP needs people like Lind to do. The Republicans' constituents are exactly split on Roe v. Wade.
They. Are. Vulnerable.
They need to be assaulted, not imitated.
Now, to the credit of TPM Cafe's readership, most of them found things they could salvage in Lind's juvenalia, but filled in the details of the past decade that he seems to have missed. In contrast, approval came from people like this:
This thread was about how the Democrats could become the majority party again.
My position is that even though the left wing of the party wants to side with terrorists against business, a majority party can never take that position.
Better to purge those with that position from the party and let them speak truth to power from the Green party or some such.
Accusations of treason in defense of failure. Nice. Better to purge those with the position that right wing extremist smears of Bush's opponents and let them fluff the GOP's failure as public Republicans than to have them lurking in the Democrats' closet. And if this is the kind of supporter you attract then please remain 100' away from me at all times.
The readers at Daily KOS, supposedly the less grown-up Democrats, weren't impressed with Lind's bowtie-transplant, and proved far more sophisticated in parsing the implications of the CAFTA vote. Funny, that. Aren't we supposed to be the crazies? To the GOP, I mean. And therefore to the DLC Surrender-Monkeys in our very own fifth-column, for whom "respectability" seems to mean "sucking Republican pud in our sleep." The GOP has banked on the Dem.'s surrendering on issues in order to fit GOP definitions of respectability.
Lind's path is that of least resistance and it leads to permanent minority status as the "me too" party. It's easy to live in the world your enemies worked to make for you. It's easier on them, too. Leading would take effort. Now you know.
But even in surrender, Lind will not be safe. Experience has shown that the GOP will label any position the Democrats take as far left, even if they have to falsify quotes, revise history, or just plain make shit up. They will continue to blast you no matter how much you suck up to them.
Finally, I would just like to say that anyone who thinks we can't afford to fight for social justice because it's politically disadvantageous is a walking moral vacuum and can kindly go fuck themselves. I will not be associated with such filth.
But even from a purely machiavellian point of view, if you don't have the sense to talk to our base but instead want to alienate it by talking only to the mushy middle, then you're going to continue losing the way you've been losing. If you're not willing to fight, then get out of our way. If you're not willing to get out of our way, then we have to fight you first. We have to take back the Democratic party before we can save the country from the extremists who are wrecking it right now. Have the sense to choose your battles and pick the right enemies. That is a luxury we will all soon lose, so while the house is burning down around our ears, let's get it on.
[flame off]
.