Cross-posted from
ProgressivePolitics
"American has become a center-right party"
You'll here it repeated like a mantra, that great shibboleth accepted by most...including liberal journalists like E.J. Dionne and Noam Scheiber.
It flashes like a warning signal for Democrats, screaming "Don't even think about standing up for what you really believe in...you'll only be steamrolled by an unstoppable conservative juggernaut." Only, is it really true? I happen to feel that "conservative" dominance of the ideological heart of the United States is overblown...bigtime. Perhaps this is the reason why an article by Paul Waldman from the American Prospect Online caught my attention.
Polling data (such as exit polling data from 2004 that shows 21 percent of the voters called themselves liberal, 34 percent said they were conservative and 45 percent called themselves moderate), assumes that ordinary people have the same understanding of the sometimes subtle ideological differences between liberalism and conservatism that political elites do. Just as Waldman writes:
They would be right if everyone who talked to a pollster understood the words "conservative," "liberal," and "moderate" in the same way people in Washington do. Political elites tend to believe that, like them, voters understand the issues that define contemporary liberalism and conservatism, and that if they call themselves "moderates," that means they must have a clearly defined ideology that resides midway between the positions of the Democratic and Republican parties on the major issues of the day.
I tend to agree with Waldman that the reason for this gap between conservative and liberal is due in large part to the 40-year conservative campaign to destroy the word "liberal" and attach to it a pejorative connotation which has ruined its popular reputation. The current popular aversion to the word "liberal" is not based on any actual understanding of what a liberal democratic governing ideology calls for, but is instead a caricature based on an incorrect perception shaped by misinformation and demagoguery. Consider what Waldman writes:
But even if lots of people like thinking of themselves as "moderate," why should it follow that more people choose to call themselves "conservative" than "liberal?" The answer lies in a decades-long campaign to make the word an epithet -- from Ronald Reagan taunting Michael Dukakis as "liberal, liberal, liberal" to a host of Senate candidates who faced television ads calling them "embarrassingly liberal" or "shockingly liberal." Through endless repetition, conservatives succeeded in associating "liberal" with a series of traits that stand apart from specific issues: weakness, vacillation, moral uncertainty, and lack of patriotism, to name a few.
Obviously, Democrats, by accepting the "America is a conservative nation" argument, rather than fighting to shape public opinion to the benefit of Democrats, were complicit in this semantic drive by...
When Republicans began to go after liberalism, Democrats cowered in fear, not only trying to distance themselves from the term but embracing the idea that a "conservative" is a great thing to be. Few Republicans would claim to be "social liberals" -- even if they are -- but Democrats are always claiming to be "fiscal conservatives," saying they have "conservative values" or chiding Republicans for not holding to the principles of conservatism on issues like the deficit. The message this sends to Americans who don't know much about politics is that, regardless of the details of policy, it's good to be conservative and bad to be liberal...
Of course, since it has worked so effectively in discrediting a caricatured version of liberal ideology, conservatives have continued this all out linguistic battle on all fronts...
This brings us to what may be the most important feature of ideological competition in America today: unlike liberals, conservatives don't simply criticize specific candidates or pieces of legislation, they attack their opponents' entire ideological worldview. Tune into Rush Limbaugh or any of his imitators, and what you'll hear is little more than an extended discourse on the evils of liberalism, in which specific events are merely evidence that the real problem is liberal ideology...
...Indeed, large portions of the conservative movement can be understood as an effort to crush liberalism in all its manifestations. Conservatives understand that their main enemy is not a law, government program, or social condition they don't like. Their main enemy is a competing ideology, and that is what they spend their time fighting.
However, as mentioned above, popular knowledge of the ideological distinctions between the parties is somewhat malleable, it is my belief that the electorate, particularly in this time of political turmoil, can be swayed with simple but compelling arguments. Today there is obviously a great deal of dissatisfaction with conservatism, which has provided progressives an opportunity they have not had for years. But before we can begin to regain ground in the battle of political semantics, we must, in Lakoff-speak, continue to aggressively frame "conservatism" in a way that destroys its credibility as a governing philosophy in the eyes of the public while simultaneously rebuilding the credibility of a liberalism and progressivism.
With the word "progressive" we may have this opportunity. Even though it has historically been associated with an approach to governmental reform that is somewhat apolitical, Democrats have a chance to reclaim a solid linguistic footing which we can utilize to move public opinion. The word "progressivism" does not carry the pejorative baggage that "liberalism" does, and may provide Democrats with an opportunity, going forward, to shape how the public thinks about Democrats - as the party of competence, of good government, of reform and effectiveness, of the future, all the while promoting the idea that government can be an incredibly effective force for good when it has the right intentions and the necessary resources.
All the while, we must aggressively associate Republicans and conservatism with incompetence and decline, with cronyism, with a disregard for the interests of average Americans, with a single-minded defense of corporate interests, with religious fanaticism, and with irrationality and extremism.