I. Kill Your Idols
Every time a self-identified progressive appeals to iconography and hero worship (Gore, Kerry in today's case) and slams another progressive for criticizing party missteps or miscalculations, I get really nervous and angry.
It's how the Left destroys itself again and again. It decides which personalities and subjects are improper to criticize, and then it enlarges the scope of each.
I don't over-exaggerate when I call this tendency Maoist in character. The term "politically correct" initially originated in Maoist literature and was used without irony, when unitary meanings for otherwise ambiguous language are preferred and party uniformity explicitly enforced. Herbert Marcuse helped historicize the term, and in later years spoke of the tendency for the Left to overreach and self-repress. When conservatives made "political correctness" an explicit pejorative, the Left abandoned the term altogether and it's viewed
But the earlier Maoist tendency, that of enforcing unitary meanings onto ambiguous language, in order to enforce party unity, still remains.
It persists, and it's precisely about identifying those pure of partisan character, and punishing those who deviate from the constructed profile. The danger, as always, is that the "pure" profile narrows to a scale that can admit nothing human (save for a fantasy Alice passing through the keyhole), and the sins of the "impure" grow to encompass anything that might be captured in normal human speech or activity.
Today, we have an example of a politician who uttered something very similar to many of the sentiments uttered in the past by the founder of this site:
"I don't want to go into the next election starting off with half the country already not wanting to vote for Democrats -- we've done that in 2004, 2000."
The transparent appeal in the comment is to a move beyond the 51% solution favored by both Karl Rove and the Democratic Leadership Council, and toward a Dean-like 50-state solution that broadens the appeal of the progressive message and creates less polarized conditions where non-Democrats are more receptive to such a message.
In both 2000 and 2004, Democrats had no national strategy, but a piecemeal strategy focused on discrete identity groups and so-called "swing states" with no appeal to southern, mid-west, or mountain states constituencies. In each case, we saw a viciously divided nation and a disputed battle over a single "swing state" (Florida in 2000, Ohio in 2004).
That was a failed strategy, and one well-documented both here on this blog and in Markos' book Crashing the Gate. It's one that as a community we have bought into.
So it's quite astonishing that, when one hears the same message echoed back at us, that some would react violently against it. Today, an essentially neutral statement about wanting to break with failed campaign strategies of the past and expanding the audience for a progressive message was reduced to a "slam" of Party Icons, in particular Al Gore. (It's instructive that there is less of a focus on the lesser idol John Kerry, because his name has less populist purchase.)
As a justification of this reduction, the writer himself slams the "punditocracy" (while remaining very much a pundit, focused on a speculative analysis of a small snippet of political language) while claiming:
Amazingly enough, none of them [candidates] walk on water, no matter what their frenzied supporters might think.
The irony here is that the anger that provoked this assertion was justified by an appeal to idolatry, to a perceived slight or criticism of a Party Icon, though the name of that supposed icon never actually appeared in the original source.
So some walk on water and some do not, depending on the season of the argument. It is necessary to kill the idols to become their self-appointed custodian.
II. Dog-Whistling in the Dark
Part of the problem is language.
George Lakoff and his theories of "framing" (which are a popularization and a slight perversion of more theoretical linguistic work Lakoff has done in the field of prototypes, category theory and frame semantics) have both become popular in progressive circles through general audience works like Don't Think of an Elephant and Moral Politics. These ideas are furthered by his popular lectures to Democratic activists through the Rockridge Institute. But this work is far afield from his earlier professional research, and is also poorly understood and often misconstrued.
In the 90s, I studied linguistics and natural languages in a couple Bay Area universities, and even took courses with Lakoff at one point. I find the extension of his work far beyond its originary purpose and scope to be often dismaying, and counterproductive.
"Framing" is not about dog-whistle politics, where we evaluate each of our politicians for affiliation cues and confirmation of a purity template.
No, that's just PC 3.0. It's neo-Maoist cultural correctness. It's like John Birch Society blues, where we find communists under the bed, in the mailbox and delivering our mail itself.
Framing is focused on creating an enduring conceptual framework behind our use of language that reinforces progressive values, which indeed can include the expansive, "maternal" language of bi-partisanship and nurturing. In fact, Lakoff pointedly associates the warrior model of the stern father who divides the world into friend and enemy with the conservative political frame.
So not only is the use of "right-wing framing" often much-reduced and misconstrued in these parts, but the progressive frame itself as Lakoff describes it is misidentified.
Framing can be a useful tool as part of a wider strategy, which reinforces nurturing, expansion of the family unit, national responsibility, and reduction of filial divisions. In many ways, that's Barack Obama's message, while the recent partisan warrior frames of Clinton and Edwards are directly opposed to Lakoff's progressive models.
In general, however, there is a true clumsiness and overuse of meta-language about "right-wing talking points" and "right-wing framing". In the end, it simply cedes more territory to the other team.
When our candidates have to be carefully scripted, and are punished for deviating from a carefully reduced party-enforced language, are candidates lose their vibrancy and fundamental character, and progressives lose in areas of the country where that language does not resonate.
We made our hard-won victories in 2006 by embracing candidates that used very non-urban and non-academic language and held positions on traditional Democratic issues (like gun control) that were rather out-of-step with Democratic conventions. We won precisely by allowing that exceptionalism to grow unmolested.
We grew and succeeded not with PC language enforcement and dog-whistle politics, but with a commitment to flexible strategies and less polarization, while leaving a fundamental progressive framework in place.
III. Loving the Alien
So why the discomfort with some creative, flexible, ambiguous language that might reach out to those traditionally alienated from Democratic politics?
I know from experience, growing up in one of the "redder" regions of the nation, that it is often the petty infighting over trivial issues of "who is a true liberal" that has reinforced that narrative that liberals are elitist, self-absorbed and radicalized. When we destroy our own because they fairly criticize political strategies that have failed for us in the past, there is little hope for true reform and real coalition building.
Progressives only thrive when party criticism is not only acceptable, but encouraged.
But criticism isn't canonical language enforcement. Quite the opposite. Substantive criticism begins with leaving the mind open enough to consider the message beyond the bottle. To hear the alien, and love it if you can.
We need as a movement to accommodate more, and purify and punish less.
We need to try to get beyond the 51% solution.
If we approach our progressive leaders with a modicum of trust first, how might the message sound differently?
How, for instance is Barack Obama's quote suggestive of personalities rather than campaign strategies and polarized political conditions that make it difficult to elect a Democrat in a general election scenario?
If he wanted to attack personalities he certainly would've mentioned them by name. Can't we, per Ockham's Razor, accept the language at face value? It's more consistent with what Obama has been saying up until now, and frankly more consistent with what Markos and others have been preaching here in the past as well.
And if there's an implicit criticism of the safe, DLC-endorsed, micro-targeted and often lackluster campaigns of Gore-circa-2000 and Kerry-circa-2004 what the hell's wrong with that? Do any of us really disagree that playing to carefully defined "safe votes" only left us scrabbling for undecideds and left the nation more skeptical of Democrats overall?
Gore in 2007 is sweet enough that you want to kiss him.
Gore in 2000 was cream corn on toast.
Fuck heroes!!!
Let's recognize what's really at stake:
In 2010, under reapportionment, we will lose electoral votes from places like New York and Ohio, and Texas and Arizona will gain them. It won't get any easier to build an enduring progressive coalition by relying on blue state strategies from 2000 and 2004.
It will be even more difficult if we get hung up on a new form of political correctness that I continue to call PC 3.0 -- relying on a script that no one but a caricature of the human can use.
It's time to talk less of "Republican talking points" and "right-wing framing" and talk more of policy differences, coalition building, and the 50-state strategy.
We are so obsessed with the spin, we can't see past the speech to the strategy.
Heroes be damned. The full language is mine, and ours, and more.
Let's use it liberally, and with care. The two are not incompatible.
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[Diary updated to more explicitly identify what period of Lakoff's work I was referring to, and give better context to the "Neo-Maoist" charge.]
