The year 2006 was shaping up to be a good one for Democrats. The toxic combination of George W. Bush and the corruption and cronyism of the Republican Congress was brewing a perfect storm that seemed to be pointing to Democratic victories in areas where they might not otherwise be expected. And nowhere was that more true than in the Mountain West.
In this land of big sky, rugged earth, and independent spirits, Democratic candidates were not only on the verge of winning big in the competitive areas such as Colorado and Montana, but they were also fighting hard in the deepest of red areas: strongly conservative states such as Wyoming and Idaho. The prevailing wisdom was that these areas preferred Republicans because voters demanded less government interference in their lives and thus tended to side with the small-government conservatives against big-government "tax-and-spend" liberals.
It was in this context that on October 2 of that year, Markos Moulitsas e-penned an editorial in an unlikely place: the electronic version of the libertarian publication CATO, appropriately dubbed CATO Unbound. In his essay, "The Case for the Libertarian Democrat," Moulitsas quoted a then-pseudonymous Daily Kos diarist to explain the common cause then forming between those with libertarian ideals and those with a progressive vision:
As hekebolos further noted, defense contractors now have greater say in what weapons systems get built (via their lobbyists, blackmailing elected officials by claiming that jobs will be lost in their states and districts if weapons system X gets axed). The energy industry dominates the executive branch and has reaped record windfall profits. Our public debt is now held increasingly by private hedge funds. Corporations foul our air and water. They plunder our treasury.
This list, I’m sure, could be added to. Oil and oil services companies can even dictate when and how the most powerful nation on earth decides to go to war. A cabal of major corporate industry is, in fact, more powerful than the government of the most powerful nation on earth–and government is the only thing that can stop them from recklessly exploiting the people and destroying their freedom.
That, in essence, is why I am a Democrat, and why my original blog post on libertarian Democrats struck a chord with so many. We cherish freedom, and will embrace any who would protect it. But that necessarily includes, in this day and age, the government.
At the time, the conventional wisdom among conservatives and many institutional Democrats was that the blogosphere was comprised of anti-war fringe leftist radicals with short tempers who brooked no dissent or even congenial discussion. A thinking person, then, might have asked what sense it made for the netroots to be so endeared with politicians like Jon Tester, Brian Schweitzer, and other authentic--and perhaps "centrist"--Democrats running in more conservative areas. As Moulitsas explained:
It is no coincidence that most of these transformative candidates are emerging in conservative areas. The Mountain West, in particular, has a individualistic libertarian streak that has been utterly betrayed by the governing Republicans. State legislatures in Alaska and Montana proudly voted to defy the PATRIOT Act. But even in places like Ohio and Virginia, many traditionally Republican voters simply want to live their lives in peace, without undue meddling from unaccountable multinationals or the government.
For too long, Republicans promised smaller government and less intrusion in people’s lives. Yet with a government dominated top to bottom by Republicans, we’ve seen the exact opposite. No one will ever mistake a Democrat of just about any stripe for a doctrinaire libertarian. But we’ve seen that one party is now committed to subverting individual freedoms, while the other is growing increasingly comfortable with moving in a new direction, one in which restrained government, fiscal responsibility, and—most important of all—individual freedoms are paramount.
More than three years later, the current debate over health care policy has provided a perfect forum to put these theories into practice on a large scale. Traditional libertarians have argued in response to Moulitsas that the only way to reduce corporate power was to reduce the government power that corporations co-opt. But as Yogi Berra said: in theory, theory is the same as practice. In practice, it isn't the same. And current health care policy has shown that under the stewardship of corporate conservatives, government has no problem limiting its own authority, but only when it benefits corporations to do so: the government is still not legally allowed to negotiate lower prices with pharmaceutical companies, or to reimport pharmaceuticals from Canada. This same political element has also been adamantly opposed to the creation of a public option. These limitations on government power benefit corporations at the expense of individuals. Whether through bigger or smaller government, the Republican Party of the last decade was dedicated to furthering corporate objectives in all policy aspects. In 2006 and 2008, Democrats were hired to change that.
But this fact makes the latest developments in the health care battle particularly problematic. The Democratic resurgence starting in 2006 was fueled by an electorate weary of corruption, incompetence, and a government that served the wealthy and big corporations at the expense of the little guy. The people voted for change in the hopes of getting an effective and sensible government that would put results ahead of ideology and once again act as a force for good--a force for them.
The chief problem with conservative Democrats who've been a persistent thorn in the side of the progressive movement on health care reform does not stem from the fact that they are conservative. It stems from the fact that they have embraced the conservative ideal of a bygone era--one in which expansion of government was automatically "liberal" while restriction thereof was automatically "conservative." But this new era of persistently abusive corporate power has changed that--and the failure of just a handful of Democrats to recognize this has put the entire party at severe risk.
In place of the "liberal" public option, the Senate bill now features a more "conservative" mandate and excise tax proposal. But both the public option and the creation of a mandate and excise tax represent an expansion of government power. But in the former, the government uses its power to provide a choice for the individual, thus expanding freedom; in the latter, it uses power to take choice away, creating anything but a free market for the corporations so fortuitously provided a government-compelled consumer base. And while the Senate bill does many good things, the mandate and excise tax will end up being the overriding narrative.
In the era of the permanent campaign, policy can no longer be viewed in isolation. Rather, it must be figured into the larger context of the continually evolving political narrative of its proponents. The loss of the public option and the imposition of mandates and an excise tax--should that indeed be the result of the final bill--is frustrating not only because it is the worse policy. It also represents the loss of a golden opportunity to rebrand the Democratic Party, and it constitutes a huge step backward in the general electorate's perceptions of the party's identity.
Since the Reagan revolution, the common stereotype of a Democrat has been the tax-and-spend liberal who restricts freedom of choice through unnecessary government intervention. The Libertarian Democratic ideal that helped fuel our comeback was one that sought to use government to shield the average citizen from the rapacious excess of the corporate world, to ensure freedom and fair play. And yet, in a few months of negotiations, we have traded away a policy that could have cemented a reputation for doing the latter in favor of one that a) restricts freedom of choice, and b) imposes a tax that might affect the middle class to do it--fitting the old, negative stereotype to a tee.
All is not lost: there are plenty of opportunities for Democrats to reclaim the magic of the message of personal freedom, such as taking a strong stance on the emotional issue of financial sector reform. But if they don't claim it clearly and boldly, the conservatives will not let the people forget it--and 2010 and 2012 could be one long, drawn-out "I told you so" unless the Democrats can remember the lessons of the Mountain West.