The constant tension between Democrats who think we have moved too far to the right and those whose who think we still need further realignment has led the Democratic party to a positon of ideological bankruptcy. The Democratic think tanks seem to believe that "liberal" views are taboo, that America is more conservative and we need to reflect that fact with new policies.
Eric Alterman has an interesting article that reveals how Democrats have been manipulated into betraying their core beliefs and misinterpreting the electorate.
Alterman argues that, despite the myth that America has become more conservative, it remains in fact a people inclined to vote Democratic. The Republicans have successfully made the term liberal an albatross that people spurn, yet liberal values are alive and well. The electorate is wary of identifying themselves as liberal, but this is more terminology than philosophy:
Here is the liberals' problem in a nutshell: More than 30 percent of Americans happily answer to the appellation "conservative," while 18 percent call themselves "liberal."
And yet when questioned by pollsters, a super-majority of more than 60 percent take positions liberal in everything but name. Indeed, on many if not most issues, Americans hold views well to the left of those espoused by almost any national Democratic politician.
In a May survey published by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 65 percent of respondents said they favor providing health insurance to all Americans, even if it means raising taxes, and 86 percent said they favor raising the minimum wage. Seventy-seven percent said they believe the country "should do whatever it takes to protect the environment.'' A September Gallup Poll finds that 59 percent consider the Iraq War a mistake and 63 percent agree that US forces should be partially or completely withdrawn....Did you know, for instance, that according to all available evidence, Americans have not grown more conservative in recent decades?
The right has been masterful in their disinformation campaign, offering blistering soundbites to confuse people and in turn discredit Democratic ideals which they are inclined to support:
Because right-wingers have been so adept at controlling the political discourse, they have succeeded in moving the Democrats rightward too. Brooks himself has pointed out that the conservative media have "cohered to form a dazzlingly efficient ideology delivery system that swamps liberal efforts to get their ideas out." In fact, all that's necessary to discredit an individual or an idea in the present poisoned atmosphere is to apply the label "liberal," which conservatives equate with "treason," "slander" and "treachery" (Ann Coulter); "idiocy" (Mona Charen); "Communism" (David Horowitz); inspiration for child murder (Newt Gingrich); Islamic terrorism (Andrew Sullivan, Christopher Hitchens, Horowitz again); and priestly pedophilia (Rick Santorum)... Hacker and Pierson shine a light on the methods employed by the governing right-wing clique to maintain and expand their power without paying the price for their unpopular policies and base-focused system of rewards. Examining the 2001 tax cuts, the Bush energy plan, the Medicare drug bill and the deregulation of almost every industry that has a lobbying team and campaign-contribution budget, they expose tactics like "tailored disinformation," designed to confuse a poorly informed public; Mafia-like manipulation of the levers of power in the House, Senate and White House that not only defenestrates the Democratic opposition but cuts off their sources of financial support; and a network of "New Power Brokers," like the aforementioned DeLay, Grover Norquist and countless think tanks, media moguls, funders and lobbyists who work together to game the system at a level that is either too complicated or too boring to attract intelligent scrutiny. (If our leading political reporters were forced to address these authors' evidence or to stop mouthing the nonsense dominating their own stories, our politics would be transformed overnight.)
Democrats have failed to effectively get their message out, but that doesn't equate to abandoning the message and embracing right ideology. People don't support the right agenda, but the left has been marginalized by a successful propaganda campaign. Instead of all the hand wringing about the political spectrum, our energy would be better served by devising a method to get our ideas out, minus the noise machine.
I don't suggest we should mirror the Republican tactics of disinformation to sway voters, but we should have a unified vehicle that exposes the slander in a forceful and unrelenting way. Republicans have us on the defensive, the only way to counter this is too develop strong coherent language and not be afraid to challenge perceived "weak" ideas. The Iraq mess is a microcosm of all that is wrong with the Democratic approach, and a testament to how Republicans have successfully manipulated us to the point of irrelevance. To all the "centrist" Democrats who demand we abandon our leftist arguments, it is obvious that factually you are in error, and have in fact become collaborators through your misinterpreting the electorate. The people agree with us, we just need to make that case loud and clear, ignore the Republican clutter and expose their extremism.
