After reading Dr. Dean's speech I went to my beloved
Alternet. I was please to find an interesting piece that dealt with the future of the Democratic party. The title? The aptly named
"Is Liberalism Dead?"
In it, Adam Werbach of the Sierra Club, is interviewed concerning his
November 3rd Thesis which speaks to the same visionary issues that Dean's speech did this week. Such standouts in the Alternet piece include:
Well, the liberal project was largely an economic project. It said people are rational economic actors and if you give them survival-based services, they will vote for you. Most Americans today are not survival-oriented; they're fulfillment-oriented.
In a sense, you're saying we're a victim of our own success?
Yes, yes, that's well said. We have changed the circumstances for most Americans and now we find ourselves unable to speak to them.
So what is this desire for fulfillment now?
It's exactly what's going on what I imagine in your life and my life, but we sort of patronizingly believe that the people we advocate for don't have those same concerns. People are looking for something to believe in. They're looking for meaning in life. They're looking to be part of a broader project.
Democrats sort of imagine the poor as an "other" and objectify their needs, and wants, and desires.
As in we imagine them as these poor struggling souls who are basically trying to make ends meet and put food on the dinner table ...
Right before they go clean chimneys. It's patronizing. First of all, very few people define themselves as poor. Most people define themselves as middle-class. And people who define themselves as poor, for example, suffer more from obesity than starvation.
The way you hear this the most is that people voted against their self-interests. You hear that all the time. It exposes a defect in our thinking, which sees your self-interest as based on your economic status. It gives no credence to your fulfillment interest - this desire to believe in something.
I find work such as Werbach's facinating because they transend the "Marginalize the DLC" and "primary challeng Lieberman" ideas. Those things are reduced to tactics. Werbach, and Dean to a smaller extent, are talking about ideological strategy. The conversation isn't about retooling and changing the guard, it is becoming about "What exactly are we doing and why are we doing it?". This isn't about "throw the bums out", this is about a Vision Statement.
Werbach perfectly captures what our current tactics should be in this exchange:
So what should our strategy be for the next four years? Do we just watch Bush dismantle everything from the sidelines? Go local?
We should fight everything. An opposition party fights. An opposition party does not negotiate. Anyone who tries to negotiate right now should not be welcomed. I have made it very clear to any environmental leader who tries to negotiate a global warming deal in the next four years should bear the wrath of all of us. And there are people looking to do that. There are deals to be made, but they're all bad deals. You don't negotiate from a position of weakness, and we're in a position of weakness. So, the first thing is to fight. There's no reason to aid them in their quest.
Or give them any excuse to look more moderate when they're not.
Right. So first thing is to fight, and the second is to provide bold solutions that may lose - that may lose badly. Let's say that the first $80,000 of everyone's income should be tax-free. Let's offer to pay a mother and father to stay at home and raise their child. Let them fight against motherhood. They're cloaking themselves in motherhood, but they don't really care about mothers.
So the point is not to be pragmatic anymore?
Yeah, at this moment we're freed from the reliance on the incrementalists.
Nothing sums up the only real asset our position provides better than this statement. Why indeed, should we be going along with anything? It isn't about being obstructionist. It is about being the opposition.
Want to reform the tax code? Here's our plan....
They want to dismantle Social Security, we want to fix it. Here's our plan....
The Democrats are not leading because we are not offering anything that looks like a plan. In an absence of leadership, people will follow anyone with a loudspeaker and a soapbox. Or more to the point, a strawman and a lighter.
Party Leadership isn't getting the job done and they will resist any change that threatens their power. Check out the November 3rd Thesis and Adam's writings. Support change in our party that is more in line with reality as it is now, and the future as we want it.