Beyond Checklist Liberalism

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07/31/2006

Beyond Checklist Liberalism

Two comments on Adam Nagourney’s Lieberman story yesterday:

1. It’s not said explicitly, but it sure does sound like the Party Of One option is now considered likely to fizzle. Nagourney focuses only on the way in which the move alienated Democrats, and says, “should Mr. Lieberman lose the primary, all indications are that most Democratic leaders will abandon him in the general election race.” Even David Broder, painfully unable to understand what’s happening and dreaming that sanity will one day return - “the early successes of these elitist insurgents have been followed by decisive defeats when a broader public weighs in” - seems to have little hope that the general election in Connecticut will be that return to normalcy. Lieberman, I’m told, calculated that he had a 50% chance of winning the primary and an 85% chance of winning the general as an independent, making his decision obvious. But of course that was a terrible miscalculation, because among other things it failed to factor in the effect of the decision itself. If he had a 50% chance of winning the primary the day before the election, that chance dropped enormously the day after, as both Nagourney and Broder say. And there was never an 85% chance of winning the general after being tagged as a loser, with Democratic officials and donors unable to help, with 40% of the vote sufficient for victory. I point this out only because you read it here first.

2.Nagourney writes:

Mr. Clinton had told him to acknowledge that Democrats should be able to hold contrary opinions on the war, Mr. Lieberman recounted. But Mr. Clinton also recommended that Mr. Lieberman aggressively try to refocus the debate on other topics.

A longtime associate spoke of sending an e-mail message to Mr. Lieberman suggesting that he talk about domestic issues important to liberal Democrats: blocking oil drilling in Alaska, protecting affirmative action and preserving abortion rights.

Is “refocus the debate on other topics” really brilliant, insightful advice for Lieberman? Hasn’t he been trying to change the topic? Isn’t the whole point that that’s not working?

And what about Clinton? This is the guy who is assumed to be the de facto strategist-in-chief for the front-running Dem 08 candidate. Is “refocus the debate” the best he can do? Or, “acknowledge that Democrats should be able to hold contrary opinions on the war,” which if Lieberman can’t or won’t do, he’s got some serious problems. (If Lieberman won’t even acknowledge that views other than his own are legitimate within the party, then who’s the unyielding ideologue here?)

And then the second paragraph, which I think says it all about why the mainstream Democrat advice to Lieberman misses the point. This paragraph is not attributed to Clinton, although its positioning implies that it expands on the advice Clinton gave. It’s a great expression of the Democratic Party of 1996: You got your enviros, you got your minorities, you got your women. Each group has one issue. For the enviros, it’s ANWR (the most trivial of victories, but the one that raises the money). For the minorities, affirmative action. (Likewise, of minor relevance to the actual structure of economic opportunity for most African-Americans and Latinos.) For women, it’s all about “preserve abortion rights.” There are a couple others, but those are the basic buttons you press to be credentialed as a good liberal Democrat. After you press them, you can do whatever you want.

But has Lieberman failed to press those buttons? No! In fact, he’s been pounding on them like that guy at the elevator who thinks that if he presses “Down” hard enough and often enough, eventually the elevator will recognize how important and how late he is.

But it’s not working. Why? Two reasons: One of course is that Iraq, and the constellation of foreign policy and security failures it represents really is huge. And while Democrats can accept a fairly wide range of viewpoints, roughly from Biden’s make-it-work to Murtha’s get-out-now, only Lieberman’s stay-the-course is ridiculous. It’s pretty difficult to look at ANWR and Iraq and conclude that a good position on ANWR more than offsets a bad one on Iraq. (Especially if there’s no reason to think that Ned Lamont has a different position on ANWR or the other three buttons.)

The second reason is that Lamont supporters actually aren’t ideologues. They aren’t looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They’re looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don’t have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman’s support for the bankruptcy bill -- because they are part of a broader vision. And I think that’s what blows the mind of the traditional Dems. They can handle a challenge from the left, on predictable, narrow-constituency terms. But where do these other issues come from? These are “elitist insurgents,” as Broder puts it - since when do they care about bankruptcy? What if all of a sudden you couldn’t count on Democratic women just because you said that right things about choice - what if they started to vote on the whole range of issues that affect women’s economic and personal opportunities?

But caring about bankruptcy, even if you’re not teetering on the brink of it or a bankruptcy lawyer yourself, is part of a vision of a just society. And a vision of a just society - not just the single-issue push-buttons of a bunch of constituency groups - is what a center-left political party ought to be about. And at the end of this fight, I don’t expect that we’ll have a more leftist Democratic Party, but one that can at least begin to get beyond checklist liberalism.

Posted by Mark Schmitt on 07/31/2006 at 09:22 AM in 2004 elections, Decembrist archives | Permalink

Comments

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In short, Lieberman has spent the last five years as the Republican's pet Democrat. The one that they bring out for 'bipartisanship', meaning all of the Republicans and Lieberman. The one that who stands up and, as a 'Democrat', denounces any Democrat who actually opposes the GOP. In shorter short, a Quisling.

Posted by: Barry | 07/31/2006 at 01:43 PM

Keep in mind I'm from IL, not CT. But I oppose Lieberman because he attacked MY patriotism. "We undermine presidential credibility at our nation's peril." He has equated my continuing opposition to starting the war and its conduct to support of terrorism.

I have no special grudge against Democrats like Hillary Clinton who hold different views on Bush's lack of strategy. But she hasn't gone out of her way to portray me as a traitor.

Posted by: Gene in Chicago | 07/31/2006 at 05:17 PM

The problem with the checklist approach you so accurately describe is that it is built around communicating on issues, rather than on values. The failure of the Democratic Party and the center-left generally to speak fluently in the language of values and meaning is the key reason they have been on the defensive for a quarter century or more. The approach hasn't worked with the general electorate in years (if it ever really did) and now, it seems, even base primary voters aren’t buying.

What is surprising is that Bill Clinton, one of the few Democrats who have shown the ability to use issues to communicate at a values level, isn't helping Lieberman to do it. Think of the way Clinton used the death penalty, rap music, gay rights, and Vietnam in '92 to show he was a generational "new" Democrat (less liberal in some ways, more liberal in others) or school uniforms, gun control, welfare reform, minimum wage, affirmative action, and social security in 1996 to connect with voters and portray the GOP as radical. It isn't like he's forgotten how (witness Hillary's every move, such as her recent "American Dream Initiative") so it makes you wonder how much he is really trying to help Lieberman and how much he is just being dutiful.

Posted by: Tilden'76 | 08/02/2006 at 11:45 AM

Could it be that President Clinton was only paying lip service to Lieberman with the “refocus the debate on other topics” advice for Lieberman?

President Clinton was probably trying to help Hillary with the trip to Connecticut. Surely he is must remember how Lieberman stabbed him in the back.

How hard up must Lieberman be?

Posted by: Don Quixote | 08/04/2006 at 11:21 AM

Lieberman is lifeless and without passion on his positions, that in a nutshell is his basic problem. He comes across (to a non-resident Connecticut voter) as someone that continually repeats the old hackneyed political phrases and expects a different response. It ain't working Joe. You're toast.

Posted by: Stephennnn | 08/06/2006 at 02:04 AM

What gets me is these guys exude a sense of entitlement. They are not elected for life ... they are subject to recall and subject to firing like the rest of us in our jobs.

If they aren't doing the will of their employers (the people) they deserve what they get.

Lieberman is pond scum, and the people are about to clean the pond!

Posted by: webegeeks | 08/06/2006 at 05:28 AM

I'll never forget Bush and Cheny both pointing to Joe Lieberman as a way of showing that "sensible" democrats supported them.

I think it was after that "criticize the President at the nations peril" speech

Posted by: Plisko | 08/06/2006 at 11:16 AM

As an Arkansas, I've known Bill Clinton a long, long time, and he's a lot of things but politically naive is not one of them. This was just to help Hillary's position. And of course his advise was elementary - it's obvious what Joe would need to do to help himself, and equally obvious Joe has waaaaay too much sense of self-entitlement to listen to *any* advice any way.

Posted by: LittlePig | 08/07/2006 at 10:57 AM