A Vital Liberal responds to the Democratic right
A centrist and a conservative Dem write:
The temptation to ignore the vital center is nothing new. Every four years, in the heat of the nominating process, liberals and conservatives alike dream of a world in which swing voters don’t exist. Some on the left would love to pretend that groups such as the Democratic Leadership Council, the party’s leading centrist voice, aren’t needed anymore.
But for Democrats, taking the center for granted next year would be a greater mistake than ever before.
Mind you, the conservative lost in 2006.Additionally, I’m more concerned about the health and viability of the country as a whole than mere party politics. And don’t accept the commonly repeated fallacy, that it’s an either-or quandary.
Centrism is fine, like it was when Ike and JFK were elected as centrists. But the ideologues who brought us the following are not centrists:
-Selling TOW missiles to Ayotollah Khomeini in the 1980s
-funding death squads that battled a democratically elected president in Nicaragua, killing priests and nuns, with the funds from illegal drug sales.
-ignoring Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds when it happened and continuing to sell him weaponry for several years.
-passing NAFTA and GATT without protections for American workers, the environment and American consumers.
-eliminating the Fairness Doctrine and permitting media consolidation that has eliminated balanced and objective reporting, permitting a political climate of corruption today in Washington DC.
-launched a preemptive war against a blustery old dictator like Saddam who never attacked us and with a weakened military, lacked all capacity to do so.
-violated the Constitution and international treaties in recent years.
-defended torture, murder and raped children in Abu Ghraib.
-casually promotes the use of nukes on a non nuclear country that hasn’t attacked us or threatened to.
There is no center. The faux center is something the rightists created. Most liberals would be thrilled to regain a true center, which is somewhere to the left of the fake one that author Harold Ford typifies.
The last liberal president was LBJ, elected 43 years ago. Liberals today don’t seek to go that far to the left, but are insisting on a center more in tune with the aims and aspirations of the majority of the country.
It’s time for us to all remember we elect representatives to represent our interests, not to treat us like children and tell us their foul tasting medicine is good for us.
It’s the DLC that’s taken us liberals for granted, not the reverse. And today we see why their way has failed the nation as Dems are viewed as having no principles, no cohesive vision, and no stomach for any serious or sustained fight.
That’s not centrism. That’s cowardice and selloutism.
Drop the phoney labels and ask voters, issue by issue what they want. That’s the real center of the country and it’s what liberals are promoting.
I’m not sure what the motives of Ford and O’Malley are, but their pretty package looks less so once the ribbons and bows come off. That smells too much of the cheap colognes of K Street and Wall Street and nothing like any Main Street in America.
Add: Barbara O’Brien takes them down piece by piece in a must0read rebuke.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:35 pm
The last liberal president was LBJ, elected 43 years ago. Liberals today don’t seek to go that far to the left
Too far to the left? Lyndon Johnson? Civil rights legislation and Medicare are further to the left than today’s liberals would choose to go?
No wonder I gave up on calling myself a liberal a good number of years ago.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
Or - wait a minute. Question arising from a second reading, did I misunderstand you? Were those two sentences not intended to be connected? Was that really meant to say “The last liberal president was LBJ, elected 43 years ago. The fact is, liberals today don’t seek to go way far over to the left, rather, they are insisting, etc.?”
August 8th, 2007 at 7:08 am
The DLC has long been recognized as Republican lite, so Ford/O’Malley team’s remarks are hardly a surprise. That’s the place where Corporate money can gravitate to allow the Corporation to appear bi-partisan without actually giving money to the left.
Maybe the problem isn’t where the right is, but where the left is. When Kucinich is the far left wing and unable to generate any support, that is a problem.
FDR was a successful because there was a real left (Socialists) that was vigorous and growing because of the depression. That pulled the center left enough to get Social Security and other social programs through the Congress and still appear centrist.
The red-baiting of the 50’s eliminated that far-left wing, moving the center to the right.
The right has proved deadly efficient at moving the dialog to the right since then.
Thus, we have “centrists” like Ford, O’Malley and Clinton.
And the far-left is Kucinich.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I’m saying most liberals would settle for less than LBJ liberalism. At this point, most would settle for anything to the left of Bush. Which means EvenHilary.
I’m not a ‘Most Liberals’