Democratic Party

Thursday, Oct 30, 2003 8:00 PM UTC

“There are leftists, but there is no left”

In These Times founder James Weinstein on the American left's "long detour" with communism, its current crisis, and the hope he sees in Howard Dean.

By Joan Walsh

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Nobody would mistake left-wing scholar and publisher James Weinstein for Roger Ailes. But long before there was a Fox News, Weinstein knew that the failure of the American left to become an enduring force in American politics was in part a failure to compete in the marketplace of ideas and in the world of media — and that back when the left thrived, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it relied on a web of local, regional and national newspapers and magazines. So while most of his colleagues focused on their books and the world of academia, he played a leading role in founding journals like Studies on the Left and Socialist Review, starting San Francisco’s Modern Times bookstore and, most notably, In These Times newspaper.

I worked at In These Times in the mid-1980s, back when it called itself “an independent socialist newspaper” (being more honest about his politics than Roger Ailes, Weinstein didn’t choose the motto “fair and balanced”). I saw the label as one of Weinstein’s charming eccentricities — he was determined to revive socialism’s respectability, take it back from those who had stolen it — but the paper’s left-wing politics were not eccentric; it was unexpectedly hardheaded. That was where I lost my romance with identity politics, with believing that some amalgam of women, blacks, gays and other pissed-off people would gradually rise and transform American politics. The paper covered all those movements, but critically. And it backed efforts to work within the Democratic Party, like Jesse Jackson’s 1984 and 1988 presidential runs, discouraging the vanity and nihilism of third-party politics — the impulse that ultimately turned into Ralph Nader’s disastrous Green Party run in 2000, which gave the presidency to George Bush.

Weinstein knows disastrous third-party efforts firsthand — he was a Communist Party member for a short time in the 1940s, and became briefly infamous on the left in the late 1970s for helping to confirm historian Ron Radosh’s revisionist account of the Rosenberg case: that despite the left’s claims that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were falsely accused and wrongly executed for spying for the Soviet Union, Julius did in fact pass information to the Soviets. (He also favorably reviewed Radosh’s “The Rosenberg File” for In These Times.) To many on the left Weinstein’s admission was heresy, given the history of redbaiting and right-wing witch hunting the left had endured in the 1950s. But Weinstein has always reckoned clearly with the contradiction of that decade — redbaiting was a disaster, but so was communism, and both had hurt the American left.

Weinstein retired as publisher of In These Times in 1999, though he still supports its work, and this year he finished his fourth book, “The Long Detour: The History and Future of the American Left.” He calls himself a “pathological optimist,” and he thinks that despite its “long detour” — the Soviet experiment and the years American communists spent defending it — the left can once again play a vital role in reforming American democracy. Salon spoke to Weinstein by phone from his home in Chicago.

Your book charts the development of an authentic, indigenous, vital American left — and an American socialism — through the beginning of the 20th century. Then it all came apart with World War I, when the left’s opposition to the war was used to tar it as treasonous and anti-American, and there were a whole string of government efforts to target and dismantle it. Was that really the first time the left was attacked as “traitorous”? Obviously, there are echoes today.

Well, it was, really. Before that, there were some movements and groups that were attacked as “un-American,” given the prevalence of immigrants in their ranks. But not “anti-American” or treasonous. Still, the socialists gained a lot of support during the war, in fact, that led to the government’s efforts to disrupt the party. It’s hard for people to understand today how unpopular that war really was.

Yes, it’s linked with World War II as one of the “good wars.”

Right, but it was very unpopular at the time, and one big factor was the number of German immigrants in the U.S., many of whom did oppose the war …

For nationalist reasons.

Some of them. But not all of them. Of course, the German socialists — who were particularly powerful in Wisconsin, especially Milwaukee — were totally anti-Kaiser. They didn’t oppose the war because they supported the Kaiser.

But they were smeared that way.

Yes. Then later, with the rise of the Soviet Union, the left was considered “anti-American” because it was seen — the Communist Party, at least — as supporting an enemy that was supposed to be very powerful and threatening, but that was basically weak and desperately trying to catch up with American capitalism’s level of industrialization.

But you’ve always been very honest about the fact that the American Communist Party was supporting the Soviet Union, which was our enemy, and how that support completely disfigured the American left, with ramifications to this day. In fact, reading the book I found myself going back and forth between feeling like the left has been destroyed by the government — looking at World War I, the Red Scare, the Palmer Act, McCarthyism, through COINTELPRO in the ’60s — and the notion that the left has destroyed itself. Thanks to its romance with the C.P. and the Soviet Union in the ’40s and ’50s, and then with violence in the ’60s. Where do you come down on that question?

Look, I wrote this book to make clear that, as you say, there was an American left, an American socialism, and through the first 20 years of the 20th century, it was growing and important. Much of what it advocated for we take for granted today. Especially after the New Deal — Social Security, workmen’s compensation, unemployment insurance, the eight-hour workday, the 40-hour week, minimum-wage laws — the ideas of the left became mainstream ideas. But they started out as totally marginal. You also have to understand, the left was in every aspect of American society back then: Two-thirds of the original members of the NAACP were socialists. The first people who got arrested for advocating birth control — Margaret Sanger, etc. — were socialists. Many trade unionists were socialists. The Intercollegiate Socialist Society, the children of the ruling class, was a vigorous organization. It had become an important aspect of every part of American life, and its programs addressed the problems of the emerging gigantic corporations — it was an attempt to stabilize the system, which meant to humanize it.

So as time went on, and especially in the New Deal, the ideas that had originally been totally marginal became the property of the mainstream of American political discourse, and meanwhile socialists had nothing new to say, because the Russian Revolution had thrown the whole movement backward. What came to mean “socialism” after the Russian Revolution was this incredibly backward, pre-capitalist, pre-industrial society whose main goal was to catch up with the west. I mean, in my book I show how the Russian city of Magnitogorsk became the model of a socialist city, but it replicated Gary, Ind. — everything radiated out from the steel mill! — which was probably the worst failed American city. I mean, they had no idea what socialism was. It was a terrible throwback, the use of slave labor, the absence of any kind of political democracy. And yet the communists, who really were at the time the most vital force in the American left, were defending it.

Yeah, but that goes back to my question: Was the left destroyed or did it destroy itself? I mean, the party channeled that vitality toward defending this failed system — which offered no democracy plus a lower standard of living. Great idea, sign me up.

Right. And coming out of World War II, you had American society going through tremendous changes, and you had corporate rulers worried we might fall back into the Great Depression. Their answer was partly the Cold War, and partly consumerism — we go from a society built on self-abnegation and saving money to a society where everybody moves to the suburbs, everybody has two cars, everybody needs their own washer/dryer — but the left had no answers. There was really very little in the way of an attempt to make sense of it.

In fact you had this odd break after the bitter infighting around communism and McCarthyism — and then came the New Left. And I’m struck, in the book, by what you say the New Left had in common with the way the Communist Party worked — that the emphasis on identity politics seemed borrowed from Popular Front-ism (when communists advised members to work through existing organizations to try to move them left). In both cases, there was no focus on cross-issue politics, on class, there was no overarching ideology — the communists because they didn’t want to be honest about what it was; the New Left because it really didn’t have one. And they were both dead ends.

I love the story I use in my book about [leading antiwar activist] Jerry Rubin, because it encapsulates what the problem was. Here you had this great antiwar movement, where most people who got involved were in it because they wanted to end the war, but when someone suggested they might actually end the war, Jerry Rubin panicked: “What would happen to the movement?” he wanted to know. His private belief was that this was some kind of revolutionary moment and that it couldn’t just “succeed.” But this was true of a lot of people in SNCC [the Students' Nonviolent Coordinating Committee], the environmental movement.

I think it’s true to this day. I think a lot of people on the left who get involved in single-issue movements — antipoverty movements, welfare organizing, labor, education reform — have this nihilistic belief that they can’t really solve the problems they’re purporting to address, because “the system” is so corrupt it won’t let them. If they did their jobs as advocates successfully, the issues would go away and they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves.

Yes, there’s some of that, and even worse than that is every one of these movements begins to operate not as part of a coherent left, as it did in the early 1900s. All these movements existed, but they were all held together by common goals and principles of the socialists who were the dominant force on the left at that time. Today, they all become like any other lobby group, and they become more and more narrow …

And there’s a zero sum approach, where if Latinos get some, blacks get less, if women get better jobs, men have to lose.

And yet, the left still has this approach to politics where they talk about coalitions as laundry lists of organizations and groups whose basic approach is really divisive.

There’s no vision of a common good.

Right. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, it should have been possible to put that whole period behind us and start thinking: Now, what’s a left that works in this country? What is the potential in the United States for the kind of society that would let us all lead humane, comfortable, secure, creative lives? But it’s not happening.

Anywhere?

Nowhere!

Well, you’ve always been a comparative realist on the left, and negative about the potential for third parties, given our “winner take all” system. In These Times sponsored a lot of debate over the Nader campaign, but I know you were very critical of it yourself.

I was very critical, but of course we were open to our readers’ opinions and we had a lot of readers who just loved Ralph Nader. And it isn’t even a question of Ralph Nader. Right now Nader is working with Dennis Kucinich, who’s running in the Democratic Party.

Which is what you think he should be doing?

Well, not necessarily. Look, I’ve been criticized for saying everybody should rush and join the Democratic Party. That’s not what I’m saying. I think there might be congressional districts where you can do something different. I think there are congressional districts where the left should run somebody in Republican primaries. My real model is the Non-Partisan League, which was in neither party, but which got control of all of North Dakota with allies in both parties, because it utilized an open primary system. Whereas the Socialist Party, which had the same exact platform, never elected anybody except in a couple of districts.

But the problem with the Green Party is that it doesn’t tend to run in Republican districts or challenge Republicans. It looks for places where it’s got some strength — which tend to be places that elect Democrats. So they go up against Democrats.

And they split the left.

But supporting Kucinich is a step in the right direction.

Yes. I mean, Kucinich isn’t going anywhere. That’s not the point. The point is that Kucinich is doing in the Democratic Party something that’s analogous to what Nader did — he’s getting some large crowds, he got 10,000 people in Minneapolis, and they’re hearing his ideas and they’re getting excited. I think he’s bringing people into the process. And then when he’s forced out, they have the option of hooking up with someone else because he’s doing it within the Democratic Party framework.

You talk about Ralph Reed in the book — he’s your role model, right? But seriously, he goes from Christian Coalition head to take over the Georgia Republican Party and takes down Sen. Max Cleland. The Christian right has a lot of discipline that the left just seems to lack.

They’ve done very well. They still don’t represent more than 15 to 17 percent of the voters. But because they operate intelligently, unlike the left, they have tremendous influence.

So you’re supporting Howard Dean this year.

Oh yeah, I mean, I don’t think he’s Franklin D. Roosevelt, although Roosevelt ran as a conservative in 1932, but he’s just head and shoulders above everybody else. He’s the only person who can talk to an audience and sound like an honest person, and I think that’s what Americans are dying for — someone who’ll listen to what they say, respond honestly and directly, and if he disagrees he’ll say why. I’ve heard him do that — I went to a fundraising party for him in Chicago a couple of months ago. The amazing thing about that was that I thought I’d go see a lot of my friends, and there were 500 people there and I didn’t know a single person. This is a movement.

What happens to it if he doesn’t get the nomination?

Who knows? But you know, it’s not that kind of movement. It’s not just about him. But the war is very important. He opposed the war at a time when it was very difficult to oppose the war, and now everybody’s trying to half-jump on his bandwagon. And they all look like a bunch of fools by comparison.

What do you think of the Wesley Clark phenomenon?

I think it’s the Clintons’ attempt, and the Democratic Leadership Council’s attempt, to hang onto the party. I think they’re afraid of what Dean represents — a whole new circle of people who threaten their hold on the party. Plus I actually think Clark is a terrible candidate. Everybody thinks the Democrats need a general, but by the time the election comes around in a little over a year George Bush will be paying for Iraq, and he’ll be in trouble no matter who he faces.

You think that’s the issue that can bring Bush down?

Well, not necessarily. The economy’s in pretty bad shape, too. [Laughs)] But I think the war is an issue that’s going to mobilize and energize a lot of people.

But won’t it divide a lot of people? I mean, there was a big antiwar demonstration last weekend, but the call was “End the occupation now” and I can’t support that — and most Americans won’t support that.

No, we can’t get out now in the sense that tomorrow morning we get out. Dean isn’t calling for that.

No, but some people on the left are. Kucinich is, ANSWER is. I mean, to go back to your book, to the extent the war poses an opportunity for the left, it poses a huge danger, too.

If there were a left, which there isn’t. There is no left.

Come on, there’s a left.

No, there are leftists, there are little groups of leftists. But there’s no left in the sense that there’s any coherence or commonality …

Well, the people with the biggest mouths get defined as the left.

Yes, and look, the “Get out now!” faction isn’t necessarily bad, as long as it’s in the background. It’s sort of how I feel about Kucinich — I’m glad he’s there, he energizes people who aren’t energized, and he provides a buffer for Democrats who know they can’t slide too far to the right, they can’t ignore the left.

Maybe I’m not as sanguine as you. I think the “Get out now,” ANSWER people wind up getting defined as “the left” — and the rest of us get smeared. When in fact there are really two lefts in this country. One is the optimistic one, which believes that its principles are in accordance with American democracy, that we’re just trying to make America live up to its own principles. And the other is a deeply negative and pessimistic left, which really does seem to hate this country and thinks everything it stands for is wrong, that it’s just a failed enterprise. That’s the ANSWER faction, and it bothers me.

Well, it’s really a holdover from the whole Soviet period. But it’s fading.

I hope so. But then, you’ve always been an optimist. What makes you optimistic lately?

I was just reading an obituary for Edward Said in the London Review of Books, and it talked about how he was always optimistic, but realistic, and it quoted [the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio] Gramsci, you know, about needing a “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.” I mean, look at what we had in this country in the 1950s, and look at what we have now. Look at the status of women, blacks, gays. And we achieved this in decades when, except for the period of the New Left in the ’60s, the nation was mostly controlled by conservatives. You hear people in different movements saying how bad things are, “We haven’t won anything,” but that’s crazy. Look at gays — look at television, where you have shows like “Will and Grace,” or the gay guys who make over the straight guys. Come on, look, it’s a different world, it’s a better world, despite the fact that the Christian right is built on opposition to this stuff. So that’s what makes me an optimist. It’s a different country, and a much better country. I’m not a historical determinist, but on the other hand, the older I get, I’m close to it.

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.

Wednesday, May 23, 2012 4:34 PM UTC

Senate Democrats heroically fund TSA

Democrats score the dumbest political victory of 2012

By Alex Pareene

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(Credit: Reuters/Frank Polich)

On Tuesday, a Senate Appropriations Committee vote effectively highlighted everything that is stupid about politics.

The Transportation Security Administration, a universally loathed government agency, is facing a shortfall, despite its more than $8 billion budget. Instead of having a debate over what effective airport security might actually look like and how much should reasonably be spent on the honestly rare threat of commercial-air-travel-based terrorism, there was a debate over how best to come up with the money needed for all the radioactive naked picture machines and bomb-sniffing dogs. The Democrats suggested passing on the cost of ineffective, cumbersome and intrusive security theater to citizens, via higher fees on airfares. The Republicans, even more predictably, suggested cutting spending that directly helps poor people to ensure there is enough to spend on stopping imaginary future 9/11s.

The newspaper account of the debate in The Hill just reinforced the Republican spin, highlighting the Democrats’ decision to make people spend more money on the hated TSA and downplaying the actual existing Republican alternative to the proposal, which was not “spend less on the hated TSA” but rather “raise money for the hated TSA by slashing needed aid to states.” The Democrats won, or “won,” and now they will earn the fruits of that victory: well-deserved scorn from everyone. And Ben Nelson (D-Troll Town) voted with the Republicans. (Though surely having users pay the fees for supposedly necessary security measures is perfectly conservative, isn’t it? Am I missing something here? I mean besides the fact that the two sides in this debate weren’t actually “liberal” and “conservative” but rather “people who want to come up with a way of paying for the oppressive and useless national security state” versus “people who want there to be an oppressive national security state but hate government spending on feeding and sheltering impoverished people.”)

I don’t know of anyone not employed by the TSA or some other arm of Homeland Security that believes the TSA does a good job and deserves its massive budget, but everyone in Washington apparently feels differently (and is terrified of being blamed for “voting to cut TSA funding” if there is another terrifying and deadly underwear bomber, of course). This is why everyone hates politics and Congress and Washington. This and Iraq. And the drug war.

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Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012 6:36 PM UTC

The Democratic Senate might just survive

A Senate map that looked bleak a year ago is now littered with surprise pick-up opportunities

By Steve Kornacki

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The Democratic Senate might just survive

Charles Schumer and Harry Reid (Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

The growing likelihood that Richard Lugar will lose next Tuesday’s Indiana Republican Senate primary is the latest in a string of unexpected developments that have bolstered Democrats chances of hanging on to the Senate.

As I wrote yesterday, Lugar’s conservative primary challenger, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock, lacks the incumbent’s broad cross-partisan appeal and is closely identified with Tea Party-flavored Republicanism. Democrats, meanwhile, are poised to nominate Joe Donnelly, a moderate third-term congressman who defied the odds to hold onto his seat in the GOP tide of 2010. Mourdock would still probably be the favorite over Donnelly in the fall, just because of Indiana’s red tint, but the seat would be in play – something that would never be the case with Lugar as the GOP nominee.

The implications of a Democratic pick-up in Indiana could be huge. The party entered the 2012 campaign cycle in a defensive crouch, nursing a 53-47 edge in the upper chamber and facing a very challenging slate of races. The basic problem: Because of strong years in 2000 and 2006, the class of senators up for reelection in 2012 is dominated by Democrats, many of them representing marginal and Republican-friendly states. With a close presidential contest, the party won’t be benefiting from the national tide that lifted its congressional candidates in ’06, leaving Republicans with a host of pick-up opportunities – and Democrats with very few.

Well, that was the case early in the cycle, at least. Back then, there was only one clear Democratic pick-up opportunity on the board: Nevada, where John Ensign, the one-time rising GOP star, was forced into retirement by scandal. The race to succeed him, between the appointed GOP incumbent, Dean Heller, and Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, is a toss-up.

But since those bleak early days, Democrats have caught some breaks.

The first came in Massachusetts, where the state’s biggest Democratic names all begged off from running against Scott Brown, leaving an assortment of B- and C-list options to a vie for a nomination that looked worthless last summer. But then Elizabeth Warren stepped in and proved herself to be a powerful communicator and a prolific fund-raiser. The Massachusetts race is now among the most competitive in the country, giving Democrats a 50/50 chance of knocking off Brown.

Then came Olympia Snowe’s surprise February announcement that she wouldn’t seek a fourth term in Maine. Quickly, the state’s former independent governor, Angus King, announced his candidacy. King, who won by 40 points the last time he was on a Maine ballot, is now the overwhelming favorite to win in November. While he won’t say which party he’ll caucus with, Democrats in the state and nationally are treating him like one of their own. Chuck Schumer, one of the top Democrats in the Senate, referred to the Snowe seat this week as “ours.”

Two other races that weren’t supposed to be competitive are also on the radar now. In Arizona, Democrats have recruited a candidate with a compelling biography: Richard Carmona, who served as George W. Bush’s surgeon general only to turn on the administration. A Democratic poll has shown Carmona within striking distance of Republican Jeff Flake, while a recent nonpartisan survey put President Obama only two points behind Mitt Romney in the state. There is hope among Democrats that Arizona, with its growing Hispanic population, is more winnable for them than most assume – and that without favorite son John McCain on the ballot, the state would have been theirs in 2008.

There are subtler clues of an unexpectedly competitive race in North Dakota. When Democrat Kent Conrad announced that he wouldn’t run again, the state was written off as an easy Republican pick-up – and it still might be. But some early developments at least offer a glimmer of hope to Democrats. As Politico reported this week:

With a dearth of public polling, the case for former Attorney General Heidi Heitkamp is based on a body of clues.

A Democratic poll showed Heitkamp with a 5-point lead; no Republican data countered the finding. The latest Crossroads GPS air strike included $76,000 to bruise Heitkamp — a sign she’s on the radar of the cycle’s most notorious super PAC. Even Berg blasted an email to supporters recently claiming the state is “Harry Reid’s #1 target.”

Add Indiana to this mix and Democrats have a total of five opportunities (or potential opportunities) for pick-ups that didn’t exist at the start of the cycle. Obviously, they won’t win all of these races, and they may still get routed in a few of them. But when you’re clinging to a 53-47 majority, any seat gained could be the difference between majority and minority status next year.

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Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki.

Friday, Apr 27, 2012 3:00 PM UTC

Dems desert the left

Why aren't Democratic candidates for Senate promoting liberal causes on their websites?

By Jonathan Bernstein

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Victories in two Pennsylvania House districts over two conservative Democrats who voted against healthcare reform gave liberals something to cheer about this week. And they’re quite right to focus on primary elections: Nomination contests are really fights over who will control the political parties. And yet liberals appear to be missing some major opportunities to influence the next round of Democratic senators, just when they have the chance to do so. A look at the websites of the 10 Democratic candidates most likely to become U.S. senators reveals that few of them are interested in several of the issues that have been the hallmark of liberal activism and often frustration during the Obama years: marriage equality, a public option on healthcare, filibuster reform and civil liberties.

Why should we care what candidates have on their websites? The truth is that politicians generally try to keep their promises once they are elected. Moreover, the more visible the promise, the more likely it is that the politician will consider herself bound by it – and face consequences if she votes the other way. Ideally, one would want to see what candidates talk about on the stump, and what they advertise in mailers, TV ads and other formats. But websites have some advantages, too. In addition to being easy to access, they also are open-ended. Presumably, candidates will list every issue they believe is important. Or at least, every issue they want to talk about. And those are the issues, again, that they’re likely to act on if they win.

So I looked through the Issues sections of the 10 Democrats who are most likely to be elected – either challengers rated as having a good chance, or open-seat candidates in Democratic or swing states. In Hawaii and New Mexico, that meant both candidates fighting in a contested primary; in six other states, it meant the odds-on favorite for the nomination.

The results should be disappointing for liberals. Two of the 10 candidates, Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, don’t even have an Issues section on their websites. For the other eight, I’ll run down the numbers quickly. None of them mentioned support for adding a public option to ACA; indeed, three had no healthcare issues page at all, unless you count a page about protecting Social Security and Medicare, which was quite popular. Two of the eight support marriage equality, both of them in New England (Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Chris Murphy in Connecticut). Only two other candidates mentioned LGBT issues at all, Tim Kaine in Viriginia and Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, who featured it in her bio page. Filibuster reform also received only two mentions. For civil liberties and the array of issues related to torture and detention, only Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, who opposed renewal of the Patriot Act, had any mention at all.

By contrast, seven of the eight candidates had a whole section of their Issues pages devoted to veterans, usually alone but in two cases bundled with something else. Now, it’s certainly true that most liberals support help for veterans, but as campaign issues go, this is surely one of the most bland.

I was pretty surprised by all of this, but I was most surprised by the candidates in competitive primaries. In Hawaii, Mazie Hirono is attempting to beat Ed Case from the left, and yet Hirono doesn’t hit at any of these issues that might help her with liberal activists in Hawaii and nationally. And it’s not as if either Hawaii or New Mexico, the two states with contested primaries, is exactly Alabama; there are plenty of liberal Democrats who are going to be voting in those primaries, and liberal positions shouldn’t be the kiss of death in the general election.

So what’s going on? It’s possible that the candidates are being overly cautious. I suspect, however, that what’s really happening is that Democratic interest groups, activists and other party actors are not pushing hard on any of these issues.

And that’s a serious mistake. It’s almost certainly the case that the best time for partisans to influence legislators is while they are running for election to some office for the first time. After all, that’s when they need party support the most – especially for those who have tough primaries, but really for all of them. Once elected, they begin to build personal connections with their constituents, based on bringing home pork or on other personal relationships. Party becomes relatively less important. Certainly, that’s what politicians have an incentive to do – to increase support based on who they are, rather than being constrained by specific policy commitments that, odds are, will make someone unhappy.

Now, it’s true, of course, that it’s still early in the cycle, so some of this could change going forward. And as I mentioned, websites are only one form of candidate advertising. It’s certainly possible that some of these Issues sections were put together exactly how I suggested – by volunteers who didn’t have the authority to commit the candidate to potentially controversial positions – and that as the year goes on things will change.

But what they’re showing right now certainly isn’t what most liberals would like to see. If activists want change on these issues after November, they need to start targeting these candidates now, before it’s too late.

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Jonathan Bernstein writes at a Plain Blog About Politics. Follow him at @jbplainblog More Jonathan Bernstein.

Sunday, Mar 25, 2012 4:00 PM UTC

All for none and none for all

Forty years of culture wars and racial battles wrecked the country and the GOP – but it's not too late to change

By Joan Walsh

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(Credit: AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

My March 4 post “What’s the matter with white people?” was Salon’s top story that week, and it got a lot of comments and online attention. I went on vacation a few days later, but I’ve wanted to address a few arguments, if belatedly.

I asked “What’s the matter with white people?” because my people are increasingly coming under fire from the right and the left. Republicans have begun to blame not the economy but “dependency” on government and rising rates of single parenthood for the economic troubles of the white working class. On the left, meanwhile, whites are dismissed as the backward base of the increasingly radical GOP, and working class whites, in particular, are derided as racists who won’t vote for Democrats because the party is now led by a black man (ignoring the fact that a larger share of working class whites voted for Barack Obama than for Caucasians John Kerry, Al Gore or Bill Clinton.)

The fact is, working and middle class whites have supported too many Republicans who’ve dismantled the opportunity structure that created the vast (white) middle class from the 1930s through the 1960s – but that’s at least partly because too many Democrats turned their backs on those policies, too. The larger point of the piece, if a 4,000-plus word article can be said to have a single point, was this:

The emerging multiracial Obama coalition has the potential to transform the way we all think about race and politics as we invent the next America — but only if we can all forgo petty racial score-setting and 20^th century conceptions about identity. And only if more white people wake up to what they’ve let the Republican Party do to the country in the last 40 years, in the name of holding on to what they think they have.

I was making two related arguments: that whites must begin to face up to economic and political reality – that the party most of them support now stands for destroying not only the social programs they (incorrectly) believe benefit “other people,” but also programs they support, like Social Security and Medicare, food stamps and unemployment, as well as protections for workers who have jobs. My second point was just as important and less commonly heard: I asked that the multiracial left have more empathy for working class whites, and stop stereotyping them and dismissing their political choices, when we disagree, as merely “racist.” Interestingly, I got little or no push back on that point from anyone on the multiracial left, although I have been criticized for that argument many times, going back to the fractious 2008 Democratic primary. Maybe we’re making progress.

The criticism of my “White People” argument came almost exclusively from the right, and there were at least a few points worth engaging.

….

Of course, more than a few people reacted to the headline without thinking (or reading the piece), and I heard a lot of what I predicted I would in the article: I am a racist! How dare I generalize about white people? I would never talk about black people that way!

The best response along those lines came from Newsbusters, the fan club Brent Bozell runs especially to promote me. It featured a typically outraged harangue from Noel Sheppard: “Actual Joan Walsh Salon Headline: ‘What’s the Matter with White People?” and included this: “Maybe Walsh should check her own racist leanings given her hatred of white people.” Noel, I love white people! Some of my best friends are white. As I even revealed in the piece, that includes some of my own family. You can do better, Noel. Try again.

The reply from the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto was a little bit more substantive – although he kicked it off on Twitter by shrieking at Charles Murray that I’d accused Murray of “attacking white people!”

I didn’t accuse Murray of “attacking” all white people. I’d made the point that Murray now blames poor and working class whites for their economic struggles, much the way he has always blamed the black poor. Their poverty rate is climbing while their wages and family incomes are falling not because of huge shifts in the economy that favor the wealthy, but because they’re lazy and promiscuous and not terribly bright, and they just don’t follow the rules the way the poor are supposed to. This is the oldest argument around, of course, when it comes to explaining away social inequity and defending the economic status quo. You can find it in the Gospels, in clashes between that bleeding heart liberal Jesus Christ, and those who believed poverty was God’s punishment. In every age, the struggle for justice turns on how successfully the privileged can justify their wealth as the natural result of their hard work and superior talent and/or the innate shortcomings of their lessers.

In my lifetime, that argument has been racialized. As the nation struggled to right the wrongs of racism, some people began to argue that the problems of poor African Americans had more to do with their own personal and cultural shortcomings than society’s, and that our efforts to use government to help made the problem worse. But I was raised knowing that virtually every awful thing said about black people had once been said about Irish Catholics, and so I’ve spent a lot of my life refuting that racialized scapegoating, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.

Lately, though, I’ve felt that we’re getting some help with that task from Republicans, as they scapegoat working class whites in terms they used to only use against blacks — their economic problems are due to the fact that they’re lazy, too many don’t get married and they want government to take care of them (Charles Murray’s argument). Taranto misunderstands the point I’m making about the new GOP line:

When Walsh accuses Murray of “attacking white people,” she seems to be hoping that persons of pallor will be open to a similar appeal–that they will finally wake up and start voting what the left considers to be their “interests.” Essentially that means embracing government dependency: “Today, many white folks who are voting Republican don’t seem to know one important fact: they are, in fact, the ‘takers.’ ” Once they figure that out, Walsh thinks, they’ll join the blacks and the Hispanics and the professional elite, and the Democratic hold on the electorate will be secure.

That’s not what I was saying, at all. I’m not someone who makes the simplistic case that the working class is voting against its interests by backing Republicans. This is a debate in which I think the right has the better side. Claiming that working class Republicans – or black and Latino Republicans, for that matter — are “voting against their interests” is hugely condescending, a vestigial Marxism that assumes the only thing that matters is material conditions. It can also sound like we’re saying: “How dare you presume you have anything in common with the wealthy, peon?”

The Republican allegiance of some working class people may well be aspirational, as conservatives argue. Liberals like John Rawls’ famous theory of justice, which held that most people would want to design a society in which, should they find themselves at the bottom, they would be protected. It turns out that a lot of people prefer social policies that would protect them if they make it to the top, however unlikely that kind of economic mobility is turning out to be in the U.S. today. Voting Republican may also reflect genuine cultural and religious values. Growing up Irish Catholic, I can’t pretend that my relatives who vote Republican over the issue of abortion are dupes suffering from some kind of “false consciousness.” They care about that issue passionately. We can disagree with conservative working class white people, we can wish they had different priorities, but when we “assume” they’re voting against their own interests, as though we, not they, know their interests, our condescension shows.

….

On the other hand, I do not mean to disrespect working class whites, but I have to say: it would be great if their politics reckoned with reality. As I pointed out in the piece, red-state Republican areas enjoy the highest levels of federal spending. That’s an inconsistency that can’t be totally explained by culture war politics. White working class Republicans are simply wrong about the way government has worked, in their own lives and in the lives of others, and Democrats need to talk about that, respectfully.

Taranto hints at the case other Republicans make more forcefully – that the more Americans become dependent on government, the more they’ll vote Democratic, and that’s Barack Obama’s not-so-secret plan. “Republican supporters will continue to decrease every year as more Americans become dependent on the government,” Tea Party Sen. Jim DeMint wrote in his last book. “Dependent voters will naturally elect even big-government progressives who will continue to smother economic growth and spend America deeper into debt.” I think DeMint’s notion is alarmist GOP propaganda. But I’d be happy to have a political debate about the role of government in our lives – one that’s untainted by racism, fears of a lazy, parasitic “other” or charges that Democrats are “socialists” seeking to impose some Soviet-style or lefty-European system on America. I think it should be clear that Democrats love capitalism, because twice in the last 75 years, under Franklin Delano Roosevelt and then under President Obama, we saved capitalism from itself.

Finally, Taranto (and a lot of letter writers who didn’t seem to read my piece), claimed that the “demographic doomsday” scenario, in which a declining white population leads to the gradual extinction of the GOP, is “overblown.” I agree – and I said so in the article. I regularly quarrel with liberals who insist that a magical “people of color” alliance is going to move the country to the left, permanently. It’s not going to happen. In the 80s and 90s, it was easy to imagine that Latinos and Asians might be receptive to Republican messaging around family, small business, religion, as well as hostility to big government, given that immigrants often came from countries ruled by oppressive governments (whether of the left or the right). Certainly Karl Rove once believed that. Republicans chased many Latinos, Asians and even conservative African Americans into the arms of Democrats by allowing racism and xenophobia to flourish in their party unchecked. As the GOP gets beaten in coming election cycles, it’s going to have to figure out a way to appeal to more than just white people — or perish as a party.

Also: most scenarios in which the white majority “disappears” in the next couple of decades ignore the fact that about 50 percent of the fastest-growing “minority” – Hispanics or Latinos – consider themselves white. (That’s why the Census has a category for “non-Hispanic whites.”) So do most mixed-race Americans in many studies. Besides, the definition of “whiteness” has regularly shifted throughout American history – Irish, Italians, Jews and other non-Nordic, Anglo immigrants all took turns in the “non-white” category in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It’s quite possible that our notion of whiteness – or let’s just say “the American mainstream” or “real Americans,” in Sarah Palin’s language – will expand to include some categories of Latinos, Asians and mixed-race folks, not to mention Clarence Thomas, Herman Cain and Condoleezza Rice.

To build a better, more inclusive country – to invent the next America – both parties are going to have to forgo identity politics and appeal to voters around principle and policy, not fear and contempt. Democrats are getting there; Republicans still have a ways to go before facing up to the fact that the identity politics practiced by the Tea Party represents a divisive dead end.

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Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large. More Joan Walsh.

Thursday, Mar 8, 2012 1:00 AM UTC

The economic story Obama must tell

We need government investment to restore prosperity. The president needs to explain that in a way that makes sense

By Gene Lyons

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(Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

Look at it this way: If the Wall Street banking crisis had taken place in 2007 instead of 2008, George W. Bush wouldn’t be able to leave home without being jeered. (As it is, he rarely leaves Texas.) Hardly anybody would buy the brand of tycoonomics GOP presidential candidates are selling. People would understand that save-the-millionaires tax cuts and deregulation had dramatically failed. President Obama would get more credit for pulling the economy out of a nose dive.

Alas, people have short attention spans and a weak understanding of abstract economic issues. You have to tell them a story. The failure of policymakers to do that has been driving progressive MVP Paul Krugman crazy. How can it be, he asks, that governments foreign and domestic are repeating the mistakes of the early 1930s — slashing government spending to reduce budget deficits, putting more people out of work, reducing demand, and inadvertently increasing deficits? Rinse and repeat.

Part of it is that the lessons of the Great Depression belong to history, and, as such, are infinitely malleable. Arguments your grandfather would have dismissed — such as Mitt Romney’s plans to assure prosperity by topping off Scrooge McDuck’s bullion tank — are given credence today. Granddad may not have grasped Keynesian economic theory, but he remembered “Hoovervilles” and bread lines. Scrooge McDuck wasn’t a cartoon figure for nothing.

Professor Krugman acknowledges that some kinds of economic thinking seem counterintuitive. “Thus,” he writes, “it’s normal to think of the economy as a whole as being like a family, which must tighten its belt in hard times; it’s also completely wrong.” Yet it makes him crazy that even President Obama has used the belt-tightening analogy.

While deeply misleading, the family metaphor works politically because it sounds like common sense. Sometimes I wonder if Grandpa didn’t also have an advantage in living closer to the farm. Though innately conservative, rural people do understand that if you skimp on fertilizer in April, you’ll have a poor hay crop come September and a hard time getting your livestock through the winter.

But nobody ever puts it to people like that. Even somebody like Krugman can be brilliant at argumentation, less gifted at storytelling. Democrats generally have lost the knack.

The key is to stress government investment. In Arkansas, where I live, nothing could be clearer than the relationship between public investment and economic prosperity. It’s practically written on the landscape, yet many need reminding.

I recently read a beautifully written memoir called “A Straw in the Sun,” by Charlie May Simon, an Arkansas writer who homesteaded in Perry County (where I live) during the 1930s. Back then, rural Arkansans basically lived in the Third World. Simon and her neighbors grew their own food, made their own clothes, music and home brew. They had no electrical power, telephones, indoor plumbing or paved roads. Few in Perry County did. They walked to town, or hitched rides on mule-drawn wagons.

Enchanting as Simon makes it sound, the world she evokes feels not 75 years distant, but 175. After World War II, what brought Perry County into the 20th century was government investment. My 65-year-old neighbor was in high school when the main highway through the county was first paved after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers bridged the Arkansas River at Conway.

So it came as something of a surprise to read that my ambitious state representative, a genial former neighbor now living over in Conway, has conceived a plan to return us to the bad old days. Supposedly by eliminating income taxes from 40 of the state’s less prosperous counties — along with concomitant cuts in public spending — GOP visionaries envision that nothing less than an economic miracle will take place.

Never mind why no such thing happened during Arkansas’s first 150 years or so of statehood. Thankfully, the proposal got nowhere. What’s amazing to me, however, is that otherwise intelligent people could be so blinded by ideology as to entertain so preposterous a scheme. Believe me; these fellows are rapt with sincerity. What’s more, their ideological brethren are taking over state governments from sea to shining sea.

That Conway, a pleasant town of approximately 60,000, should serve as the epicenter of this backward revolution strikes me as comically ironic. Although filled with Republicans, there are few cities of like size whose prosperity depends more obviously upon public largess. Located along Interstate 40, it’s also home to three state agencies and the University of Central Arkansas, a rapidly growing public institution. Trim UCA’s budget 20 percent, and Conway’s economy would go into a tailspin.

The city’s two private colleges are greatly dependent upon state-sponsored tuition scholarships, just as its nonprofit medical center relies upon Medicaid and Medicare. I could go on. Even Conway’s two newest large private employers are Internet- (hence government) dependent.

Around these parts, alas, Democrats have lost control of the story line.

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Arkansas Times columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons.