Liberals, and Democrats generally, often find themselves in a position where they are defending a minority viewpoint. Sometimes, this is because they hold the minority viewpoint (Taxes aren’t the worst way in the whole world to spend money, or poor people are often the moral superiors of rich people, or the government is as capable of arranging the finance of a national health care system as an ad hoc conglomeration of hr departments, insurance companies, and hospital stockholders). Sometimes, though, it is because they hold the basic view that even people in the minority should be allowed their opinions. This makes it difficult to follow a debate; the debate is between people who are against X, and people who are also against X but think it’s a bad idea to lock up or kill or even silence people who are for X. If you don’t really want to pay attention, after a few exchanges like
Republican: I’m against flag burning!either you get the impression that everybody is against flag burning, and so the amendment is a good idea, or you get the impression that the Democrat is in favor of flag burning, but won’t admit it because everybody else is against it. Either way, the true position of Democratic legislators doesn’t come through. Particularly, I should add, when the Republicans, aware of this, make the exchange a little more like
Democrat: I’m not in favor of flag burning, but surely a constitutional amendment to criminalize it is a bad idea.
Republican: I’m against flag burning! And the Democrats are in favor of it.
Democrat: I’m not in favor of flag burning, but surely a constitutional amendment to criminalize it is a bad idea.
Republican: Why are you in favor of flag burning?
I’m not sure what can be done about that. The Democratic position is just harder to explain. And that is not just about stupid issues like flag burning, where one would think we could break through to the majority view that we should only amend the constitution if we really need to.
Republican: I’m against abortion! And the Democrats are in favor of it.Some people (who? Why doesn’t he link to them?) suggest that the thing to do is to reverse the technique. They imagine something like this:
Democrat: I’m not in favor of terrorism, but surely using torture, secret prisons, and desecrating sacred texts are ineffective ways of persuading people that we mean well.
Republican: Why do you want to tax dead people?
Democrat: I’m against torture! And the Republicans are in favor of it.I submit that the scenario is not really very likely. Remember, the Republicans know what they are doing. They have been here before. A more likely version might go something like this:
Republican: I’m not in favor of torture, but surely we need to get vital intelligence from taxi drivers who pick up people who have names similar to those names which we made up and put on a list somewhere.
Democrat: Why are you in favor of torture?
Republican: I admit it! I love torture! Oh, why did you make me admit that, you big meanie. Now nobody will vote for me anymore. Waaaaaaah!
Democrat: I’m against torture! And the Republicans are in favor of it.Anyway, the best that you could hope for would be
Republican: Why are you in favor of terrorism?
Democrat: I’m not, but I’m against torture!
Republican: You keep changing the subject, because you don’t want to answer the question: Why do you want to tax dead people?
Democrat: I’m against torture! And the Republicans are in favor of it.
Republican: Why are you in favor of terrorism?
Democrat: No, why are you in favor of torture?
Republican: No, why do you hate ducks?
Democrat: No, why do you—wha? Ducks?
Republican: Duck season is over, and it’s rabbit season!
Democrat: Duck season!
Republican: OK, it’s duck season. Now, will you tell us why you hate ducks?
Democrat: I don’t hate ducks, but the ecosystem is very delicate, and if we don’t take seriously our stewardship of the oh shit you got me again.
I’m not saying that all Democrats are wimpy and worthless debaters, and that all Republicans are weaselly demagogues. Not in this note, anyway. What I’m saying is that (a) the accurate liberal response to many questions challenging policies begins ‘it’s more complicated than that’, and (2) any response beginning that way makes a lot of people’s eyes glaze over, as they assume what follows is insincere fence-straddling.
We can’t change the first of those and stay liberal. I have no idea if we can change the second, but I sure hope we can.
chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.
it seems like the qualifications are the big problem. what about something like the legislative rider.
no wiggle, no qualification, no getting caught in the knot.
repeat as necessary…
of course that’s not really a good way of saying it. i got caught up in figuring out how to do the formatting and blew the note. allison is saying that (OC) nobody wants to deny future amendments.
i’d really rather that democrats who had a mic stuffed in their face used the time to tell people what needs to be done instead of getting sidetracked.
Don’t think they haven’t tried that. It doesn’t work as well as it ought to. Part of that is the broadcast news media, part of it is that the Republicans are too smart to play yesterday’s game (and too good at playing tomorrow’s), and part of it is that, for instance, although it is certainly true that every moment we fail to act on climate change we endanger our economic security, Democrats often feel it appropriate to mention that acting on climate change is expensive and should be paid for out of revenues, and that even if we act on climate change immediately, there is no immediate remedy commensurate with individual property rights (or even conflicting with them) that can guarantee that all Americans will be healthy, happy, and prosperous all year long.
And by that point, people are thinking “when will this guy shut up?” not “this guy is honestly addressing an intrinsically complex situation”.
Thanks,
-V.
David couldn’t keep away from this, he swears this is the last of it:
Every minute that the Dems aren’t providing public pressure on the really big issues. there are global movements on poverty, disease, climate that are historically amazing and we aren’t participating in them because our prez is a nimrod. it is not acceptable for the rest of americans to behave similarly and talk about only what the prez wants to talk about. maybe there are a lot of people who think that anyone outside the country is a moron, but i don’t care if bringing up these bad situations is considered impolitic in DC, that doesn’t change their seriousness, the real solutions on offer, or the stupidity of a program which ignores those situations. with due respect to civil libertarians, and everybody, the situation at git’mo is DWARFED by the losses of life to AIDS and future climate disasters FOR WHICH WE ARE AND WILL BE RESPONSIBLE.
David is getting very upset. I tried to tell him that talking about torture is not just an important human rights issue but a way to talk about our role in international process. I don’t know if I agree with him or not but he says that AIDS kills as many people as the whole population at guantanamo bay every 2 hours – he wants to know where our priorities really lie.
no no no response yet! ack!
i guess i just don’t believe that the democrats are serious anymore. they aren’t doing what they need to do to win even the fights they’re willing to take on and they’re acting like complete a’holes in relation to the really big stuff.
there’s a lot of pain we’ve put off in order to pretend we’re still the most important everything, ever. now we’re trying to export that pain – even when it comes to making other people fight our wars for us. the democrats are trying very hard not to be the party of the bitter pill.
TOO. HARD.
Minor clarification: “AIDS kills as many people as the whole population at guantanamo bay every 2 hours” that is, the prisoner population.
Well, and this deserves a whole separate entry (guest post?) but at the risk of defending the Democratic Party, which has been sadly weak on many of the things you talk about, many of the party leaders made (and continue to make) political judgements that talking about those issues does not get the country any closer to good policies, and does increase the risk of even worse policies as Democrats are abandoned by a big chunk of the electorate who, as you say, don’t want to take the bitter pill.
These judgements may well be wrong. I suspect that for a decade or so, the party leaders were far too risk-averse, particularly in not changing that aversion as they had less and less to lose. Still, I would guess that (particularly with union leadership which has also been really weak on international issues, whilst being really defensive on the costs of such issues) they are more or less right that such stances aren’t politically tenable.
Politics is still the art of the possible. The art part lies in changing what is possible. I don’t know how to do that, myself; it’s one of the things that frustrates me.
Thanks,
-V.
My view of the Dems is about as dim as David’s.
The Dems could at least be _rallying their own base_ around issues like the catastrophic consequences of global warming.
But not only that: the people of the U.S. need not only to be warned, and to be told about their responsibilities. They need to be offered a vision of what the alternatives to keeping the party going until our economy collapses are.
The problem with buying into the fantasy (again, I agree with David) that you are the best thing ever is that change becomes unthinkable.
Our current way of life is so wasteful of our resources (and the resources of others) and of our time that I can imagine, in the abstract, a large-scale change in the way we live that both radically reduces the destructiveness, on a global scale, of our way of life and generally improves our quality of life.
Maybe that’s a pipe-dream, and the vision needs to be made concrete, but that’s where the change in the possible for politics will have to come from.
I don’t want to give the impression that I disagree with david, here. I agree on the merits of the issue, and I also agree that the Democratic leadership has made what I consider to be misjudgments in the last ten years and in the ten years before that (and the ten years before that, as well). On the other hand, I have a lot of sympathy for the Democratic leadership of the last ten years. Their position is fundamentally untenable. And, of course, they haven’t figured out how to be an opposition party, and although by now that means we need new leadership, still, I have sympathy for that.
One of the hardest things about being an opposition party that cares about governance is that you need to trade off influence on actual policies against rallying your base. In addition, it is possibly the case that the populace really is more conservative than the Democratic party’s leadership. I go back and forth on that. But I do think it is the case that a majority of the populace mistrusts and dislikes the Democratic Party and its leaders. The fundamental question is how to regain that trust (or at least the trust of enough of the population to win more elections and start to write policies again). Now, it may be necessary to have new leaders and a new party name; I wouldn’t think so, but it may be. Either way, I doubt that spoiling the fantasy would be a good first step.
This is a problem of democracy. For this thing to work, either (1) some agency outside electoral politics will have to bust that fantasy, preferably before a catastrophe, or (b) the party will have to gain the trust of the people while staying comfortably within the fantasy, and then risk its gains by busting the fantasy once in office.
The thing is that the latter risk is one that political leaders and parties have, from time to time, been willing to take. The potential payoff is immense. But a risk-averse leadership is unlikely to do it. And, I think, a party that isn’t risk-averse is unlikely to win lots of elections.
Thanks,
-V.