The Left And The Other Left

By Cernig

Well, the Dems might just have done it again - snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. If you need any evidence at all for that other than the evidence already before your eyes, check out the comments threads on two Larry Johnson posts here and here. The preponderance of ostensibly Dem commenters saying they'll vote for the Republican candidate and describing him in glowing terms is revelatory.

McCain could be laughing all the way to November.

Now for the positive side - a Mccain victory handed to him by the Clintonistas might just mean the end of the two party monopoly in America. An Obama victory gained despite this primary season's bloodletting and erosion of trust might well mean the same thing. There's a lot of dynamic just now that says the natural tendency to stick with what you know and not rock the boat to the point of capsizing might be itself overturned.

It seems to me that the schizophrenic nature of the Democratic Party may finally resolve itself. There's a good chance that the right wing of the party will follow the Clintons into GOP-land. They always were "compassionate conservatives" and that's probably where they belong. The Dems could end up looking a lot more like a European social democrat party as a result and if so the GOP will most likely fracture in its turn too. The far right won't be able to call the shots quite so much, with what will then be a massively enhanced left wing of the Republicans able to steamroller them, and they'll head for the exits to form a new hard right bunch of God-bothering, xenophobic helicopter-chasers. That way lies their consignment to history as a part of a ruling coalition, although they'll be able to exert pressure from the finges. It's probably the most positive role they could possibly play. Likewise, on the other flank of the main two, I think we'll come to see democratic socialists and greens providing pressure from smaller but still influential partries on specific issues. The GOP will be left looking far more like a European conservative party.

If we don't see Clintonista defections in droves, then it will be because the Republican hard right is just too odious for them to contemplate making common cause with. That will have pretty much the same efect, since in that case the GOP leadership is going to have to engineer a move leftwards just to recapture that party's electability. The same fallout would then ensue as the hard right will still decamp following such a move and the Dem tent now has so many holes in it that a lot of those further left than right of the Dem center are likely to look to other parties to support so that they don't have to relive the feuds of this primary season. Their trust that the Clinton camp has roughly the same aims as they do has been seriously eroded.

Either way, then, I think change is coming. The US has been further Right than the international mean for decades now, mainly due to the interplay of power centers in both the main parties rather than any intrinsic rightwingedness in the nation as a whole - but the adjustment has to come sometime.

Comments

[Carol]

Excellent insights in here. Sadly, I fear you are right. I don't know if the Democrat party can overcome the tarnishing it has suffered at the hands of the Clintons (since 1992). A vibrant third party wouldn't be a bad thing, but who? How? Who knows.

[Libby]

Freaking brave to wade through NoQuarter Cernig.

Oddly, however, your post comforts me. I hadn't thought about it in this way, but I think it's a good take. It could be the real change we'll all looking for out of the ruling duopoly.

[Jill]

Well, a good starting point would be to avoid using the right-wing expression "Democrat Party", which they started in 2004 to emphasize "rat". It's a childish, immature, ridiculous thing that too many people on our side have fallen into.

As for the original post, I wish I could be as optimistic. I don't see women like Harriet Christian, the screaming harridan on the video making its way around YouTube becoming a left wing of the Republican Party....I think they're likely to vote for McCain and then go on complaining about how bad things are. One thing about making a career out of seeing yourself as a victim -- the LAST thing you want is real change to take that away from you.

[Mark]

I think you are mostly right, and I took a similar tone this morning (shameless self promotion here: http://publiusendures.blogspot.com/2008/06/my-two-cents-on-dnc-deal.html). The difference is that I think this is all ultimately a good thing. The result will likely be that the authoritarian wing (aka, Clintonites) of the Dem Party shifts to the GOP, while the anti-authoritarian wing of the GOP (aka libertarians and social liberals) switches to the Dems.
Had the Dems achieved unity, then a McCain defeat would have been inevitable, as the anti-authoritarian wing of the GOP would have gone entirely to Barr. The result would possibly have been a reformation of sorts within the GOP. Now, that equation may change.

I would argue (and at some point will argue in more detail) that this is a good thing, and would represent a reunification of classical liberals. To understand why this would be a reunification, I will recommend this Will Wilkinson post from the other day:
http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2008/05/30/liberaltarianism-back-the-future/

[James]

Thanks to you I actually took my first trip to No Quarter in ages. Looks like the Dems' right-wing is well-represented. One of the regulars there, Susan Hu (she goes by SusanUnPC these days) used to pose as a lefty on various community blogs a few years ago. She blew her cover a bit, and retreated to Johnson's blog, and these days seems content to crow about McCain as a "stand-up guy."

All that said, I do hope you're right about an adjustment happening on the US political scene. It's been very long overdue.

[Ron Chusid]

There are many similarities between this argument and a post I had been working on. After I saw this highlighted at Memeorandum I revised my post to take in both what is said here as well as Mark's post on this topic:

http://liberalvaluesblog.com/?p=3339

[Clive A.]

Rumor has it that Hillary thinks she could win a three-way race in November as an Independent against Obama and McCain.

Such an eventuality, or even an attempt at same (however unlikely), would seem to fit with the idea that the disintegration of the current configuration of both parties is coming, as envisioned in Cernig's post.

[The Other Ed]

What's amazing over at No Quarter is that they are pinning their last hopes on Republican thug Roger Stone of the anti-Hillary Clinton 527 group (initaled Citizens United Not Timid) and Florida Brooks Brother Riot fame.

They have truly lost their minds.

[Batocchio]

The No Quarter comments are among the worst I've seen. Crazy. Troubling.

This could indeed be a momentous election in any of a number of ways and directions. If it the end result is positive, great. A veto-proof, Blue Dog BS-proof majority in both houses will be essential, too.

[Geek, Esq.]

Johnson is a racist reptile.

Some people defect every election, and the racist reptiles are usually among the first.

See ya, LC.

[Anthony Kennerson]

I see it quite differently myself: If the right-wing "populists" like Johnson do succeed in torpedoing Obama's candidacy by handing the election to McCain (or, less likely, by getting Hillary the nomination in spite of her utter political failures), it will more than likely benefit the Right more than the Left, because it will reenforce the long-established meme that the Dems can only win by pulling to the "center" (that is, the Center-Right), and that cultural liberals and Black voters will just have to take a back seat, if not be pulled under the bus altogether, to satisfy the needs of the "working class White" majority. Were it not for Hillary's strength amongst Hispanics, we would already be seeing a move with the Dems towards more right-wing populist positions, including an all out stand against "illegals" (read that to mean, non-wealthy Brown people). Not to mention the fact that four more years of McCain/Reagan/Bush would allow them to consolidate right-wing control of the Supreme Court, which would mitigate any Democrat majority (and besides, the Blue Dogs and DLC Dems would probably cross the aisle and support most of McCain's efforts, anyway) until the Repubs can make their grand comeback in 2010 and 2012.

All the more reason why Nader and McKinney have got to get together and develop a real Independent Left alternative to fill in the increasing gaping gap that is becoming the political Left.

Anthony Kennerson

[pontificant]

There is a reason we have a two-party system, and no matter what movement occurs among subsets, the two party stasis will return. The office of the presidency forces these constituencies to form coalitions within rather than between parties. So, unless we change the structure of our government, we will not see the flowering of a multiparty system.

[Avedon]

I think you're dreamin', hon.

I also think that all Obama has to do is make enough friendly and welcoming noises and most of the Clinton voters will probably leap on board. The problem is that he's left it a bit late, and he's let a few sores fester. He should fix that. If he wants to, he can.

But he'd better win in November, because if he doesn't, both sides will blame the other 'til kingdom come.

And he'd better be good, too.

I don't see why you think the Hillary supporters are the same as DLC supporters, though. Look at the things most of them are writing and in most cases it sounds like they have exactly the same complaints about Obama's lack of progressivism as Obama's supporters have about Hillary's lack of progressivism. And remember, one of the points of pride of the Obama campaign has been that he has been attracting Republicans - and they're as bad as the DLC.

I think you're falling for myths about these constituencies based on anecdotes that have been a popular part of the media narrative. Today, with Obama having virtually clinched the nomination, we're seeing a lot of noisy and obnoxious sore losers saying stupid things, including that they'll vote for McCain or stay home, but a few weeks ago, when there was a (slim) possibility that the superdelegates would "overturn the will of the voters" by giving the nomination to Hillary, there was a huge groundswell of equally petulant oaths to do the same or even throw a full-scale violent protest in Denver. (I note an undercurrent of "They started it!" to some of what the Clintonistas are writing now.)

And a lot of those Clinton supporters, by the way, are very liberal women who have been being very liberal when it meant facing police batons and tear gas at civil rights demonstrations; they do not appreciate being lumped in with the DLC and the KKK. And they've been complaining about the sexism because there has been, unquestionably, sexism. It is not particularly progressive to deny this.

A lot of the rest are economic populists who hear Clinton talking about families and jobs, and hear Obama being much more vague and appearing to talk to people who are not like them. It's a class thing, and Obama has not mastered it as well as Clinton. But what those people in Appalachia like about Clinton isn't that she's white and Obama is black, but they actually like Clinton's progressive economic talk.

And what a lot of those independent and Republican Obama supporters like about Obama has nothing to do with progressivism - in fact, many of them like his rejection of partisanship, his appearance of being someone who wants to "reach across the aisle" (and we know what Republicans mean by that), and the chance to prove they aren't racist by voting for someone who's black. Some of them are even reacting positively to his statements about being against single-payer and various dog-whistles to the right. Oh, and they also just hate anyone named "Clinton".

Meanwhile, both candidates have surrounded themselves with advisors from the DLC, both candidates seem to believe in Imperial America, and both candidates have spent this campaign more focused on the details of the campaign process than on the issues. It may be that some Obama supporters are sexists and some Clinton supporters are racist, but I don't think you can assume that the bulk of either group is particularly more or particularly less progressive where real issues are concerned, nor that either group is particularly interested in the DLC. In the meantime, the Democratic Party establishment - the same one that supported the Clintons (including Al From of the DLC) has obviously embraced Obama and he is as much a part of them as the Clintons ever were.

But I bet an awful lot of Hillary's supporters don't really even know what the DLC is and what Hillary's relationship to it is - and the ones that do have probably noticed that Obama's economic advisors are from the DLC. So it's pretty much 50-50, there.

Most of all, I really think it's counterproductive to keep this stuff going about how superior Obama's supporters are to Clinton's supporters. Not a good way to win friends.

[Steve Hynd]

Hi Avedon,

There's a lot of truth in what you write and I'm no denialist. I've been saying from word one that Obama was the American Blair and my opinions of Blair aren't too high. My opinions of Clinton, however, are no higher.

But I also think you, as a political junky, are forgetting that most Obama and Clinton supporters, even though they're Dem registered, simply aren't the same kind of animals. Narratives matter more than truth in such situations...as Blair proved. In my post I was trying to project how the narratives would play out on a longer timeframe, not how the actual facts would.

Regards, C

[AlanSmithee]

What a load of horseshit. The pwogwessive "movement" is so much hot air and electrons. Everyone knows the intertube pwoggie-bloggies are as gutless a bunch of fakeass chickenshit liberals as ever existed. When push comes to shove, they'll vote the way their fucking told to by their masters and betters in the DLC.

By Fester Alan --- your IP is being banned for sockpuppetry with both this name and John Thomas --- if you would like to comment, please e-mail us in three days and we'll remove the ban so long as you stick with one handle.