In a slow campaign week, the New York Times and the Washington Post have trawled their vaults to resurrect the eighties' campaign caricature of out-of-touch liberal Democrats. It seems instead that they are the ones out of touch with the American public.
Public opinion surveys published over the last several years give a portrait of an America very different from the one imagined by the suicidal liberalism theory rehashed here. Americans today are less conservative and more liberal than they have been at any time in the last twenty years. 64% of Americans believe it is the responsibility of the government to make sure Americans have health coverage. 70% believe that the government has a responsibility to take care of the poor. 89% support equal employment rights for homosexuals. 70% favor affirmative action for blacks, minorities, and women. 6 in 10 Americans think that the Iraq War was a mistake. (These examples and scores more can be found here, here, and here in the National Journal Polltrack Subscription Service.)
The most dramatic shift has been among the young. The Pew Center's fascinating Generation Next report of January 2007 reveals that 18-25 year-olds are unequivocally progressive on issues of race and sexuality, on the environment and immigration. They are more pro-government and less religious than their elders. They are more opposed to the war and more strongly support diplomacy. They are the least Republican and most liberal generation. (This study was published one month before Obama announced his candidacy.) If historical patterns hold true, this will not be a passing fad. We form our political opinions when we're young, and tend to stick with them for a lifetime.
At the same time, conservative ranks have shrunk from a "silent" and "moral majority" to a noisy and embittered minority. According to a range of surveys covering issues and political self-identification, no more than one-fifth to one-third of Americans are conservative. There are some issues on which conservatives made headway -- abortion, civil liberties, positive views of business -- but not enough to alter the general trend. Republican party identification is down to 27%, its lowest level in sixteen years.
In short, on social and cultural issues, on social welfare and economic regulation, on international relations, a majority of Americans favor the positions advanced over the last forty years by liberal Democrats. Yet America's two most important national newspapers fret that Obama is unelectable because he is too liberal. You can hardly blame some Democrats, worn down by years of trench warfare against a better armed Republican Right, from cowering when the big gun, the L-word, is rolled out.
Obama has chosen transcendence over denial. "A lot of these old labels don't apply anymore," Obama told the New York Times. He is correct, factually and politically. Only a small portion of the millions of Americans who favor liberal policies call themselves liberal. The old labels have become an obstacle to progressive politics and governance. It is not that there is something wrong with liberalism; it is rather that our understanding of what liberalism means derives from a political era that is passing rapidly. Obama's bid to portray himself as a progressive and a pragmatist makes sense as an electoral strategy. But more fundamentally, it makes logical and philosophical sense. There is a new political spirit in America that can't be encompassed in the old categories. It's up to Democrats and progressives to redefine the terms of political contest. Otherwise, they may very well find themselves defeated by the broken-down but not quite obsolete weapons of the last war.
Nancy Cohen is the author of The Reconstruction of American Liberalism, 1865-1914 and The Social History of the United States: The 1990s (forthcoming October 2008).