The "L" Word: The Challenge for Progressives

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).

Comments

[mommadona]

A rose is a rose, by any other name....

http://www.spiritone.com/~gdy52150/wr.htm

ONWARD!

[InofTouch]

out so now were trusting polls again

[larry278]

To use babble, most liberals have evolved into progressives, the current buzzword. Progressives are former liberals who have learned to adapt to changed conditions in America.

[nazgul]

Hence, one of the problems many of us have with the Clinton's approach to progressive leadership: at the first sign of trouble--indeed, often at no sign of trouble--they run to the right. True progressive leadership will stop, fight and demonstrate that the center is actually much farther to the left than Republicans would have us believe and the MSM, in its zeal to engage in stenography, obligingly reports.

If you think HRC should stay in, tinker with Slate's delegate counter. It proves pretty effectively that she can't win.

http://www.slate.com/id/2187679/

[EspritDeVoltaire]

Senator Obama is very astute to choose transcendence as an approach as the old Left/Right dichotomy is an outdated concept in American politics. Left implies economic theories which have no place today as most Americans are more properly economic centrists and also the NeoCons are not true economic Conservatives. A more reasonable classification is Progressive/Reactionary.

This division is more proper nomenclature as it points out the current social values politics in a more easily understood way. The Progressives are for change, a more diverse society and enabling equality for all the society's members. The Reactionaries are simply knuckle-dragging political Neanderthals who are opposed to change and who favor the the rights of property ownership over human rights.

[RepublicanBrain]

Decent, but not quite. NeoCons are indeed not economic conservatives. However, Progressives are not necessarily for what you state, and neither are the reactionaries. Progressives are about "change", but Reactionaries are about "change back"

Progressives are also not about a diverse society and equality for all of society's members. If this were the case, progressives would not support programs that classify based on race and such, but those identified as Progressives do this.

[Geoffreys]

Thank you for telling us how we think and what type of programs we support. Now, would you like to tell us what we want for dinner?

[ResidentChimp]

If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck and surrenders like a duck, it's a liberal. No matter how you want to pretend words are more important than actions, Obama is a radical leftist liberal.

[andyg]

the rest sound ok, but affirmative action, that sounds like a anti white policy, since i am a typicla white person,

[sparkandy]

You must be a typical white MAN. Because everyone knows women are the biggest beneficiaries of affirmative action. That's why I spent the first 25 years of my working life driving a forklift and unloading trucks for about 2/3 what a man would have been paid.

[RepublicanBrain]

There are many serious problems in your research. Either your research, yourself, or both make faulty assumptions, such as affirmative action is the way to end racial discrimination, the questions about equal pay for equal work are asked only women making less wages, and not the reverse, and (like most surveys) assume the survey-taker is stating the truth and not his interpretation of it.

Look for some better results, please.

[RabidRightRebel]

It should also be pointed out that adopting the rabid right usage is a offensive, not a defensive position. For too long have I watched as the Liberals squirm while trying to explain why they should not be considered loony left. I want Conservatives squirming while they try to explain why they are not part of the rabid right.

[RabidRightRebel]

You are quite right we need to redefine the terms of political contest. That is why I am doing my best to get people to adopt the phase "the rabid right". We all know who these people are, they are the hate mongering loud mouths that spew their intolerant rants like rabid dogs.

Justa positioning the rabid right against the loony left, and the loony left look quite moderate.