Déjà vu vu vu, part one

A lot of energy has been expended of late talking about how the left has to articulate a "clear message" but that in order to do that we have to "rethink" our positions because we've "lost touch with the American people." I was looking for something else in my files and came across a few things that really gave me a feeling of déjà vu. We have gone down this same post-election path before, this same "be more cautious, be more 'centrist'" path, and it seems every time we walk right into the brick wall athwart it we pick ourselves up, dry our bloody noses, dust ourselves off and do the same damn fool things over again only to act shocked when we walk face first into the same brick wall at the next election. (Isn't one of the definitions of insanity "repeating the same actions and expecting a different result?")

I know I've been pounding the table about this recently, but I figure this is going to be an ongoing topic and we need to make sure the policy wonks, the pollsters, and the focus-groupers aren't the only voices heard. (Maybe the first thing we should do is stop talking about "the American people" as if it was a foreign nation. 'Cause, hey, I dunno about you, but I figure I am part of the American people. We may be a political minority right now but what does that have to do with it?)

So two trips down memory lane, to remind ourselves that the "new approaches" being advocated by some in the wake of 2004 ain't so new - and that all along there has been another set of ideas that have been dismissed when not derided by the loudest voices.

First stop, 1988. After George I was elected, a friend wrote to me asking what the role of the left would be now that Jesse Jackson had been iced out of the upper echelons of the Democratic Party and Michael Dukakis had lost the election.

The role of the left after the election will be the same as it's been all along: arguing, working, and campaigning for our ideas and ideals. ... All the things we've talked about, disarmament, health care, housing, environmental clean-up and protection, decent jobs under decent conditions at decent wages, an end to sexism, racism, homophobia, and all the other -isms and -phobias to which we're heir, an economy controlled by all for the benefit of all instead of by the few for the benefit of the few, and a society that values cooperation above competition and public good above private greed, all of it still needs doing. And there will always be children to be educated instead of indoctrinated, communities to be cemented instead of walled off, and human freedoms to be protected by rigorous vigilance instead of proscribed by rightist vigilantes. That we've not had much success recently has a lot more to do with us than with the conceptually warped, logically vapid, morally bankrupt frothings of the right. We've failed to advocate our beliefs either strongly or openly and have tended to - pardon the cliche - hitch our wagons to the harness of the currently popular Democratic Party star, whoever that might be. It never seems to occur to us that when you hitch your wagon to someone else's team you spend your time following a horse's ass.

"Anybody but [fill in the blank]" is not a new phenomenon. Nor is it a winning program.

Our second stop is in 1998, right after the again-disappointing Congressional elections.

The people on the left don't seem to be much help. A siege mentality has settled in, leading to the prevailing opinion (happily, not yet a consensus - but unhappily, it could come to that) among left pundits that we need to limit ourselves to "traditional" goals of the classic Democratic party coalition - more specifically, those which either have, or it's thought could easily gain, majority public support - while avoiding "divisive" (or, in an even more dismissive description, "secondary") "cultural" (or, again worse, "lifestyle" or "identity") issues - which apparently includes not only things like multiculturalism, abortion, and gay rights, but extends in some minds even to affirmative action and sexism. Those who urge otherwise, they say, are - and this is a quote - "luxuriating in their marginality."

But that is, of course, exactly the wrong way to go about it. Two relevant quotes:

- "My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking." (Marshal Ferdinand Foch at the Second Battle of the Marne, 1918)

- "The fact is, the movement for peace and social justice in this country has been at its strongest and most influential when it has spoken the truth without giving a flying damn if anyone was 'offended' or not. We didn't build a movement against the Vietnam War by harping on the 'shortcomings of both sides' but by blasting it for what it was.... We didn't build movements for civil rights, women's equality, or a cleaner environment by worrying about how we'd be received by bigots, sexists, or greedy corporate bosses - or who we'd 'turn off' if we labeled the discriminators and despoilers for what they were." (Lotus, April 1991 - i.e., me)

Too much of the left, unfortunately, seems to think it necessary to beat a tactical retreat to what's perceived as safer ground, to avoid being "controversial" or "confrontational." But whatever merits a tactical retreat can have as a military maneuver, in politics all it means is you're ceding ground. In politics, you never gain by backing up, a lesson the right learned decades ago but which the left has yet to even begin to absorb. This, I note, has nothing to do with the compromises involved in so-called "coalition-building" or the considerably harder ones of legislating; it has to do with what you advocate, with where you stand, with what you stand for. Despite that basic and I would have thought obvious reality, one commentator still went so far as to say "we have to avoid being out in front of the American people." (The quote is not exact, but it does accurately reflect the sentiment.) Since being "out in front" is really the only way you can point out a path to follow, that sentiment struck me as exceedingly strange - but, sadly, not unfamiliar.

I read a response to that prevailing opinion last week, one that openly declared that so-called "cultural" issues must be part of any movement if it's really to be about change, not just adjustment - and even though she fell back on hackneyed proposals to get things started ("form a strong labor movement" - gee, I wonder why no one thought of that before?) I was ready to cheer the author. That is, until she ended her argument by asserting that the reason that others urged retrenchment is because they are "comfortable white men." That is, it's not that they're wrong - it's that if they're not on her side it's because they're sexist bigots who really don't care about women or minorities or the poor, but only about themselves.

When my choices get reduced to self-defeating timidity and doctrinaire sloganeering I get really depressed.

I haven't heard much of the doctrinaire sloganeering this time but I still see enough of the self-defeating timidity, as I still see people arguing that the left has to "downplay" issues such as GLBT rights despite the fact that there is no evidence that those 11 anti-rights amendments had anything to do with Bush's win. (Overall, Bush did no better in the states with the amendments than he did in those without them; he carried no states among the 11 that he did not carry in 2000; and in fact, in Ohio he did a little worse than he did last time.)

We even see people prepared to dump Roe v. Wade as either a "drag" on the left or as a way to "shock" people into realizing what is happening, what the reactionaries are pushing. The idea that some people's rights can be sacrificed to other people's tactical considerations shows how desperate some have become. It actually reminds me of - and makes as much sense as - the days when the Weather Underground fantasized it was striking great blows for freedom by smashing windows, trying to provoke a police overreaction and repression that would likewise "shock" people into greater resistance.

I say the answer to not being heard is to talk louder, not to start whispering.