krebscycle

Suppose you were a left liberal, what we used to call a “progressive” writing about President Obama’s proposed 2014 budget. You might write something like this:

 The 2014 budget makes some steps towards: fixing the economy, with a $50B infrastructure investment fund, to a healthier society with things like universal Pre-Kindergarten, and to tax fairness by cutting outrageous subsidies for executive jets and oil companies. But  the extremist Congressional Republicans have threatened to destroy the economy to protect tax gifts to the rich and they hate what they call  “entitlements” like Social Security and Medicare and this budget sacrifices too much to try to satisfy their demands. In particular the offer to limit cost of living increases for Social Security is wrong, Social Security can easily be fixed by simply increasing the cap on the tax – making wealthy people pay more of their fair share. President Obama should not let the GOP damage Social Security with their blackmail, Congressional Democrats and the people need to push back hard and protect our basic right to a fair society.

That argument is a perfectly reasonable argument and it captures, I think, what progressives claim to believe. However, the progressive blogs and other media did not make this argument. Instead they made the following two arguments:

Obama is a fool who has agreed to let the GOP destroy Social Security because he’s naive/stupid/weak/deluded …

or

 Obama has always wanted to destroy Social Security and now he is going for it

Actually, my summary tones things down too much. The raw contempt and anger at places like DailyKos are kind of shocking – read this post and some of the comments to get a sense of the extent of it.

The first argument  draws the reader attention to the positive program, the way forward but the second two are purely reactionary, line-in-the-sand arguments. Nobody  reading the second and third arguments would know that Democrats want to take care of children and create jobs or make taxes fairer instead they would, incorrectly, see the Democrats as the threat to Social Security.  More importantly the first argument  attacks GOP branding and the other arguments reinforce it. Since the 1970s, when Nixon, Roger Ailes, and Lee Atwater destroyed George McGovern’s campaign, the Republicans have followed a simple branding strategy:

• Republicans: strong, decisive, competent, hard working, manly men/feminine women, Patriotic, trustworthy
• Democrats: weak, waffling, incompetent, lazy, effeminate men/bitchy women, unpatriotic, untrustworthy

This list bears no relationship to reality (and incorporates a number of repellent prejudices), but it has been sold very well and many people believe it without even knowing that they do – that’s what “branding” means, after all.  The first argument  damages GOP branding but the other arguments reinforce Republican branding and tell you that the Democrats consist of two groups a weak, incompetent, untrustworthy President and a weak, betrayed, impotent constituency. After all, the Daily Kos’s Markos Moulitsas supported the election of a man he now calls “bumbling” – what does that tell you about his judgment?  The second and third arguments carry the message that being a Democrat is shameful and pathetic  and that Republicans are powerful, decisive, effective and competent at what they do.

Most citizens do not engage in the political process with a checklist of political positions they support or oppose – they often lack the interest, or access to information, or education, or the time to consider such things. What they do is vote on impressions.  But people like Markos Moulitsas tell them that the Democratic President is a clown and Democratic voters have been suckers and the party itself is for losers. Who wants to sign up for that?

if there’s any silver lining in this debacle, it’s that it’ll allow congressional Democrats the opportunity to distance themselves from this bumbling White House.

Unfortunately, they have to distance themselves from the party’s leader, never a fun place for a politician to be. See 2006. And 2010.

What’s craziest about this whole fiasco is how shellshocked the White House appears about it. It’s as if they expected to be greeted with rose petals for “making the tough choices” or whatever bullshit they want to call it today.

This is not an argument defending Social Security or one advancing a progressive agenda. The usual excuse for  such arguments is that they reflect a left dissent, a truth telling, a principled opposition to too much compromise. That defense is not sustainable. The only real question is whether such destructive rhetoric is appallingly self-destructive or  just destructive. If the claim of people like Moulitsas to want to support  “more and better Democrats”  to be believed, we have to ask why he and others persist in working so hard to damage the Democratic brand.  Can it really be that the consequences of this kind of rhetoric is so hard to understand? Can it really be that the bitterness and hostility of these “left” critics is due to  disappointment – as they claim? Here is something from The Nation magazine about the first Black President forcing Assad to destroy most of his chemical weapons stocks:

It’s tempting to enjoy the moment, that is, the humiliation of President Obama and the short-circuiting of his war push by a brilliant coup conducted by Vladimir Putin, that sly old dog and ju-jitsu expert, along with Russia’s ally, Syria

To me, it’s obvious that consciously or not, many of the “critics from the left” are more interested in destroying the Democrats than in pushing progressive political and economic reform.