We've lately received a small handful of letters here complaining that we're deviating a bit. Two recent print pieces in particular -- Sarah Blustain's “Choice Language” (which critiqued the rhetoric pro-choice groups have used to defend abortion rights) and Mark Leon Goldberg's “Is Moore Less?” (which explored the question of whether the Democrats should do anything about Michael Moore) -- raised a few hackles. And a couple people have noted that we're not as enthusiastic about Howard Dean becoming Democratic party chairman as they'd prefer (although those of you who were upset with Goldberg's Moore piece need to know that he's quite enthusiastic about Dean).
I'm the one who assigned the abortion and Michael Moore pieces, and I also have expressed my reservations about Dean. I'll explain why, starting with the broader perspective before I get down to particulars.
It's not an exaggeration to say that liberalism in this country is on the precipice of being in deep, deep trouble. One more election like the last two, and movement conservatism will be in charge of Congress for decades to come. Take a look at the senators up for reelection in 2006: There could be, realistically, close to 60 Republican senators by January 2007. Once they hit 60, of course, they have the votes to defeat cloture and get anything through the Senate they wish. If they increase their margin in the Senate, odds are that they'll do so in the House as well, by another handful of seats; and given the way districts are drawn these days, that majority will likely exist for many years.
The judicial branch, of course, is close to being sewn up for conservatives already. And if Antonin Scalia becomes chief justice, and if President George W. Bush appoints two more associate justices -- replacing the moderate John Paul Stevens and the sometimes-moderate Sandra Day O'Connor with movement conservatives (and he's certainly given no indication that he'd nominate anything but movement conservatives) -- the judiciary will be conservative for at least 20 more years.
That leaves us with the presidency, and of course that's the biggest prize of all. One could say that Senator John Kerry came impressively close -- even though he was running against a “wartime incumbent” and didn't run a great campaign -- and that all Democrats need to do is concentrate on a few states where demographics are headed in their direction, and they'll eke out presidential elections with 275 or 280 electoral votes. But we know, deep down, that recent history -- with Kerry losing some states that Al Gore carried -- suggests that the opposite trend is at least as likely. It's not hard to picture Republicans being able to take Pennsylvania, for example, or Wisconsin.
And now, the GOP has commenced a pointed outreach for black votes. If Republicans improve their margin among African Americans from 9 percent to anything north of 15 percent, that's something on the order of a million votes -- that is, a swing of two million, since Democrats would lose the million that Republicans would gain. And naturally, the Republicans would target those votes to come from close states like, again, Pennsylvania. The Democrats would be in extremely serious trouble. All the above may seem self-evident, but it's the political context for our time, and it's important to acknowledge it.
It's a tough situation, and tough situations require serious thought. And so it's appropriate and necessary that liberals and Democrats engage in that thought; and a part of that process, if undertaken with honesty -- and with the desire that liberalism produce a more majoritarian politics, which is certainly my goal and the goal of everyone at this magazine -- is self-examination.
Some will say at this point: But wait. When conservatives were at the bottom of the well, they didn't spend a lot of time engaged in namby-pamby navel-gazing. They went out and said what they believed, repeatedly, loudly, unapologetically. And they won. And, therefore, that's what our side needs to do now.
There's some justification for this point of view; certainly, one of the Democratic Party's biggest problems these days is that people don't know what they stand for, and just standing for something -- anything! -- is better than always appearing to be backtracking, soft-pedaling, trying to prove they're just as tough or patriotic as Republicans. It's a pathetic thing to watch. And here's one point on which I want to be very clear: Self-examination does not mean inevitably moving to the middle. Adopting a centrist pose can be every bit as knee-jerk and shallow as insisting that nothing's changed since 1974, and it can be even more debilitating politically than going (or staying) left.
But the historical analogy to the 1960s conservatives breaks down here. In 1964, conservatism was not in the position that liberalism is in today. Conservatism at that point had never been the country's reigning ideology for a long period of time. Of course, the America of the 1920s, and of the 19th century, was a very conservative country by today's standards. But in those days, conservatism wasn't yet an ideology in the way it became in the 1950s, under the leadership of people like William F. Buckley Jr. and others. Movement conservatism of the sort that nominated Barry Goldwater and elected Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush didn't really exist until the postwar period.
In other words, the conservatives of the 1960s had never been in power. So they didn't have a legacy to contemplate, because they hadn't been in the position to make one.
Liberalism, though, has been in power, and for a good long time -- from 1933 to 1980, generally speaking (Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon weren't movement conservatives). And as we know all too well, conservatives have spent probably hundreds of millions of dollars discrediting it, and it's worked pretty well: In the 1960s, about 40 percent of Americans were willing to call themselves “liberal,” and today the number is half that (I'm sometimes amazed, and gratified, that it's still even that high).
And so, our side ran things in this country more or less for decades (and then again, of course, during Bill Clinton's presidency; obviously, he wasn't really a liberal in the old sense, but if you parse his administration's record item by item, it was much more liberal than not). So, unlike the conservatives of the 1960s, our side has had real power, and hence we have a track record.
I think it's an excellent track record myself, far more positive than not. But it's not perfect, because nothing is. Combine that past with a present in which Democrats keep losing elections, and you have a situation in which it's pretty obvious that we need to ask ourselves some things: what mistakes we've made; whether there are things that we once believed that are now outdated; how we can, and need to, change.
And so having such a conversation -- a conversation that really tries to figure out the difference between liberalism's first principles, on which there can be no compromise, and its secondary assertions, which may need a rethink -- is of vital importance. Also, a conversation about the intellectual basis of liberalism. Are we for freedom? What does that word mean to us? Has liberalism emphasized rights too much and placed too little emphasis on civic obligation, a concept to which the liberals of the 1930s and 1940s (halcyon days that we all celebrate) were certainly not strangers? What is the proper balance between pluralism and commonly shared values that should transcend race, gender, geography, sexual orientation? What's the proper balance between religious faith and civic morality?
These are hard conversations to have. Keeping abortion a legal and, therefore, safe option for women is, for me, is a first principle, because the option gives women moral autonomy over an extremely personal decision that the state should not make in their behalf. But the rhetoric used to support that option is not a first principle. It's a tactic, and it's right to talk about that. Blustain's piece was necessary and even rather brave (and she made clear that she's pro-choice). Gay marriage is a first principle, and someday the country will accept it. But it's reasonable to have a conversation about how to deal with the question politically until that someday arrives.
An important point, or even the important point: These conversations are necessary to strengthen liberalism. If abortion-rights activists find a better way to defend abortion rhetorically, thus appealing to more Americans and speaking to feelings of conflict some people may have about the practice, isn't that a good thing? Doesn't that do more to protect abortion in the long run? No one's talking about reaching out to the religious right. They're completely unreachable. There are, however, millions of Americans who aren't religious extremists who have mixed feelings about abortion. A political movement that doesn't try to persuade the conflicted isn't much of a movement.
As for Michael Moore, of course I knew that piece would upset some people. He's an extremely popular guy, and I can completely understand that many progressives feel he was speaking for them when few leaders were. My thinking was this: Undeniably, Republicans talk a lot about Democrats being “the party of Michael Moore,” and they don't mean it as a compliment. They do this because they think it works in tarring Democrats. Well, does it? I thought it would be interesting to hear Democrats talk about this. That's all. In fact, anyone who read Goldberg's piece fairly saw that he ended up defending Moore -- or at least dismissing the idea that banishing Moore would solve the Democrats' problems. The piece concluded -- and writers generally conclude articles with the thought with which they want to leave readers -- with a lengthy quote from Paul Begala saying that the Democrats' problems went deeper than one filmmaker and that scapegoating Moore was just a way of ignoring these deeper problems.
And Howard Dean: Look, I think that much good came from his campaign, and other Democratic leaders, rather than running from him, should be thinking hard about why he won admiration in the party's base that they clearly have not. I wish we lived in a country in which he could become party chairman by acclamation and without controversy. But we don't. He's not all that highly regarded even among registered Democrats overall, let alone Independents (slightly more than half of whom need to vote Democratic in a presidential election for the party to win). He's the apple of the eye of liberal activists, but the mathematical fact is that liberal activists make up maybe 12 or 15 percent of the voting population. His challenge will be to reach beyond that constituency, and I have news for you: If you're a big Dean fan, he's likely to disappoint you as chairman. Remember this when you read that he had lunch with Al From. (And he should have lunch with Al From; he's not becoming an issue activist or a magazine editor, he's becoming a party chairman, and Al From is objectively a leader of a branch of the party.)
It's the job of party or movement activists to be activists. It's the job of journalists to engage in journalism. That certainly includes speaking to and representing the views of its readers; we know where our bread is buttered, and we will never lose sight of that. The issues of the magazine that included the abortion and Moore pieces both devoted immeasurably more space to criticisms of the right and arguments in liberalism's behalf. But journalism also includes engaging in critical thinking and just plain criticism (and yes, they do this on the right, too: The Weekly Standard recently published a scathing cover story by Andrew Ferguson on the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, which undoubtedly upset some of their readers, one of whom was undoubtedly Tom DeLay). Readers can disagree with some arguments, but they should never doubt that we're all working for the same cause.
Michael Tomasky is the Prospect's executive editor.
