George Zornick, filling in for Eric Alterman, points out yesterday's Washington Post article asking whether Obama is...gasp!...a liberal. "What's so strange about the story," says Zornick, "and others like it, is that it never attempts to define liberalism, simply presenting it as a self-evident insult." Yep. There's never a moment in the article in which the reporter says that Obama believes liberal orthodoxy X, and liberal orthodoxy X is unpopular, and this will pose a problem for him in the election. Rather, it's the very fact that he can be called a liberal, no matter how popular or mainstream his policy ideas, that's the problem. In other wors, it's another of these cases where the political problem assumes the existence of a substantive problem that doesn't exist, or is at least unproven. Presumably, being "a liberal" is bad because Americans disagree with liberal policies. But it's hard to find the policy plank of Barack Obama's that's wildly unpopular. That may make him timid -- (coughcoughmandatescough) -- but it doesn't make his ideas divisive. And if liberal just means broadly popular policy ideas, then it's obviously not a political danger. Yet it's still treated as a political problem, even though the word, in this article, is basically an empty container. Reading the piece is like watching the reporter drink water from an empty glass. To most readers, it sure looks like he's drinking something. But to anyone looking closely, there's no there there. Obama, however, is no profile in courage on this subject. "Let me tell you something," he says. "There's nothing liberal about wanting to reduce money in politics. It's common sense. . . . There's nothing liberal about wanting to make sure that everybody has health care. We are spending more on health care in this country than any other advanced country. We got more uninsured. There's nothing liberal about saying that doesn't make sense, and we should do something smarter with our health-care system. Don't let them run that okey-doke on you!" Okay...but there is something liberal about all these things! And Obama is, in fact, a liberal. He supports a slew of popular liberal policies that attempt to achieve popular liberal ends, like reducing money in politics and expanding health insurance. And if he lets them define liberal" as a bad thing, then that, indeed, is what it will be. But if he had changed that rebuttal just slightly, and instead stuck to the refrain, "that may be liberal, but it's also just common sense," he'd be a lot better off. But it never works for liberals to try and define their policies as not liberal. Kerry tried it, ad it failed, and Obama will try, and it will fail. Rightly or wrongly, National Journal ranked him as the most liberal member of the Senate, and arguing with that ranking and label is going to be considerably harder than denying its villainy.
