On the other side are hawks and moderates who argue that it is both bad policy and bad politics to oust Lieberman -- or anyone -- over support for the Iraq War or any other apostasy on a single issue. Lieberman himself criticized Lamont on the specific grounds that "He's a single-issue candidate who is applying a litmus test to me." This sentiment has been expressed by many of the senator's supporters.
So one side says there should be no single issue litmus test for party support, while the other says Iraq should be the litmus test. What if both are wrong?
Contra the moderates, ideological litmus tests for party membership are in fact more appropriate in this era than they have been in the past. In these recent years of polarization and partisan parity, the two major American parties have become much more ideologically coherent. Only ideological cohesion and party discipline on the part of the Democrats have stood between the Bush administration and many of its goals. In such a context, litmus tests are needed.
But the standard for full-scale exile from the party must be high -- it can't extend to just any specific issue on which a majoirity of Democrats currently agree. The standard should be adherence to the principles that Democrats uphold to defend American democracy. Among Democrats, one of those principles is the following: Every citizen has a right to vote and to be free of discrimination in the workplace or other places of public accommodation. When an issue finds those principles on one side with no legitimate progressive counter-argument on the other, then sometimes those who take the wrong side can be said to have failed the litmus test and should be defeated by real progressives in primaries.
This isn't to say that every specific case warrants a purge. Gay marriage, for instance, meets the definition of a core civil rights issue, but its weak public support makes it politically impossible for a major party to impose a litmus test on it. Rather, the challenge for Democratic Party activists is to make the case for gay marriage and build public support to the point where no Democrat can credibly claim that he or she has no choice but to oppose it. Moreover, questions of relative impact are also important. A ban on flag burning, while an assault on core free speech principles, is also a symbolic and narrowly circumscribed policy that on its own is a poor choice for being a deal-breaker issue.
What are examples of better issues for Democratic litmus tests? I think of voting rights and stem-cell research. Voting rights are fundamental to American democracy, and, in the abstract at least, they are a settled issue in the eyes of the public -- no Democrat can claim he or she would lose a seat by standing up for them. Similarly, with stem-cell research, there is no credible progressive argument against it and it has the potential to cure diseases that claim more than a thousand times as many American victims as has the Iraq War. (It's a question worth asking why significant numbers of liberal activists are beginning to identify Iraq as a litmus test issue while Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska gets a pass on his opposition to stem-cell research.)
Litmus tests may sometimes be necessary. But should the Iraq War be one? The passion that issue draws from many on the left has led to odd alignments and confused notions about the proper grounds for excommunication. It seems strange that progressives who would rate protection for civil rights and civil liberties as two of the most essential components of American democracy are enamored by Russ Feingold, one of very few Democrats who voted to confirm John Ashcroft, and Robert Byrd, one of the few who voted to confirm Samuel Alito, largely because of their articulate opposition to the Iraq invasion and occupation. I don't mean to imply that Byrd or Feingold should be purged. (I don't think they should, for the reasons of political realism and proportionality stated above.) But I am arguing that the travesty in Iraq has blurred the vision of some on the left, making one kind of stubborn iconoclasm seem much worse today than others.
The fact is that Iraq is not an issue about which it can credibly be said that those who agree with Republicans are all just cowardly, right-wing, or both. A genuine progressive can, in keeping with liberal principles, support the Iraq invasion and the occupation. To be sure, I believe those positions to be wrong on the merits, but litmus test issues should be confined to those where there is both no good-faith progressive argument to be made in favor of the offending position and where that position betrays a lack of core conviction on an issue where all Democrats must be in broad agreement. On Iraq, the core conviction that all progressives must share is not an exact date that the United States should leave, but rather a commitment to achieving the result that loses the fewest lives and creates the most livable Iraq possible in the long run. Reasonable people can differ on what policy will accomplish this.
That isn't to say Lieberman is a legitimate Democratic standard-bearer. Bloggers and others have pointed out at length how he has betrayed the Democrats repeatedly in myriad ways extending beyond the Iraq debate. His wavering on Social Security privatization and his excuse-making regarding torture were genuine deviations from mainstream progressive values. These outlier positions taken together arguably do constitute legitimate grounds for a concerted effort to throw Lieberman out of office.
Purges, litmus tests, apostasy, party discipline -- looking forward, it seems likely that Democrats and progressives will be grappling with these issues more and more often and grasping for some ground rules. Moderates are going to need to accept that, while the progressive (and Democratic) tent should be big, it is not infinitely expandable; they must show some willingness to confront those who too often or egregiously betray core Democratic convictions. By the same token, the activists who are eager to enforce party discipline need to proceed with an eye towards the bigger picture and a focus on the core values that Democrats hold dear.
Ben Adler is editor of Campus Progress at the Center for American Progress.
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