https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-HOIKCqNjw
This is an attempt to focus the discussion from the Biden thread more closely on the strategy and tactics of left wing politics.
Someone sent me this blog post, and I think it sums up a lot of what is being talked about at least around the internal battle within the left:
For Democrats, It's the Worst of Both Worlds (https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/for-democrats-its-the-worst-of-both?s=r&fbclid=IwAR280hYb4phDbcZSRWqmVFSqP0DrqGGoqR3dFs7RUOerTkeWLqo0ZMo4kqo)
I think this is a good piece, and worthy reading for Languishites involved in the debates we've had around progressive strategy. I fall pretty solidily (although not entirely) in the "Centrist" wing.
Some good pieces (but really, read the entire bit, it's not that long):
QuoteIf you're going to have your far left element play such a role in the public face of your party, you want to at least try to implement their radical agenda; if you're going to have the party be dominated by your ass-checking, risk-averse moderates, you'd want them to ruthlessly control the party's image for maximum electoral gain in a polarized country. But we get the worst parts of both, a party where the leftists are constantly publishing in The New York Times while the centrists get to make all the backroom deals
QuoteIt's also true, though, that the left of the party has created a mental universe in which the very idea of limits and the need to moderate have been waved away. I come from a tradition with radical demands but which also recognizes that we can't actually get most of those demands yet, that we need to do a lot of organizing and persuading to get there. But so many leftist Democrats now insist that
- Their agenda is already popular with Americans
- You only need to juice turnout, not to change minds, evidence be damned
- If the Democrats only embrace a left-wing agenda, they'll sweep to power
QuoteFor example. I'm a "let them all in" guy when it comes to immigration. Those are my values, and I do think that someday we'll have a vastly more open and humane immigration system. But someday is not today. Liberal views on immigration [color=var(--print_on_web_bg_color, #1a1a1a)]are deeply unpopular[/color] in this country right now. If Democrats run hard on mass immigration increases, they will lose more elections and the Republicans will be empowered to make the immigration situation even worse. I don't have any sort of simplistic schema for when you have to compromise and when you have to fight; it's complicated. But so many further-left Democrats I encounter presume that there's never any time when compromise is necessary and who view strategic calls for moderation as inherently bad faith, as the province of the wicked. It's a terribly unhelpful way to do electoral politics in our stupid system.
(Bold is mine)
Who said we were smart?
Are they always losing?
They lose because religion is still a big issue in the US and lots of people who hate what the Republicans have become will vote for them anyway because this is what their Faith dictates. Doesn't matter if they had good ideas, from their point of view, they will vote for the most religious party. They may not be a majority, but just like the conspiracy theorists, they are in sufficient numbers to push the vote to the right side.
Quote from: Berkut on April 20, 2022, 02:13:53 PMSome good pieces (but really, read the entire bit, it's not that long):
QuoteYou only need to juice turnout, not to change minds, evidence be damned[/font][/size][/color]
[/list]
The evidence* presented isn't convincing. I will agree that past a certain point tools to juice turnout may also have the effect of increasing negative turnout (i.e., turnout of the other party).
However, when you consider that most "independent" voters are "voters of party X who refuse to tell a pollster that" - https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/01/independent-voters-partisans-in-the-closet-101931/ - it seems clear that juicing turnout is a viable strategy.
Further, the story of the "evidence" when you click through boils down to the assertion that "The only reason we won is that there were these very large swings toward us among college-educated white people in the Atlanta suburbs."
...note that it doesn't say there whether people switched their votes, or some people who voted in 2016 stayed home in 2020 while other people who didn't vote in 2016 voted in 2020. Without separating those 2 cases, you can't assert that people actually changed their minds.
*Most political science evidence is trash. The sample sizes are too small considering generational turnover, etc. etc.
Variations of this topic come up on Bulwark Podcast all the time. Remember these are almost all ex-GOPers (exception - they recruited Will Saletan formerly of Slate as an unapologetic liberal, but one who no longer felt comfortable at Slate).
The basic line is "Why are Democrats so bad at politics"?
Berkut, you need to look in the mirror.
When Biden took office, republicans were scandalized by Jan. 6 (plus the general aftermath of the trump administration) and some polls showed support for convicting trump. Today polling shows Trump would crush Biden in a new election, and the democrats seem poised for a historically bad midterm. This reversal has been in just 15 months and without any significant scandal. I can't imagine any conclusion except that the democratic gerontocracy badly misplayed their hand from the very beginning.
When i arguing they were making a tactical mistake at the beginning of February by leading with the trump impeachment before getting covid relief passed or key cabinet members in place, you so vociferously argued against me you mentioned i had a brown shirt. This refusal to accept any challenge to democratic leadership is a plague upon the party, and a big part how we ended up with this gerontocracy to begin with.
My objections had nothing to do with my love for the Dem leadership, or my belief that if only they impeached Trump, then surely it would all be wonderful for Dems for all time.
I am very confident that if the Dems had gone with your plan of ignoring a insurrection in favor of letting Mitch McConnel tell them how they should start off their control of the Senate, we would not now somehow be better off.
But this argument is not going to be very interesting if it is just your personal pissing contest, AGAIN, so I will pass on engaging in it.
Quote from: Berkut on April 20, 2022, 04:11:31 PMMy objections had nothing to do with my love for the Dem leadership, or my belief that if only they impeached Trump, then surely it would all be wonderful for Dems for all time.
I am very confident that if the Dems had gone with your plan of ignoring a insurrection in favor of letting Mitch McConnel tell them how they should start off their control of the Senate, we would not now somehow be better off.
But this argument is not going to be very interesting if it is just your personal pissing contest, AGAIN, so I will pass on engaging in it.
And this is precisely what I meant--you lie and distort to defend a leadership that doesn't deserve your support. My suggestion was never that they ignore the insurrection, or that they let Mitch McConnell tell them how to run the senate. My suggestion was that they hold the trial after getting key cabinet members in place and make sure it wouldn't interfere with covid relief. That would avoid pressure of accelerating the trial unnecessarily to get to other senate business, avoid the optics of the top priority being prosecuting trump, and losing some of the honeymoon period that is advantageous to getting legislation passed.
That was not McConnell's plan. McConnell's idea was the entire trial was unconstitutional.
I dared to question the wisdom of leadership on the timing of senate business on tactical grounds and you make fascist allusions and make up that i'm copying the ideas of McConnell. And then after throwing fascist stuff my way, accuse me of a personal pissing contest that you aren't engaged in.
:jaron:
Liberals may be smart, but voters are stupid.
You need a centrist face on progressive policies.
Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.
I disagreed with AR on that - my view was there was no better moment and it was essential to put something on the record urgently.
In retrospect I think he was probably right and I was wrong about it.
Quote from: Josquius on April 20, 2022, 04:39:04 PMYou need a centrist face on progressive policies.
Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.
So do right wing policies. It's just they don't match up with political parties in most western countries. People generally like a state that spends lots of money, but are incredibly hardline on things like law and order.
If there was an American or anywhere else equivalent of a "fund the NHS, hang the paedos" style party they'd sweep the board.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 04:41:39 PMQuote from: Josquius on April 20, 2022, 04:39:04 PMYou need a centrist face on progressive policies.
Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.
So do right wing policies. It's just they don't match up with political parties in most western countries. People generally like a state that spends lots of money, but are incredibly hardline on things like law and order.
If there was an American or anywhere else equivalent of a "fund the NHS, hang the paedos" style party they'd sweep the board.
Not sure I'd call law and order a right wing policy.
Hang the paedophiles sure (paedo is a word that gets my inner pedant riled up lately). But they also tend to be big on massive budget cuts to law enforcement.
I guess the key problem here is breaking through with anything more complex than 2 dimensional thinking - guy who says let's kill all the thievs will do better than someone with a plan to invest in policies to reduce crime happening in the first place.
This is a key reason conservatives, especially in their modern guise, tend to have an advantage over the left. Emotions and simple solutions to complex problems trump workable thought out plans to actually tackle problems.
Law and order is definitely a right wing policy in the US.
The problem is only crazy and stupid people vote Republican right now, and it's hard to figure out how to get crazy and stupid people to vote for you without being crazy and stupid yourself.
Quote from: Josquius on April 20, 2022, 04:46:51 PMNot sure I'd call law and order a right wing policy.
Hang the paedophiles sure (paedo is a word that gets my inner pedant riled up lately). But they also tend to be big on massive budget cuts to law enforcement.
I guess the key problem here is breaking through with anything more complex than 2 dimensional thinking - guy who says let's kill all the thievs will do better than someone with a plan to invest in policies to reduce crime happening in the first place.
This is a key reason conservatives, especially in their modern guise, tend to have an advantage over the left. Emotions and simple solutions to complex problems trump workable thought out plans to actually tackle problems.
You can't just pull out policies and poll them on their own. Because people aren't voting for policies they're voting for politicians or parties. Policies don't and shouldn't matter to any normal voter - they're an issue for wonks.
What matters is the strategy that is around the policies. Why are you arguing for those policies? How do they relate to other bits of your program/manifesto? And what's the purpose of all those together? In addition you also need to be credible, so people believe you will - or will at least try to - implement those policies. If you do the thinking on that it's not about emotion or complexity because you will know how to explain what you're trying to do in a sentence or two.
But if all you've got is a grab-bag of policies with nothing to cohere them, or you've no trust on delivery then it doesn't matter how popular policies are on their own - voters won't buy your program. And that's what politicians/parties are selling (as well as ability to deliver).
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 04:39:14 PMI disagreed with AR on that - my view was there was no better moment and it was essential to put something on the record urgently.
In retrospect I think he was probably right and I was wrong about it.
To me it's the same mistake they made with all of the other investigations. They seem to be half-hearted and incomplete. The investigation should have started right away, but let it run as long as necessary to collect the information. The fact that they chose not to get testimony in the face of opposition during the first impeachment was ridiculous for something that important. Take the time to get it right and make it stick, or make it even uglier for the Republicans to vote against it.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 05:00:48 PMYou can't just pull out policies and poll them on their own. Because people aren't voting for policies they're voting for politicians or parties. Policies don't and shouldn't matter to any normal voter - they're an issue for wonks.
Policies do and should matter. If weed is legalized their lives change and they should and do care. If stimulus checks are sent, same. Increases or decreases in taxes, same. Less or more cops on the street, same. Drunk driving gets more strict, same. So on and so forth.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 20, 2022, 05:34:10 PMQuote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 05:00:48 PMYou can't just pull out policies and poll them on their own. Because people aren't voting for policies they're voting for politicians or parties. Policies don't and shouldn't matter to any normal voter - they're an issue for wonks.
Policies do and should matter. If weed is legalized their lives change and they should and do care. If stimulus checks are sent, same. Increases or decreases in taxes, same. Less or more cops on the street, same. Drunk driving gets more strict, same. So on and so forth.
Yes.
I'd say policies should be 100% the main thing that voting is for.
I don't care if someone has the personality of a slide of toast and is crap at making speeches. If they have good ideas and seem competent then that's who I want in charge.
But then politics by its very nature (being shit) does go the opposite way.
I think more democratic nations tend to have things a bit straighter here.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 20, 2022, 05:34:10 PMPolicies do and should matter. If weed is legalized their lives change and they should and do care. If stimulus checks are sent, same. Increases or decreases in taxes, same. Less or more cops on the street, same. Drunk driving gets more strict, same. So on and so forth.
Sure but that's having an opinion on an issue. People do have that - it might not be very strong. There's only a few issues where I think I have a clear view on something in a yes/no way. People probably have a sense of the direction they want society to go in.
Or it's an argument for politics existing. Those things matter and politicians work out policies - how do they deliver them, increase or decrease which taxes, more police on the street could be operational spend more on admin support so police are on the beat for more of their shift and less on fancy equipment. What are the priorities within those policies. They put that together as an agenda or a program and we vote based on whether that matches with our sense of direction or not.
It's why pulling apart an entire program into disaggregated individual issues, separate from who's promising them is a fool's errand that tells you nothing. Because it all matters and that's what voters base their vote on. In terms of the Democrats they're bad at that bit, which is the reason their "messaging" is an issue.
Although there will be a few single-issue voters, for sure.
QuoteYes.
I'd say policies should be 100% the main thing that voting is for.
I don't care if someone has the personality of a slide of toast and is crap at making speeches. If they have good ideas and seem competent then that's who I want in charge.
But then politics by its very nature (being shit) does go the opposite way.
I think more democratic nations tend to have things a bit straighter here.
I totally disagree and find it strange for this view now - for me the biggest argument against say Trump or Johnson, or Corbyn or Melenchon for that matter, is who they are. It's their personality and their suitability for office that I think is the most important thing. It's a small c conservative thing but I think character matters - probably far more than their legislative program.
Even today I was listening to a podcast on the French election and they were discussing how "normal" Le Pen's policy documents were. There was nothing crazy or frightening the horses in them. But there is a profound difference between her and Macron it's in who they are, the agenda they represent and the direction they want their policies to take society. Just looking at policies in isolation won't tell you that which is why it's not what politics is about in a representative democracy - but could be in, say, Switzerland or California.
Because they want to be right not win.
Quote from: Razgovory on April 20, 2022, 02:42:58 PMWho said we were smart?
I think that is the part of the premise that we must question here :lol:
That is not to say Liberals are not smart, but obviously not smart in the ways that win elections.
My superficial take on the Democrats (the Liberals are doing pretty well up here in Canada):
1. The woke faction could do with being a little more forgiving of the shortcomings of the non-woke faction. If someone is only 80% of the way there, don't condemn them but work with them on the bit where there's overlap while continue to argue to push them the remaining 20%.
2. The non-woke faction ideally stops accepting the Fox News framing of woke issue. Stop throwing your allies under the bus and ceding ground on things like Critical Race Theory. Even if you're not ready to go to bat for them, at least do the work to stop accepting the Fox News take as accurate. Realize that they're trying to poison you and turn you against people you should work with and act accordingly.
3. Do some opp research and identify GOP wedge issues, then hit those hard.
4. Find one or more narratives about how to improve the lives of one or more sections of average Americans and push those hard. Make it aspirational and contrast it with the petty bigotry of the GOP.
5. 50+% of the GOPsphere is about grifting their followers. If you can amplify the story of how the GOP is exploiting and using its adherents in venues that they actually see that could peel some folks off.
6. Whine less.
7. Amplify the GOP's lack of decency, but in a way that doesn't focus purely on culture war targets.
Quote from: Jacob on April 20, 2022, 09:09:48 PM7. Amplify the GOP's lack of decency, but in a way that doesn't focus purely on culture war targets.
This angle did enable us to win a senate seat in Alabama for a short time. Anything is possible with the scum and villainy the Republicans run.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 04:39:14 PMI disagreed with AR on that - my view was there was no better moment and it was essential to put something on the record urgently.
In retrospect I think he was probably right and I was wrong about it.
In retrospect the impeachment did nothing to increase prices so seems irrelevant to the question.
Quote from: Josquius on April 20, 2022, 04:39:04 PMYou need a centrist face on progressive policies.
Research tends to show time and again if seperated from a context of being attached to a side, left wing policies tend to be very popular.
I don't think it's even about policies. I can't form many coherent policies from the Republicans right now, except being anti-Dems.
Man, Berkut really loves posting about how the far left is destroying the Democratic party. This is bullshit and frankly stupid. Very few voters go into a polling place and say, "Man, I wanted cheaper health insurance, LGBT rights, respect for the rule of law, but man that AOC and that Bernie Sanders get way too much attention in the party, I better vote for a White Nationalist who supports qAnon theories."
That just isn't reality.
Very few people in the entire country are making choices like "do I vote for Hillary of Trump" or "Do I vote for Biden or Trump?" Instead a lot of people in '16 were thinking "ehh, do I go vote for Hillary who kinda sucks or do I just stay home?" And in 2020 a lot of people were saying "well Trump really sucked so I guess I'll go vote this time and vote for Biden." We don't have "straight" elections for anything really. Our House seats are gerrymandered in many States and even when not deliberately gerrymandered, because our politics now break heavily along urban vs rural lines, many districts just simply aren't meaningfully contested. Our Senate seats are contested statewide, but only a handful of States have a close enough split between the partisans for people who are persuadable to actually make a difference.
The electoral college incorporates many of the same problems with the Senate.
Like there isn't some playbook Schumer and Pelosi can pull out that wins them Mississippi or Wyoming's Senate seats. Likewise there isn't a meaningful playbook that McConnell and gang can put together that is going to make them competitive in New York or Massachusetts. Note that this trend is going in the way of being more like this--we used to be able to talk about your Democratic Senators spread around some random states like the Dakotas and a few Southern states, or your Repbulicans sneaking wins in New England, that's mostly done now and not likely to come back anytime soon.
To have any meaningful conversation you need to refine it to something beyond "why do they lose so goddam always", because obviously they don't. In fact since 1992 Democrats have almost always won a plurality of total votes cast nationwide in Presidential elections, and in most Senate and House elections. Ignoring that we have a system in which one side can very significantly get more votes, sometimes by a lot, and still lose, ignores a huge part of the problem.
Democrats win all the time--they've barely lost a meaningful election in California (a state with more people in it than Canada) in a decade. Ditto New York State (just not quite as big), they rarely lose across New England, New Jersey, Delaware, they've locked up New Mexico pretty solid. They win mayoral elections in just about every city in America with more than 150,000 residents, almost 100% of them.
By some metrics Democrats not only win, they win more than Republicans. But when it comes time to determine who wins the Electoral College, the United States Senate, and the House of Representatives, the votes of the Republican base simply count for more. All of those institutions are dominated in total number by more seats/States that massively overrepresent white conservatives as compared to their share of the national population.
So here's the real answer--they lose the races you're talking about because white conservatives are going to vote for a white conservative party, and because of how polarized the country is the Democrats cannot meaningfully field white conservative candidates or field white conservative messaging. Like there's no option to run a Joe Manchin in Alabama or Idaho--if Joe Manchin was 25 he would be a Republican, but because he's 75 and from a dynasty of West Virginia Democrats from back when being a Democrat meant supporting the United Mineworker's Union and hating blacks, Joe was stuck with the party that is now toxic in his state. There is no meaningful way to go back to that without imploding the Democratic party.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 20, 2022, 10:22:12 PMQuote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 04:39:14 PMI disagreed with AR on that - my view was there was no better moment and it was essential to put something on the record urgently.
In retrospect I think he was probably right and I was wrong about it.
In retrospect the impeachment did nothing to increase prices so seems irrelevant to the question.
Biden should have simply arrested Trump and charged him with the appropriate crime when coming into office. The problem wasn't that we went to far with impeachment it was that we didn't go far enough. Instead of lawsuits and congressional subpoenas we should have warrants and raids. We won't get a next time.
I cut that post off without getting to my final point to avoid it being over-long but also so it would stand alone as its own thought--the real question I think most people that ask Berkut's simplistic question actually care about is "why do Democrats seem to lose more than they should." They don't--they actually win probably a little more than they should in some respects, but most of their wins don't help them in the ways people care about because of the way our country is structured.
I would propose a better question is this: given that control of the country's Federal government is largely determined by about 6 to 8 states, what could Democrats do to more reliably win enough of those states to control the Federal government? The answer is a mixture of "I don't know" and they will still lose sometimes no matter what they do, so what the hell are we really talking about? I guess we're really talking about paring down "winnable losses", a winnable loss would be the 2016 Presidential, the 2020 Maine Senate election, several House elections in moderate districts in 2020, etc. Let's be real clear--I think some messaging and Strategy shifts could have meant that the Dems didn't lose House seats in 2020 and possibly ended up with maybe a 52 D Senate. I do not think there is any permutation of strategy, no matter when it was implemented (i.e. Day 1 of Biden's Presidency) that will protect the Dem House majority in 2022--likewise there was no winning strategy for the Dems in 2010, Republicans in 2018 or 2008 etc.
At least some of these elections expose a brutal reality of our system--because we have narrowed down the portion of our country that gets to make a meaningful decision, and because those States where that occurs are very polarized and close to a split electorate, the ~10-15% of voters that political scientists have found almost always vote against whomever is in power, have an outside influence. These are people who, for whatever reason, reliably go and vote and always vote opposite of their prior vote the election previous. There is no actual logic that could drive such people, and thus we can assume they are largely driven by emotional dislike for whoever is in charge. If we had more national elections these people would be less important because the weight of the country being somewhat more in line with the Democrats would likely overwhelm the GOP much moreso than happens now.
Note also that at no point since 2012 has the GOP in a poll of party favorability pulled higher than 37%, and its unfavorable has never dipped below 43%--and by the way that 43% was back in 2012, while it has seesawed since, it has trended ever-upward, its unfavorability hasn't dripped below 50% since 2013 (the closest it got was in January of 2017--Trump's first month in office.) If we judge a political party on how it persuades people one would have to question why is the GOP so disliked--and they became markedly and consistently more disliked 10 years ago and have never recovered? The fact that they are still so competitive in spite of that is primarily attributable to a system of elections that gifts their base with far more power than they would have in systems used in most other democratic countries.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 06:09:00 PM.
Even today I was listening to a podcast on the French election and they were discussing how "normal" Le Pen's policy documents were. There was nothing crazy or frightening the horses in them. But there is a profound difference between her and Macron it's in who they are, the agenda they represent and the direction they want their policies to take society. Just looking at policies in isolation won't tell you that which is why it's not what politics is about in a representative democracy - but could be in, say, Switzerland or California.
Disclaimer in my view of course that I don't mean Mr Jewkill can show up one election with a policy of peace and love and all that went before is forgotten.
Who someone is matters in terms of policy history and likely future policies as well as those directly promised.
Also have to be sure they are actually telling the truth since there's no legal protection for the person elected on a policy of nationalise things to decide actually more privatisation is what we need.
Beyond these aspects however personality meanwhile matters not at all. My point is slick salesmen types have an outsized influence on the world and I detest it.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 20, 2022, 06:09:00 PMEven today I was listening to a podcast on the French election and they were discussing how "normal" Le Pen's policy documents were. There was nothing crazy or frightening the horses in them. But there is a profound difference between her and Macron it's in who they are, the agenda they represent and the direction they want their policies to take society. Just looking at policies in isolation won't tell you that which is why it's not what politics is about in a representative democracy - but could be in, say, Switzerland or California.
It's about giving cover to people that would otherwise be embarrassed to admit voting for a neo-fascist party. Marine has done a bang up job of normalizing the indefensible; she is a far more skilled politician than dead old dad.
The fact is that the left wins a lot of elections outside the US and perhaps the UK.
Perhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 09:48:39 AMPerhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Both are poor questions for a number of reasons.
First, the rules are radically different. In a first-past-the-post system where the head of the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative branch, you get 2 parties, period. And that forces many disparate groups into an unofficial coalition from the jump.
Second, the right wins a lot of elections around the world as well, so the US is only so much of an outlier in the grand world scheme.
But, to recap (I had this half written and spilled coffee on my computer, RIP):
This is attributed to Adlai Stevenson, almost certainly apocryphally:
Quote"Governor, you have the support of all thinking people!"
"But Madam, we need a majority!"
It's easier to run a campaign of demagoguery than to pull together dozens of different groups into a coalition, where each can plausibly make the claim that their issues are most important and are being ignored by the larger group...
Quote from: ulmont on April 21, 2022, 10:08:07 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 09:48:39 AMPerhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Both are poor questions for a number of reasons.
First, the rules are radically different. In a first-past-the-post system where the head of the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative branch, you get 2 parties, period. And that forces many disparate groups into an unofficial coalition from the jump.
Second, the right wins a lot of elections around the world as well, so the US is only so much of an outlier in the grand world scheme.
But, to recap (I had this half written and spilled coffee on my computer, RIP):
This is attributed to Adlai Stevenson, almost certainly apocryphally:
Quote"Governor, you have the support of all thinking people!"
"But Madam, we need a majority!"
It's easier to run a campaign of demagoguery than to pull together dozens of different groups into a coalition, where each can plausibly make the claim that their issues are most important and are being ignored by the larger group...
In Canada we have a first past the post system and the liberals are famously known as the natural governing party of the country.
That remained true even when the left vote became split between the liberals and the NDP. There is no significant competition for the one federal right wing party and yet they rarely form government.
I think it's striking that the US and Canada can be culturally similar in so many ways and yet be so completely different politically
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:50:59 AMQuote from: ulmont on April 21, 2022, 10:08:07 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 09:48:39 AMPerhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Both are poor questions for a number of reasons.
First, the rules are radically different. In a first-past-the-post system where the head of the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative branch, you get 2 parties, period. And that forces many disparate groups into an unofficial coalition from the jump.
Second, the right wins a lot of elections around the world as well, so the US is only so much of an outlier in the grand world scheme.
But, to recap (I had this half written and spilled coffee on my computer, RIP):
This is attributed to Adlai Stevenson, almost certainly apocryphally:
Quote"Governor, you have the support of all thinking people!"
"But Madam, we need a majority!"
It's easier to run a campaign of demagoguery than to pull together dozens of different groups into a coalition, where each can plausibly make the claim that their issues are most important and are being ignored by the larger group...
In Canada we have a first past the post system and the liberals are famously known as the natural governing party of the country.
That remained true even when the left vote became split between the liberals and the NDP. There is no significant competition for the one federal right wing party and yet they rarely form government.
I think it's striking that the US and Canada can be culturally similar in so many ways and yet be so completely different politically
The clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
Quote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:50:59 AMQuote from: ulmont on April 21, 2022, 10:08:07 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 09:48:39 AMPerhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Both are poor questions for a number of reasons.
First, the rules are radically different. In a first-past-the-post system where the head of the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative branch, you get 2 parties, period. And that forces many disparate groups into an unofficial coalition from the jump.
Second, the right wins a lot of elections around the world as well, so the US is only so much of an outlier in the grand world scheme.
But, to recap (I had this half written and spilled coffee on my computer, RIP):
This is attributed to Adlai Stevenson, almost certainly apocryphally:
Quote"Governor, you have the support of all thinking people!"
"But Madam, we need a majority!"
It's easier to run a campaign of demagoguery than to pull together dozens of different groups into a coalition, where each can plausibly make the claim that their issues are most important and are being ignored by the larger group...
In Canada we have a first past the post system and the liberals are famously known as the natural governing party of the country.
That remained true even when the left vote became split between the liberals and the NDP. There is no significant competition for the one federal right wing party and yet they rarely form government.
I think it's striking that the US and Canada can be culturally similar in so many ways and yet be so completely different politically
The clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
The problem with that analysis is that the Liberals were the natural governing party of Canada before the NDP became a political party. But I think you have hit on a different point, the perspective of the US is very much from the right. In Canada the Liberals need to continually steal the ideas from the NDP to stay in power. So it is the reverse of what you proposed - the Liberals have to be left enough to maintain power - rather than appealing to the right to keep the left out of power.
A very different dynamic from the US.
Quote from: The Minsky Moment on April 21, 2022, 08:27:23 AMIt's about giving cover to people that would otherwise be embarrassed to admit voting for a neo-fascist party. Marine has done a bang up job of normalizing the indefensible; she is a far more skilled politician than dead old dad.
Yes.
The most far right party anyone I know has voted for is the Lib Dems. But this happened a lot with Corbyn-fans I knew. They would often point out that his policies were no more radical than mainstream social democracy - which is true. Or ask what policies I disagreed with. I would explain that for me it was anti-semitism, wanting to disband NATO, IRA-sympathising and a whole history of alarming foreign policy interests/ties. But they didn't believe, examples wouldn't help - in their view it was the bias of mainstream media, it was a hit job by the Tories/Blairites/right-wing press etc. Policy was a refuge because it gave them a credible excuse to back someone with all those issues beyond "I sympathise" or "I don't care".
Now admittedly in the end with friendships I valued we just had to not talk politics.
QuoteThe fact is that the left wins a lot of elections outside the US and perhaps the UK.
Perhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Well isn't the issue that the question is wrong. The Democrats win pretty regularly at Presidential and Congressional level - it's not the dominance they had for most of the 20th century but it's competitive two party system. The issue is that the US has so many features in its system that gives power to a minority party that is broadly cohesive and almost parliamentary style that the Democrats don't win by enough. Becaue they're not that cohesive and, generally, the GOP are.
The US is - like Spain - one of the countries I'd point to of not having a "natural party of government"/party of power (though I think there's an argument they did and it was the Democrats in parts of the 20th century). The UK (although I'm unsure on the shape of our politics right now), Germany, France (at least historically), Japan have a conservative/christian democrat/right tradition that's the natural party of government; Sweden has the one from the left; Canada has the Liberals; Ireland (historically) had Fianna Fail. I think those parties in those countries, politics is on the easy setting. But I don't think it's true of the US which seems to go back and forth pretty regularly.
How are you using policy? Leaving NATO is a policy. Brexit is a policy.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 12:14:51 PMHow are you using policy? Leaving NATO is a policy. Brexit is a policy.
The formal policy of the Labour Party due to a huge backbench revolt was support for NATO during Corbyn's leadership. Given his entire history, the people around him - including his spokesman saying the UK should withdraw its troops from Estonia - I don't think that mattered.
In terms of policies in his manifesto - there was nothing to object to. I didn't trust him on that. And I think his worldview/the direction he wanted to take the country, plus other issues like anti-semitism was really problematic - and I don't think he's a credible leader on delivery. I've no douobt there were lots of policies I'd like in a left-wing Labour manifesto but that's not enough - and not just for me, loads of his policies polled very well until people were told who was proposing them.
I think I get it. You're using policy to mean like party platforms. Whereas I (and I think Squeeze) are using it to mean things that get enacted.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 12:38:44 PMI think I get it. You're using policy to mean like party platforms. Whereas I (and I think Squeeze) are using it to mean things that get enacted.
I'm not sure. Policy = reduce income tax by 2%, it's a direct actionable promise/pledge/idea. Party platforms are normally made up of lots of policies.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 12:38:44 PMI think I get it. You're using policy to mean like party platforms. Whereas I (and I think Squeeze) are using it to mean things that get enacted.
The difference does not matter--most voters don't care about the platform or things that get enacted. People that talk about politics on the internet, are significant outliers in this regard.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 01:09:07 PMThe difference does not matter--most voters don't care about the platform or things that get enacted. People that talk about politics on the internet, are significant outliers in this regard.
I have yet to talk to a single person who was not happy to receive stimulus checks.
In terms of control of the House I think Democrats compare somewhat favorably to the Liberal Party of Canada over a historical timeline.
Starting in 1868 (first Canadian Parliamentary elections), there have been ~52,396 days, the Liberal Party has held governmental control for 32,693 of them--around 62%.
Starting in the closest U.S. House term, the 40th Congress, up through the present congress, there have been 77 Congresses, with the Democrats controlling the House of Representatives (the equivalent of controlling the Parliament in Canada) 46 out of 77 Congresses, or 60% of the time.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 01:22:48 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 01:09:07 PMThe difference does not matter--most voters don't care about the platform or things that get enacted. People that talk about politics on the internet, are significant outliers in this regard.
I have yet to talk to a single person who was not happy to receive stimulus checks.
I've yet to talk to a single person who liked Trump who said they planned to vote any different in 2022 or 2024 because Joe Biden gave them a stimulus check. I also don't know anyone who disliked Trump who said they were going to vote for him in 2020 when the first round of the checks went out (which happened during the campaign.)
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 01:38:31 PMI've yet to talk to a single person who liked Trump who said they planned to vote any different in 2022 or 2024 because Joe Biden gave them a stimulus check. I also don't know anyone who disliked Trump who said they were going to vote for him in 2020 when the first round of the checks went out (which happened during the campaign.)
You're moving the goal posts. I said people should and do care about policies. I didn't say tribalists changed their party vote on one policy or another.
Though there is the example of senior citizens voting against Trump because of this handling of covid.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 02:03:10 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 01:38:31 PMI've yet to talk to a single person who liked Trump who said they planned to vote any different in 2022 or 2024 because Joe Biden gave them a stimulus check. I also don't know anyone who disliked Trump who said they were going to vote for him in 2020 when the first round of the checks went out (which happened during the campaign.)
You're moving the goal posts. I said people should and do care about policies. I didn't say tribalists changed their party vote on one policy or another.
Though there is the example of senior citizens voting against Trump because of this handling of covid.
If it doesn't affect voting it doesn't matter in terms of politics. This is a political discussion.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 02:06:07 PMIf it doesn't affect voting it doesn't matter in terms of politics. This is a political discussion.
I just gave you the example of senior citizens voting for Biden because of covid.
Quote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:50:59 AMQuote from: ulmont on April 21, 2022, 10:08:07 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 09:48:39 AMPerhaps the question is better posed as to why the US is such an outlier.
Both are poor questions for a number of reasons.
First, the rules are radically different. In a first-past-the-post system where the head of the executive branch is elected separately from the legislative branch, you get 2 parties, period. And that forces many disparate groups into an unofficial coalition from the jump.
Second, the right wins a lot of elections around the world as well, so the US is only so much of an outlier in the grand world scheme.
But, to recap (I had this half written and spilled coffee on my computer, RIP):
This is attributed to Adlai Stevenson, almost certainly apocryphally:
Quote"Governor, you have the support of all thinking people!"
"But Madam, we need a majority!"
It's easier to run a campaign of demagoguery than to pull together dozens of different groups into a coalition, where each can plausibly make the claim that their issues are most important and are being ignored by the larger group...
In Canada we have a first past the post system and the liberals are famously known as the natural governing party of the country.
That remained true even when the left vote became split between the liberals and the NDP. There is no significant competition for the one federal right wing party and yet they rarely form government.
I think it's striking that the US and Canada can be culturally similar in so many ways and yet be so completely different politically
The clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
This is a terrible idea. I don't even know where to start.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 21, 2022, 02:11:18 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 02:06:07 PMIf it doesn't affect voting it doesn't matter in terms of politics. This is a political discussion.
I just gave you the example of senior citizens voting for Biden because of covid.
You may have gotten into your drugs early today but "covid" isn't a policy, it was/is a global pandemic.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 02:36:41 PMYou may have gotten into your drugs early today but "covid" isn't a policy, it was/is a global pandemic.
Talking smack and discussing can both be enjoyable. Give me a shout if you settle on one.
Quote from: Zoupa on April 21, 2022, 02:32:05 PMQuote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMThe clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
This is a terrible idea. I don't even know where to start.
The success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
In the UK the rise of Labour quickly ate into the support for the centrist Liberals, who themselves are now the third party after merging to form the LibDems.
Quote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMThe success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
Yeah it is interesting. The closest I could get is probably Ireland, which had scrambled, non-idelogical civil war politics - but Fianna Fail is often centrist, with a healthy populist streak. Maybe give it a few years but you could make the same case for the SNP - broadly centrist, little bit populist and nationalist.
My guess would be that that bit of Canadian exceptionalism has its origins and maybe is to do with the role of Quebec. But I've no idea what beyond that suspicion?
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 21, 2022, 03:20:44 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMThe success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
Yeah it is interesting. The closest I could get is probably Ireland, which had scrambled, non-idelogical civil war politics - but Fianna Fail is often centrist, with a healthy populist streak. Maybe give it a few years but you could make the same case for the SNP - broadly centrist, little bit populist and nationalist.
My guess would be that that bit of Canadian exceptionalism has its origins and maybe is to do with the role of Quebec. But I've no idea what beyond that suspicion?
The Liberal's support in Quebec has always been a strength of theirs for sure. There, the Liberals have always been the voice of federalist voters. And while federalist voters aren't necessarily the majority in Quebec, it gives a base to the Liberals.
The more nationalist voters in Quebec (not necessarily separatist, but nationalist) seem to flip flop between being left nationalists (Parti Quebecois/Quebec Solidaire), or right nationalist (CAQ, in older times the Union Nationale).
Federally you've sometimes seen national parties break through and connect with more nationalist voters (NDP under Layton, the PCs under Mulroney), but such connections never seem to last due to the inherent contradictions of being a national party trying to appeal to Quebec nationalist voters.
Quote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMThe success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
Japan's Liberal Democratic Party has been the party of government almost all the time in recent history.
Quote from: Jacob on April 21, 2022, 03:36:52 PMJapan's Liberal Democratic Party has been the party of government almost all the time in recent history.
Isn't it pretty right-wing/conservative though, despite the name?
I mean Canada isn't that unique in centrism dominating--in fact America has a much stronger and longer tradition of that very thing. There have been vanishingly few times that any political faction that has strayed significantly far from the center has achieved Federal power in the United States. The two major factions always had radical elements but were anchored by groups that tend towards more centrist views, all the way back to 1789--the yeoman farmers of the Democrats and the "commercial interests" (for lack of a better term) of the Federalists/National Republicans/Whigs/GOP Republicans.
Depending on how you argue it there may only be 2 to 4 good examples of Presidents who strayed into actually heading a genuinely radical coalition.
Perhaps more contemporary history - say from the 60s or so would be a better comparator for the modern political situation we are discussing.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 21, 2022, 03:20:44 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMThe success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
Yeah it is interesting. The closest I could get is probably Ireland, which had scrambled, non-idelogical civil war politics - but Fianna Fail is often centrist, with a healthy populist streak. Maybe give it a few years but you could make the same case for the SNP - broadly centrist, little bit populist and nationalist.
My guess would be that that bit of Canadian exceptionalism has its origins and maybe is to do with the role of Quebec. But I've no idea what beyond that suspicion?
The problem with that comparator is the Liberals are not really a centrist party. They definitely veer left - eg taking all the good ideas from the NDP.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 03:55:39 PMI mean Canada isn't that unique in centrism dominating--in fact America has a much stronger and longer tradition of that very thing. There have been vanishingly few times that any political faction that has strayed significantly far from the center has achieved Federal power in the United States. The two major factions always had radical elements but were anchored by groups that tend towards more centrist views, all the way back to 1789--the yeoman farmers of the Democrats and the "commercial interests" (for lack of a better term) of the Federalists/National Republicans/Whigs/GOP Republicans.
Depending on how you argue it there may only be 2 to 4 good examples of Presidents who strayed into actually heading a genuinely radical coalition.
Just because the NDP exists to the left, does not mean the Liberals are a centrist party.
They can be. The Overton window is allowed to go left.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 04:01:42 PMThe problem with that comparator is the Liberals are not really a centrist party. They definitely veer left - eg taking all the good ideas from the NDP.
But within the tradition of left-wing parties that is still weird. The US is also an exception here.
It's like if Lloyd-George's Liberals or the Radicals survived. Most left-wing parties either come from a Marxist tradition with some form or other of a concept of "socialism" - and normally a conscious decision to take the parliamentary/non-revolutionary route, or they come from a labour movement developing a political/parliamentary wing. That covers almost every party of the left in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and much of Latin America too (though there's obviously more broad left/Popular Unity style coalition building there).
I can't think of another example of a 19th century incrementalist liberal party seeing off a challenge from the left. I wonder if the reason that happened in Canada - and maybe the US too? - is geography. A lot of energy on the left was through the farmer-populist style left? Which provided more of a counterweight to urban workers or workers in extractive industries which are really prone to unionisation/class struggle?
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 21, 2022, 04:15:21 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 04:01:42 PMThe problem with that comparator is the Liberals are not really a centrist party. They definitely veer left - eg taking all the good ideas from the NDP.
But within the tradition of left-wing parties that is still weird. The US is also an exception here.
It's like if Lloyd-George's Liberals or the Radicals survived. Most left-wing parties either come from a Marxist tradition with some form or other of a concept of "socialism" - and normally a conscious decision to take the parliamentary/non-revolutionary route, or they come from a labour movement developing a political/parliamentary wing. That covers almost every party of the left in Europe, Australia, New Zealand and much of Latin America too (though there's obviously more broad left/Popular Unity style coalition building there).
I can't think of another example of a 19th century incrementalist liberal party seeing off a challenge from the left. I wonder if the reason that happened in Canada - and maybe the US too? - is geography. A lot of energy on the left was through the farmer-populist style left? Which provided more of a counterweight to urban workers or workers in extractive industries which are really prone to unionisation/class struggle?
I suppose part of the issue then is what constitutes the left. I would argue that a lot of social democratic policies have been incorporated by "liberal" parties such that it is hard to really distinguish amongst them in modern age. I think that is a sign of how successful social democratic movements have been. That might be where the US becomes the outlier - it has not really become as entrenched there. A good example is a lot of Americans still recoiling in horror at the thought of single payor "socialized medicine". Whereas much of the rest of the liberal democratic West consider it perfectly normal and the better system.
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 21, 2022, 04:13:46 PMThey can be. The Overton window is allowed to go left.
Sure, and that is where I say the majority of voters in Canada and other places outside the US are now. Which is why I proposed the question to be, why is the US the outlier.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 04:24:06 PMI suppose part of the issue then is what constitutes the left. I would argue that a lot of social democratic policies have been incorporated by "liberal" parties such that it is hard to really distinguish amongst them in modern age. I think that is a sign of how successful social democratic movements have been. That might be where the US becomes the outlier - it has not really become as entrenched there.
Yeah I'm not meaning to be pedantic over who is or isn't on the left. I can absolutely accept that's where the Liberals are.
It's worth splitting out a little though - because I think what seems unusual to me is that Canada was a country that had democratic institutions and party politics at the turn/early decades of the 20th century. In countries that also had democratic institutions at that point the traditional left party now will trace its routes to those origins of either a socialist/social democratic movement or a union movement. There is a process where working class socialist/social democratic/union parties take over on the left from (and often absorb chunks of) liberal parties that were middle class, but often passing social reform laws.
There'll be loads of countries that are democratic now and don't have a left party with that type of heritage because they didn't have multi-party politics during that transition period in the early 20th century. I find it interesting that that shift doesn't seem to happen in Canada in the same way - that's not me slurring the Liberals as a left-wing party or damning them for coming from the wrong class background :P
It's just something I'd not really thought of and it seems odd and interesting. All of my suggestions - Quebec, prairie populism - are literally just guesses as I have no idea :lol:
QuoteA good example is a lot of Americans still recoiling in horror at the thought of single payor "socialized medicine". Whereas much of the rest of the liberal democratic West consider it perfectly normal and the better system.
I think so on socialised care, but it's not universally single payer by any means. Most of continental Europe has some form or other of social insurance model (France, Germany, Belgium), some have universal private care (Netherlands, Switzerland). The thing that marks out the US is just not having a universal system of whatever type which is very weird - plus the fact that they spend so much more on health than almost anyone else :blink:
Quote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMQuote from: Zoupa on April 21, 2022, 02:32:05 PMQuote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMThe clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
This is a terrible idea. I don't even know where to start.
The success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
In the UK the rise of Labour quickly ate into the support for the centrist Liberals, who themselves are now the third party after merging to form the LibDems.
Maybe a product of Canada doing pretty well this past decade?
I'd say it did used to be the case in the UK sort of, with every party fighting for the centre, the tories only finally winning an election when they abandoned their unpopular right wing policy and elected a Blair clone as leader, entering into a coalition with the lib dems with the help of the global economic crisis.
They then gradually drove the country into the ground which helped to make politics far more divided again.
Quote from: Josquius on April 21, 2022, 05:06:12 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMQuote from: Zoupa on April 21, 2022, 02:32:05 PMQuote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMThe clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
This is a terrible idea. I don't even know where to start.
The success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
In the UK the rise of Labour quickly ate into the support for the centrist Liberals, who themselves are now the third party after merging to form the LibDems.
Maybe a product of Canada doing pretty well this past decade?
I'd say it did used to be the case in the UK sort of, with every party fighting for the centre, the tories only finally winning an election when they abandoned their unpopular right wing policy and elected a Blair clone as leader, entering into a coalition with the lib dems with the help of the global economic crisis.
They then gradually drove the country into the ground which helped to make politics far more divided again.
The Liberal party dominance in Canada has occurred for many many decades.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 21, 2022, 04:15:21 PMI can't think of another example of a 19th century incrementalist liberal party seeing off a challenge from the left. I wonder if the reason that happened in Canada - and maybe the US too? - is geography. A lot of energy on the left was through the farmer-populist style left? Which provided more of a counterweight to urban workers or workers in extractive industries which are really prone to unionisation/class struggle?
I don't want to overstate it because there are multiple factors--but a major one is "the land." In Canada and the United States just about everyone could acquire land if they wished. That is not the case in Europe, by the 18th century just about all the good quality land in Europe was controlled by the wealthy or at the very least the "middle class" (in the old British sense i.e. the quasi-wealthy who let the land out to tenants.) I think leftism is much harder to take hold when many of the working class are landowners.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 21, 2022, 04:52:36 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 04:24:06 PMI suppose part of the issue then is what constitutes the left. I would argue that a lot of social democratic policies have been incorporated by "liberal" parties such that it is hard to really distinguish amongst them in modern age. I think that is a sign of how successful social democratic movements have been. That might be where the US becomes the outlier - it has not really become as entrenched there.
Yeah I'm not meaning to be pedantic over who is or isn't on the left. I can absolutely accept that's where the Liberals are.
It's worth splitting out a little though - because I think what seems unusual to me is that Canada was a country that had democratic institutions and party politics at the turn/early decades of the 20th century. In countries that also had democratic institutions at that point the traditional left party now will trace its routes to those origins of either a socialist/social democratic movement or a union movement. There is a process where working class socialist/social democratic/union parties take over on the left from (and often absorb chunks of) liberal parties that were middle class, but often passing social reform laws.
There'll be loads of countries that are democratic now and don't have a left party with that type of heritage because they didn't have multi-party politics during that transition period in the early 20th century. I find it interesting that that shift doesn't seem to happen in Canada in the same way - that's not me slurring the Liberals as a left-wing party or damning them for coming from the wrong class background :P
It's just something I'd not really thought of and it seems odd and interesting. All of my suggestions - Quebec, prairie populism - are literally just guesses as I have no idea :lol:
QuoteA good example is a lot of Americans still recoiling in horror at the thought of single payor "socialized medicine". Whereas much of the rest of the liberal democratic West consider it perfectly normal and the better system.
I think so on socialised care, but it's not universally single payer by any means. Most of continental Europe has some form or other of social insurance model (France, Germany, Belgium), some have universal private care (Netherlands, Switzerland). The thing that marks out the US is just not having a universal system of whatever type which is very weird - plus the fact that they spend so much more on health than almost anyone else :blink:
On the first point, interesting thought. I think it is fair to say that what moved the Liberals left was the creation of a formal party of left in the early 30s (the CCF which then became the NDP). That may be why Canada generally has a much more left leaning political outlook as compared to our friends to the South. But for a party on the left the Conservatives and Liberals might well have gone the way of the modern day Republicans and Democrats - essentially right wing parties throwing platitudes to left leaning concerns.
On the second point, yes - thanks for the clarification on the single payor point.
Another key factor IMO is there was no American leader that ever tried to take us truly left. FDR is vilified by many on the right for introducing a number of social welfare reforms, but the truth is FDR probably more than any other man of the 20th century insured that socialism would never have political sway in the United States. Most likely given his popularity if FDR had been more of a David Lloyd George type the entire country's Overton Window would be much further left now, probably as much as Canada's. At the same time some of that goes back to land--the radical branch of Liberal party politics Lloyd George emerged from had as a major focus land ownership reform--a hallmark of leftist policy, and there was just never any serious need for that in the United States. We have lots of land and it was historically usually quite cheap.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 06:20:06 PMAnother key factor IMO is there was no American leader that ever tried to take us truly left. FDR is vilified by many on the right for introducing a number of social welfare reforms, but the truth is FDR probably more than any other man of the 20th century insured that socialism would never have political sway in the United States. Most likely given his popularity if FDR had been more of a David Lloyd George type the entire country's Overton Window would be much further left now, probably as much as Canada's. At the same time some of that goes back to land--the radical branch of Liberal party politics Lloyd George emerged from had as a major focus land ownership reform--a hallmark of leftist policy, and there was just never any serious need for that in the United States. We have lots of land and it was historically usually quite cheap.
The counter example though is Canada. Lots of land but the CCF was born on the prairies. Right in the heart of where the available land is located. Left-wing politics appealed to the farmers. Which is I think dramatically different from what happened in your country.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 07:11:01 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 06:20:06 PMAnother key factor IMO is there was no American leader that ever tried to take us truly left. FDR is vilified by many on the right for introducing a number of social welfare reforms, but the truth is FDR probably more than any other man of the 20th century insured that socialism would never have political sway in the United States. Most likely given his popularity if FDR had been more of a David Lloyd George type the entire country's Overton Window would be much further left now, probably as much as Canada's. At the same time some of that goes back to land--the radical branch of Liberal party politics Lloyd George emerged from had as a major focus land ownership reform--a hallmark of leftist policy, and there was just never any serious need for that in the United States. We have lots of land and it was historically usually quite cheap.
The counter example though is Canada. Lots of land but the CCF was born on the prairies. Right in the heart of where the available land is located. Left-wing politics appealed to the farmers. Which is I think dramatically different from what happened in your country.
Not true. The farmers were a pretty radical group in some ways. They backed William Jennings Bryan and others. FDR is the one who protected their farms and gave them subsidies and they supported him in a big way.
It was only with the culture wars in the 1960s that the farmers became reactionary.
Quote from: Valmy on April 21, 2022, 08:03:44 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 07:11:01 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 06:20:06 PMAnother key factor IMO is there was no American leader that ever tried to take us truly left. FDR is vilified by many on the right for introducing a number of social welfare reforms, but the truth is FDR probably more than any other man of the 20th century insured that socialism would never have political sway in the United States. Most likely given his popularity if FDR had been more of a David Lloyd George type the entire country's Overton Window would be much further left now, probably as much as Canada's. At the same time some of that goes back to land--the radical branch of Liberal party politics Lloyd George emerged from had as a major focus land ownership reform--a hallmark of leftist policy, and there was just never any serious need for that in the United States. We have lots of land and it was historically usually quite cheap.
The counter example though is Canada. Lots of land but the CCF was born on the prairies. Right in the heart of where the available land is located. Left-wing politics appealed to the farmers. Which is I think dramatically different from what happened in your country.
Not true. The farmers were a pretty radical group in some ways. They backed William Jennings Bryan and others. FDR is the one who protected their farms and gave them subsidies and they supported him in a big way.
It was only with the culture wars in the 1960s that the farmers became reactionary.
Interesting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
It's a good question. Same thing seems to have happened in Canada.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 07:11:01 PMQuote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 21, 2022, 06:20:06 PMAnother key factor IMO is there was no American leader that ever tried to take us truly left. FDR is vilified by many on the right for introducing a number of social welfare reforms, but the truth is FDR probably more than any other man of the 20th century insured that socialism would never have political sway in the United States. Most likely given his popularity if FDR had been more of a David Lloyd George type the entire country's Overton Window would be much further left now, probably as much as Canada's. At the same time some of that goes back to land--the radical branch of Liberal party politics Lloyd George emerged from had as a major focus land ownership reform--a hallmark of leftist policy, and there was just never any serious need for that in the United States. We have lots of land and it was historically usually quite cheap.
The counter example though is Canada. Lots of land but the CCF was born on the prairies. Right in the heart of where the available land is located. Left-wing politics appealed to the farmers. Which is I think dramatically different from what happened in your country.
Eh, the Democratic Farmer-Labor movement was huge in the late 19th/early 20th century.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 05:28:33 PMQuote from: Josquius on April 21, 2022, 05:06:12 PMQuote from: Barrister on April 21, 2022, 03:07:48 PMQuote from: Zoupa on April 21, 2022, 02:32:05 PMQuote from: PJL on April 21, 2022, 11:11:33 AMThe clue is right there. Because there are more than 2 parties, the centrist Liberal party can claim to be paty of moderates, seeing off challenges from both the left and the right. The problem the Democrats face is that they have no such leftwing equivalent. So they need to create one by disowning/throwing out the progressives from their party. By doing, they stand to gain more than they lose. Because right now, many Republicans think the progessives in the Democratic party ARE the party. By splitting into two, they can at least show waverers they are not the same.
This is a terrible idea. I don't even know where to start.
The success of the Liberal Party of Canada is quite an outlier though around the world. Name me one country with a large "centrist" party that wins a lot of elections.
In the UK the rise of Labour quickly ate into the support for the centrist Liberals, who themselves are now the third party after merging to form the LibDems.
Maybe a product of Canada doing pretty well this past decade?
I'd say it did used to be the case in the UK sort of, with every party fighting for the centre, the tories only finally winning an election when they abandoned their unpopular right wing policy and elected a Blair clone as leader, entering into a coalition with the lib dems with the help of the global economic crisis.
They then gradually drove the country into the ground which helped to make politics far more divided again.
The Liberal party dominance in Canada has occurred for many many decades.
You miss my point.
The point isn't it has suddenly happened in Canada, rather that it survived in Canada where 2008 killed it elsewhere.
I also kinda think Canada and the United States are a lot closer in terms of how much leftism they adopted than many might think. For the obvious reasons, healthcare stands out as being of paramount importance. However, it is mostly a "historical fluke" that the United States didn't adopt some national healthcare system in the 1940s, politically speaking there wasn't much difference on that topic between the United States and Canada, or other Western countries.
To the point think about this--in the election of 1948 Harry S. Truman promised that if he was re-elected he would pass a national health plan. And his opponent Thomas Dewey? He promised if he was elected...he would pass some form of national health plan. Literally both party Presidential candidates (one of them a sitting President) were running with that as part of their platform, and Truman obviously won.
There was basically just a really savvy lobbying push by the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association that killed the legislation--and at the time it actually was not a big deal, that's something that is often somewhat forgotten historically. When most Western countries passed these plans, healthcare just wasn't the big deal it is today. That isn't to say people's health wasn't a big deal, but rather that health spending as a total percentage of GDP was fairly small for a host of reasons--chief among them less specialization in the medical field, fewer advanced treatments for serious disease, fewer long term chronic diseases with expensive treatment regiments etc. Additionally because of the WWII era wage freeze, the vast majority of employers, blue collar and white collar, were offering very generous health plans at the time, and thus it was seen as not that big of a problem.
Add about 40 years to the timeline and you get to the 1980s where most blue collar workers no longer have a union and are now employed by "race to the bottom" employers in terms of employee compensation and benefits, and health care as a percentage of GDP has soared in cost, and suddenly it's a huge fucking problem. And then you start getting hardcore ideological antithesis to public healthcare among the right, largely fueled by a mixture of genuine anti-government sentiment on the right and obviously the massive pocketbooks of the vested special interests. In that climate it would be difficult for any country to nationalize their health system.
I'm a lot rustier on my Canadian history than I should be, but aside from healthcare wasn't Canada a lot closer to the American model in the mid-20th century than say, the British? I.e. I don't think Canada had all these nationalized pet industries that the government was running essentially as some sort of convoluted scheme to keep people employed in various industries (i.e. British Coal, Iron & Steel, Railways, Airways etc etc.) But maybe they did, as I say I am not as up to date on my Canadian political history as I ought be.
That is interesting.
I've always thought public healthcare was no different, really, then public education. A rich society like ours can afford to have pretty much as much of either as they choose to pay for. We chose to pay for public education, and that isn't at all controversial anymore (if it ever was?). We argue about the details, sure, but nobody serious actually advocates for getting rid of public schools or privatizing state university systems.
But the same thing is true - we started public education when it was relatively inexpensive to do so. Most people didn't go to school beyond 6th or 8th grade, and the cost of those schools was low (a building, some books, and some poorly paid female teachers) since in many places the rural nature of that nation meant that there was no need for large, multi-room schools with staffs and overhead, much less sophisticated curriculums.
It's funny how much of our "ideology" is really just entrenched historical chance.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
Let's ask Lyndon Baines Johnson from 1964, after signing the Civil Rights Act: "We have lost the South for a generation."
...in retrospect, he was an optimist.
Quote from: Jacob on April 21, 2022, 11:18:30 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
It's a good question. Same thing seems to have happened in Canada.
I think that happened later. Saskatchewan and Manitoba particularly. Alberta as always is an outlier and because of oil and the social credit movement in that province.
But we may be getting closer to the answer - religion and the rise of the religious right as access to abortion became an issue in this country.
But that still does not explain what happened a couple decades earlier in the US.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 22, 2022, 07:34:01 AMI'm a lot rustier on my Canadian history than I should be, but aside from healthcare wasn't Canada a lot closer to the American model in the mid-20th century than say, the British? I.e. I don't think Canada had all these nationalized pet industries that the government was running essentially as some sort of convoluted scheme to keep people employed in various industries (i.e. British Coal, Iron & Steel, Railways, Airways etc etc.) But maybe they did, as I say I am not as up to date on my Canadian political history as I ought be.
Just on the British comparison - I think Britain is an outlier though because I think we are probably the country that came closest to trying full-blown democratic socialism.
Labour leaders at the time all deeply believed in a planned economy. There's the welfare state which, in the UK, was universal and non-contributory and covered a lot, plus nationalising about 20% of the economy (in particular the "commanding heights" of steel, rail, coal). At the time there was always a sense that crises - balance of payments, Korea, the winter of 1947 etc - meant they couldn't build the planned economy as they wanted because they had to respond to events which always made it challenging. But that was absolutely the intent.
But also the big difference between the US and Canada with the rest of the democratic world is that you weren't re-building from war. Labour in the UK believed in a planned economy in the 40s - but they also believed it was essential for Britain's recovery from the war and it was, in large part, based on Britain's wartime command economy (the NHS is arguably the longest lasting legacy of that wartime, centralised, command economy, rationed system). That also goes for almost every other European country - whether it's Enarques running big companies and government cooperatively, or cooperation between employers and workers, or pillarised institutions. I think all of them have their roots in the need to reconstruct and rebuild their countries after the war. The US and Canada do not have that experience of more or less year zero.
I also know far less about Canada but that point is a bit of a mythical golden age for the US economically. It's the mass consumption economy. While in Europe it's aperiod of building various forms of mixed economies to rebuild, because there was a sense that could not be left to the market (as it had been in the inter-war period). While also trying to contain political risks: communism on the one hand and fascism on the other. The models vary but that challenge, I don't think, existed in the US or Canada. In the US it's the triumph of New Deal economic model and politics until Reagan rather than something new starting after 1945.
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 22, 2022, 07:34:01 AMI also kinda think Canada and the United States are a lot closer in terms of how much leftism they adopted than many might think. For the obvious reasons, healthcare stands out as being of paramount importance. However, it is mostly a "historical fluke" that the United States didn't adopt some national healthcare system in the 1940s, politically speaking there wasn't much difference on that topic between the United States and Canada, or other Western countries.
To the point think about this--in the election of 1948 Harry S. Truman promised that if he was re-elected he would pass a national health plan. And his opponent Thomas Dewey? He promised if he was elected...he would pass some form of national health plan. Literally both party Presidential candidates (one of them a sitting President) were running with that as part of their platform, and Truman obviously won.
There was basically just a really savvy lobbying push by the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association that killed the legislation--and at the time it actually was not a big deal, that's something that is often somewhat forgotten historically. When most Western countries passed these plans, healthcare just wasn't the big deal it is today. That isn't to say people's health wasn't a big deal, but rather that health spending as a total percentage of GDP was fairly small for a host of reasons--chief among them less specialization in the medical field, fewer advanced treatments for serious disease, fewer long term chronic diseases with expensive treatment regiments etc. Additionally because of the WWII era wage freeze, the vast majority of employers, blue collar and white collar, were offering very generous health plans at the time, and thus it was seen as not that big of a problem.
Add about 40 years to the timeline and you get to the 1980s where most blue collar workers no longer have a union and are now employed by "race to the bottom" employers in terms of employee compensation and benefits, and health care as a percentage of GDP has soared in cost, and suddenly it's a huge fucking problem. And then you start getting hardcore ideological antithesis to public healthcare among the right, largely fueled by a mixture of genuine anti-government sentiment on the right and obviously the massive pocketbooks of the vested special interests. In that climate it would be difficult for any country to nationalize their health system.
I'm a lot rustier on my Canadian history than I should be, but aside from healthcare wasn't Canada a lot closer to the American model in the mid-20th century than say, the British? I.e. I don't think Canada had all these nationalized pet industries that the government was running essentially as some sort of convoluted scheme to keep people employed in various industries (i.e. British Coal, Iron & Steel, Railways, Airways etc etc.) But maybe they did, as I say I am not as up to date on my Canadian political history as I ought be.
Canadian Crown corporations actively involved involved in the economy were a key feature of our history and did not start to be privatized into roughly the 80s.
In some sectors we have realized that was a mistake.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:01:46 AMQuote from: Jacob on April 21, 2022, 11:18:30 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
It's a good question. Same thing seems to have happened in Canada.
I think that happened later. Saskatchewan and Manitoba particularly. Alberta as always is an outlier and because of oil and the social credit movement in that province.
But we may be getting closer to the answer - religion and the rise of the religious right as access to abortion became an issue in this country.
But that still does not explain what happened a couple decades earlier in the US.
The unionization of Eastern farmers and the continuation of wheat board contributed to turning Western farmers into reactionary from the failures of their Social credit movement. Also influx of post-communism immigrants.
Quote from: ulmont on April 22, 2022, 08:01:25 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
Let's ask Lyndon Baines Johnson from 1964, after signing the Civil Rights Act: "We have lost the South for a generation."
...in retrospect, he was an optimist.
That explains the South, but what explains farmers in Northern States?
Quote from: Grey Fox on April 22, 2022, 08:08:15 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:01:46 AMQuote from: Jacob on April 21, 2022, 11:18:30 PMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 21, 2022, 10:38:25 PMInteresting
How did the 60s turn farmers from socialist into reactionaries?
It's a good question. Same thing seems to have happened in Canada.
I think that happened later. Saskatchewan and Manitoba particularly. Alberta as always is an outlier and because of oil and the social credit movement in that province.
But we may be getting closer to the answer - religion and the rise of the religious right as access to abortion became an issue in this country.
But that still does not explain what happened a couple decades earlier in the US.
The unionization of Eastern farmers and the continuation of wheat board contributed to turning Western farmers into reactionary from the failures of their Social credit movement. Also influx of post-communism immigrants.
That's a good point.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:06:49 AMCanadian Crown corporations actively involved involved in the economy were a key feature of our history and did not start to be privatized into roughly the 80s.
In some sectors we have realized that was a mistake.
That's interesting, I'll have to read more on them when I get a chance.
One good
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 22, 2022, 08:55:09 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:06:49 AMCanadian Crown corporations actively involved involved in the economy were a key feature of our history and did not start to be privatized into roughly the 80s.
In some sectors we have realized that was a mistake.
That's interesting, I'll have to read more on them when I get a chance.
One good case study is the provincial utility crown corps. Looking at the history of the BC electrical company will give you a good snap shot.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:11:21 AMThat explains the South, but what explains farmers in Northern States?
In part industrialization turning farmers into corporations and/or small businessowners, which generally aligned them against low-wage workers such as farm employees. There are some notes in here regarding California and the Midwest: https://food.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019_Montenegro-de-Wit-et-al_Agrarian-origins-of-authoritarian-populism-in-the-United-States_-What-canwe-learn-from-20th-century-struggles-in-California-and-the-Midwest_.pdf
Quote from: OttoVonBismarck on April 22, 2022, 08:55:09 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:06:49 AMCanadian Crown corporations actively involved involved in the economy were a key feature of our history and did not start to be privatized into roughly the 80s.
In some sectors we have realized that was a mistake.
That's interesting, I'll have to read more on them when I get a chance.
I'm not sure it's wise to fall into this particular well but do check out this history of Bell Canada for a company that had a monopoly for the longest time & still think it has one.
Quote from: ulmont on April 22, 2022, 09:28:16 AMQuote from: crazy canuck on April 22, 2022, 08:11:21 AMThat explains the South, but what explains farmers in Northern States?
In part industrialization turning farmers into corporations and/or small businessowners, which generally aligned them against low-wage workers such as farm employees. There are some notes in here regarding California and the Midwest: https://food.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/2019_Montenegro-de-Wit-et-al_Agrarian-origins-of-authoritarian-populism-in-the-United-States_-What-canwe-learn-from-20th-century-struggles-in-California-and-the-Midwest_.pdf
Many thanks. I just had a chance to skim that publication and will give it a deep read on the weekend. But it looks like it provides an answer to both my question and Berkut's question as well as providing some thoughts on the way out of the right wing madness for the US.
Interesting piece I think I agree with - I think it links to OvB's comment on intermediary organisations as well. But it makes me think my argument on the policy/intellectual infrastructure is possibly wrong - though I still think that's important I think the argument here for intermediary organisations and movements, like parents, say, is strong:
QuoteThe Democratic Party Is Wasting Its Grassroots Energy
By Sam Adler-Bell
When I was young, my activist friends and I would often speak of something we called the movement. "This will be good for the movement," we'd say." Or, "They do good movement work." He was a "movement lawyer"; she, "an artist dedicated to the movement." I assumed this expression referred to something real: international socialism, maybe, or trade unionism. I wasn't sure. Surely, I thought, there must be a movement out there to which we all belonged, and to whose future victory our meager efforts — as environmentalists, labor organizers, anti-war activists — were contributing. But that wasn't so. Later, I realized the term was more like an incantation, the expression of a wish that all this various activism might one day coalesce into something worthy of the name. For the time being, "the movement" was a linguistic gesture with no referent, a half-ironic shibboleth with which we signaled our belonging and our willingness to nurture each other's precious illusions and beliefs. Playfully we toasted "to the movement," unsure whether our cheeks reddened out of shame at our cynicism or our sincerity.
I'm reminded of these episodes when I contemplate the sorry state of the Democratic Party. No doubt, the Democrats' gruesome midterm prospects are, as the social scientists say, overdetermined. Midterms tend to punish the president's party anyway, and basically every other input is bad: Biden is unpopular, inflation soars, and Putin's war has pushed food and fuel prices even higher. It's a bad hand, and none of the plausible last-ditch, Manchin-approved policy interventions or executive orders seem like aces.
But surveying the landscape from a few hundred feet higher, another striking deficit looms into view: There appears almost no grassroots energy or urgency of any kind on the Democratic side. After four years of fever-pitched marching and movement-building by anti-Trump resistors, antifascists, Democratic Socialists, and Black Lives Matter militants, the sudden quiet from the country's left flank has been deafening. Where, I find myself asking, is the movement?
By contrast, the conservative grassroots are ablaze. The parents, pundits, and propagandists behind the "critical race theory" crackdown, and now, the moral panic over LGBTQ educators, have been startlingly successful — not only at creating media spectacles, but at recruiting activists, electing school board members, and passing laws. Anti-abortion measures, meanwhile, sweep the country in anticipation of a possible repeal of Roe v. Wade. And, all along, one-term president Trump has defied political gravity, attracting crowds to his rallies and playing de facto party boss from his spray-tan Tammany Hall in Palm Beach. The right, in other words, is on the march. The left is nonexistent.
In one sense, there is no mystery here: Most of the recent popular energy in American politics has been oppositional, buoying the party out of power. The Tea Party energized the Obama-era GOP just as the Resistance fueled the Democrats in 2018 and 2020. Trump's elaborately disturbing presidency fertilized a rich movement ecosystem from which several arose. They have dissipated since he left the White House.
It isn't difficult either to provide a more textured tick-tock of their respective dissolutions. In a Twitter thread, Matt Yglesias provided a partly plausible account of the failure of the women-led "Resistance" to consolidate into a durable movement — faulting, at once, overeager progressives for attempting to supercharge its admirably minimalist strategic goals and overcautious moderates for blanching at its "tactical aggression." The socialists, meanwhile, sublimated anger over Bernie's 2016 defeat and despair at Trump's 2016 victory into a wave of org-building, electing comrades down the ballot and providing a clearinghouse for millennial activism in many U.S. cities. But when Sanders lost for a second time — undone by the superior party discipline of the moderate wing — he proceeded to embrace Biden, largely abdicating his role as an insurgent leader. Sanders may have envisioned a future for the socialist movement as a loyal opposition, but his embittered followers wouldn't follow him there.
Democratic efforts to capture the energies of the 2020 BLM uprisings were similarly demoralizing for all involved. Mayors made fitful, largely self-defeating gestures at constraining their police forces, while party leaders gave a pathetic half-hug to the movement and tip-toed around its politically inconvenient slogan. The abolitionist critique — that the problem is not merely police departments, but a social order that requires them — was then metabolized by elite liberalism into a surfeit of yard signs, nonprofit donations, and various Robin DiAngeloisms of the board room. (Not to mention a $6 million house for a few of the BLM movement's most savvy self-promoters.)
Perhaps it couldn't have been otherwise. You get the presidency or you get vital social movements, but you don't get both. Well, that may satisfy the political scientists, but if you, like me, want the Democrats to control government as frequently as possible — overcoming the growing geographic bias against them to do so — and when they have it, to wield power to do a whole hell of a lot more for workers, and to stave off climate catastrophe, than Biden has managed, then you may wonder, as I do, whether we don't need movements that transcend this boom-and-bust cycle. Movements that can mobilize, agitate, and organize even when — especially when! — there's a chance of using that popular energy to get something done.
But wait. Listen. What is that sound? A growing crowd chanting "movement, movement, movement!" Who is that? By God, it's the nonprofits!
Whether one celebrates or laments the fact, it cannot be denied that nonprofits have taken the place of other civic or party institutions as the site of grassroots Democratic politics. And perhaps no single arena of American life is more replete with talk about "social movements" than the nonprofit sector. "Nonprofits have learned to speak like social movements," says Daniel Schlozman, author of When Movements Anchor Parties: Electoral Alignments in American History. And the foundations that fund them have learned to love "social movements" too. As an example, Schlozman directed me to an April 20 Medium post from Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm founded by Clinton White House alum Eric Kessler, which advises rich liberals about their political giving. It reads in part: "Movements matter ... Donors must be willing to embrace direct-action tactics such as hunger strikes or civil disobedience that bring litigation and reputational risks. They must relax their insistence on measurable outcomes." It concludes with great fanfare: "The dangers we confront will bring a reckoning, one that will be painful but will also create opportunities to imagine and build a more equitable and resilient society."
The Marxist in me cannot help but wince at the idea of wealthy consultants advising wealthier elites to fling their money at whatever NGO promises to get the most college kids zip-tied by the D.C. police. Call me cynical, but I have my doubts that liberal billionaires are going to bring about the reckoning we need.
Reading through this and other self-congratulatory accounts of liberal philanthropy from the past few years, I couldn't help feeling an itch of the old suspicion. When NGOs and their funders invoke "social movements" they seem to do so in the same wistful, self-soothing spirit that I did as a 19-year-old: as a prayer, not a reality. "If you're your average foundation-funded NGO, you now want to say, 'I am a social movement, not just a foundation-funded NGO,'" says Schlozman. But if you press down on this assertion, he says, "it turns out it's all money from Ford and Open Society. And they're not doing much of anything except talking to each other."
Much ink has been spilled — by centrist popularists and socialist radicals alike — about the perverting effects of allowing nonprofits to lead the Democratic Party's left flank. I won't rehearse those arguments here. But what I do want to say is this: American political parties really are capable of transformational change when they are "anchored," in Schlozman's language, by movements. The Democrats and labor did it in the 1930s. The religious right and the GOP have done it since the 1980s. Movements that succeed and grow do so because they are built atop the civic and material association through which communities are already bound. They are not summoned by the wishes of dark money consultants or well-heeled nonprofit executive directors.
And the trouble is, at the moment, the right is doing it better. Movements of the right are reaching deeper into communities, finding them in the places where they already gather, and strengthening the solidarity they already feel for one another — in many cases, channeling it toward cruelty. As Schlozman told me, "the great rediscovery" of people like Christopher Rufo and Ron DeSantis "is that parents know other parents, and right-wing parents know other right-wing parents, and they can talk to each other, and that is a great reservoir of connection to be politicized."
The civic bonds on which Trumpism is built are often the inheritance of past injustice (as Gabriel Winant once provocatively put it, "Whiteness itself is a kind of inchoate associational gel ..."), but they are real. And while the right builds a movement, the Democrats attempt to call one into being — by giving more and more money to insular activist NGOs that speak an alienating language to people in places where they do not frequent, among people they do not already know.
The alternative — and you'll be just shocked to hear me say this — is the only one that has ever worked. That is, the labor movement: a movement of the left that mobilizes and draws us together on the basis of our most basic associations and material interests. As Tammi and Marvin once put it, "Ain't nothing like the real thing."
Labor is not the only movement that has enacted transformational change. MLK/Civil Rights, Gay Rights.
The moderates did not beat Bernie through superior discipline. They beat him because not enough people voted for him.
I have no idea what he's talking about re NGOs leading the movement.
A more inquisitive mind might wonder why not enough people voted for Bernie.
Quote from: crazy canuck on April 26, 2022, 04:17:54 AMA more inquisitive mind might wonder why not enough people voted for Bernie.
American centrists and leftists being smarter than Canadian ones? ;) :P
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2022, 02:27:50 AMLabor is not the only movement that has enacted transformational change. MLK/Civil Rights, Gay Rights.
I agree on civil rights and I think those organisations and black churches may be the last of those intermediary organisations that OvB mentioned. But definitely a movement and probably the last one the Democrats still actively engage with across the party.
On gay rights I'm less sure - in part because of what Republicans are saying now about Obergefell. I'm not sure how long for the world that rulinng is, despite majority support (same goes for Roe). I think if it is overturned then I'd query the transformational change, though I think it's happened in public attitudes.
QuoteI have no idea what he's talking about re NGOs leading the movement.
A large part of the right's success in the US is that they have a mobilising movement to support them, in exchange for helping deliver their agenda politically. That has been, since the Reagan revolution, the religious right.
When the Democrats were dominant they had a similar moblising movement in unions - and civil rights organisations. Since the 80s, however Democrats have generally failed at building/maintaining movements to support them, or has failed in helping deliver their agenda politically (the unions). In addition activists and donors on the Democrat side fund and do busy work talking to each other through foundations and NGOs which talk of themselves as movements - but they're not they're pet projects by philanthropists and it is a displacement activity. Those activists could be better used building links with actual movements or helping them in some other way - and so could the money.
I keep coming back to it but the Democratic consultants advising candidates not to talk about Supreme Court and Roe - despite majority support for it - is mindblowing to me. I've no doubt there will be a movement in response to that and that Democrats will want their votes (and probably win most of them). But I find it crazy that they're being told to focus on pocket book issues. It seems odd when you look at how the GOP have achieved what they have with and by the religious right - but Democrats seem a little chary of doing that with movements that exist like unions and like, sadly I think probably quite soon, women's movement on abortion.
Incidentally the NGO point also annoys me from the other angle in that lots of charities I've previously donated to have basically become NGOs - they're doing less and less actual charity work and more focus on policy work and conferences. I donate to pressure groups that exist purely to do that, I support a political party to do that - but I want to be able to give to charities that are doing charity work. It's probably good but it's made me look for smaller local charities who do stuff that I care about.
Quote from: Sheilbh on April 26, 2022, 05:31:31 PMA large part of the right's success in the US is that they have a mobilising movement to support them, in exchange for helping deliver their agenda politically. That has been, since the Reagan revolution, the religious right.
All fine and good, but your boy is saying the only movement leftists are coming right now from NGOs. That's what I don't see.
The most significant NGPO in US politics, by far, is the Federalist Society, and it is right-wing Republican. The entire problem with judicial activism in the current US is the result of the Federalist Society and its successful grooming of far-right candidates for the judiciary (including all six of the current right-wing USSC justices, the Chief Justice among them). No left-wing NGO or community comes close to their sway.
Quote from: Admiral Yi on April 26, 2022, 06:38:56 PMAll fine and good, but your boy is saying the only movement leftists are coming right now from NGOs. That's what I don't see.
That's just not how I read those three paragraphs. I think it's where the activity and energy is but it's broadly a displacement activity that isn't generating a connection between the Democrats as a political party and a movement of people:
QuoteReading through this and other self-congratulatory accounts of liberal philanthropy from the past few years, I couldn't help feeling an itch of the old suspicion. When NGOs and their funders invoke "social movements" they seem to do so in the same wistful, self-soothing spirit that I did as a 19-year-old: as a prayer, not a reality. "If you're your average foundation-funded NGO, you now want to say, 'I am a social movement, not just a foundation-funded NGO,'" says Schlozman. But if you press down on this assertion, he says, "it turns out it's all money from Ford and Open Society. And they're not doing much of anything except talking to each other."
QuoteThe most significant NGPO in US politics, by far, is the Federalist Society, and it is right-wing Republican. The entire problem with judicial activism in the current US is the result of the Federalist Society and its successful grooming of far-right candidates for the judiciary (including all six of the current right-wing USSC justices, the Chief Justice among them). No left-wing NGO or community comes close to their sway.
Yes. I think it's the best example but I think there are others that, for example, provide a pipeline of smart, young conservatives into the administrative state. But also I think lots of ideas that Fox and the propaganda wing of the right then talks about are workshopped. I think that infrastructure is missing on the left.
I'm never fully sure how I feel about it because I can see the argument that basically from at least FDR the Supreme Court especially and the administrative organs of the state have been where politics is done by other means. So it makes sense to focus on developing a theory and a framework and a network for future recruits into those areas. On the other hand I'm always a believer on that Bagehot idea that you don't shine light on magic - and I think making those institutions nakedly political (even if they've always been discreetly political) is not great. But if one side is doing it, don't you have to fight back and isn't it just the latest expansion of party politics etc. I don't know basically :lol: :blush: But I think it's an absence that Democrats are feeling.
As a total aside there a "national conservative" conference for right-wing culture warriors in the UK. It was really striking that their big takeaways for a "Orbanisation" of the UK was not focused on the media or comms. Two of their key recommendations though were - establish a "Federalist society" for officials (because judges matter less here) to have what, to me, sounds like entryists in the civil service and establish an "NRA for culture" to rate MPs and deselect disloyal Tory MPs. As I say I think that side of the GOP is really important and I think it matters more than media and comms.