Moderate Democrat defeats traditional liberal in VA primary

[Spoke]

A president has no input on the legality of gay marriage. He cannot pass a constitutional amendment, and it is the states, not the president, who determine what “marriage” is.

So if the president has no effect on the question, why do you insist that a presidential candidate ought to take a bold stand on the issue? I’m looking for a candidate who can get elected and do some good, not one who will martyr himself and condemn the rest of us to four more years of a Republican White House.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@spoke-

A president has no input on the legality of gay marriage. He cannot pass a constitutional amendment, and it is the states, not the president, who determine what “marriage” is.

Whether those things are true or not is quite independent of whether a candidate will be asked about these matters, right? Or should he respond that he has no opinion because he won’t have any power in that regard? Furthermore, W has shown that a president does have power to bring attention to the matter, hasn’t he?

So if the president has no effect on the question, why do you insist that a presidential candidate ought to take a bold stand on the issue? I’m looking for a candidate who can get elected and do some good, not one who will martyr himself and condemn the rest of us to four more years of a Republican White House.

And I’m telling you that a president cannot be elected in the first place while appearing to be gutless and afraid to express his convictions. Kerry took this tack on this very issue. Why condemn us to continually making the same mistake over and over again?

Clearly, if you are a Democrat, you’re a DLC-type Democrat, and you won’t be swayed by my ramblings. For my side, I’ve had my fill of the same strategy over and over of being tentative so that the un-alienated voters will turn out in droves for us because we’re just so darn un-alienating! “Gee, I like that guy because he doesn’t feel strongly about the positions I’m told I should feel strongly about! I’m for him all the way!”

We have to take control of the issues so that they don’t control us with them. The more Democrats show that they want to avoid certain topics, the more those topics will be brought up to keep the issues focused away from what we want to talk about. I get that you don’t see it that way. You don’t need to say it over and over again.

[BrainGlutton]

@spoke-

A president has no input on the legality of gay marriage. He cannot pass a constitutional amendment, and it is the states, not the president, who determine what “marriage” is.

But he can appoint SC justices, who can make rulings relevant to gay marriage.

[BrainGlutton]

@spoke-

What we need is a centrist candidate. That does not mean a candidate who is mealy-mouthed a la Kerry. You can be centrist and still speak plainly and stand firm. What you don’t do is fall into the Republican trap of being drawn into a campaign on social issues (gay marriage, abortion, etc.). Instead, you campaign on economic issues.

The problem with that approach, spoke-, is that if you run a centrist Dem candidate you might wind up with a centrist Dem president. Which is preferable to a Pub of any stripe, but otherwise . . . Attractive though it looks in hindsight, I’d rather not have a rerun of the Clinton presidency, thank you very much.

[BrainGlutton]

Robert L. Borosage, writing in The Nation, 6/26/06:

In an elegant essay, Michael Tomasky, editor of The American Prospect, urges Democrats to return to their tradition of “civic republicanism,” of arguing for the common good, for a sense that we’re all in this together and that together we can build a more perfect union. In Being Right Is Not Enough, Paul Waldman of Media Matters details how this contrasts clearly with the right’s “we’re all on our own” hyper-individualism. In All Together Now: Common Sense for a Fair Economy, Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute lays out an economic argument along the same lines. All agree that a common-good politics is best expressed in universal rather than small-bore programs–Medicare for all, for example–that contrast clearly with the conservative vision, with its scorn for any collective enterprise beyond the military.

The scope of the challenges facing the country sets the stage for this politics. And the widespread understanding that conservatives in power have championed the interests of the few rather than the many provides a compelling backdrop. But what keeps Democrats from putting forth a clear governing philosophy–and laying out an agenda to give it substance? Tomasky suggests that the problem is grounded in the success of the movements of the 1960s, which shattered the hypocrisies and racism of cold war liberalism but left in their wake an interest-group pluralism focused on rights rather than common enterprise. With less venom, he echoes the arguments of the Democratic Leadership Council and Newt Gingrich that Democrats lost their way in the 1960s, as the antiwar, women’s and civil rights movements produced, to use Richard Nixon’s venomous formulation, a party of “acid, amnesty and abortion.” (Reagan added the “welfare queen” and the politics of racial division.)

Tomasky is silent about the failure of military Keynesianism to deal with stagflation in the 1970s, and the corporate offensive that declared open warfare on liberal economics, unions and consumer and environmental groups. Corporations built not only the ideological arsenal of the right but also the money wing of the Democratic Party. Democrats found that, as the majority in Congress, they could fill their campaign coffers with corporate contributions. Liberal Atari Democrats and conservative New Democrats learned to scorn unions as a special interest, and to champion much of the corporate agenda–balanced budgets, free trade, deregulation, privatization, capital-gains tax cuts, opposition to the minimum wage, even the short-term stock options that gave CEOs a multimillion-dollar personal incentive to cook the books. **Democrats stopped speaking to the common good less because they were mugged by women’s or civil rights groups than because they found it literally paid to stop fighting for working people in the economy. **

The misdiagnosis leads to the wrong prescriptions. Tomasky fantasizes about a Democratic presidential candidate announcing to the “single-issue groups arrayed around my party” that “I don’t seek your endorsement, won’t fill out your questionnaires” in order to convince Americans that he or she would put the “common interest over the particular interest.” This might be called the Democrats’ Sister Souljah temptation–after Clinton’s staged insult to Jesse Jackson in 1992: the calculated, if symbolic, straight-arming of your own base to demonstrate independence.

The problem with this “politics of inoculation,” as Ruy Teixeira and John Halpin call it in their essay “Politics of Definition,” is that it not only demoralizes the most passionate activists at the base of the party but also contributes to the sense that Democrats won’t even defend their own. And of course, pushing away the base has been generally used by Democrats to move to a more cautious corporate politics–**as when President Clinton gained praise for his “courage” in standing with the Fortune 500, the bulk of editorialists and all of Wall Street to champion NAFTA against trade union opposition.

In fact, it is far less the supposed dominance of the movements in the Democratic Party than the influence of Wall Street and corporate money that impedes building a bold new governing strategy.** It is not women, civil rights or union movements that lead Democrats to embrace a bipartisan corporate trade strategy serving multinationals but not the nation; or that cause Democrats to help pass top-end tax cuts, that make them vote to keep CEO stock options off the books or that make them wary about backing national healthcare. To revive a true politics of the public interest, Democrats will have to challenge the grip that corporate money and conservative economic ideology have on the party.

(Emphasis added.)

Yes, spoke- is right that the Dems need to run on economic issues – but we also have to make sure the the content of their positions on those issues is considerably to the left of the DLC. That’s how we need to be thinking about this and later elections. That’s how we can not only win, but win something worthwhile.

[Evil_One]

The CT primary race between Ned Lamont and Joe Leiberman will be interesting as well as we see the two sides of the Democratic party battle for supremecy.

If “loud and proud” Lamont ousts pro-war Leiberman, look for that as a signal to the rest of the Democrats that the war is a winner as a primary issue.

If Leiberman wins…chaos.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Evil One

If “loud and proud” Lamont ousts pro-war Leiberman, look for that as a signal to the rest of the Democrats that the war is a winner as a primary issue.

I think that the Virginia primary already showed that. Webb was anti-war (and claimed that the war was why he left the Republican party), while Miller had been largely silent about the war. That’s part of the reason Webb got such support from the from the national party, and that Webb’s votes came mostly from more liberal Northern Virginia, while Miller’s votes were mostly from the more conservative south of the state.

[Spoke]

@Evil One

The CT primary race between Ned Lamont and Joe Leiberman will be interesting as well as we see the two sides of the Democratic party battle for supremecy.

Bah. Don’t lump Lieberman with me. He’s no moderate; he’s a Republican.

[BobLibDem]

@spoke-

Bah. Don’t lump Lieberman with me. He’s no moderate; he’s a Republican.

He’s a Vichy Dem just like Hillary.

[Captain_Amazing]

@BobLibDem

He’s a Vichy Dem just like Hillary.

That’s not very fair. Hillary’s to the left of Lieberman. For instance, the ADA ranks Hillary at 95% and Lieberman at 75%

[BrainGlutton]

@Captain Amazing

That’s not very fair. Hillary’s to the left of Lieberman. For instance, the ADA ranks Hillary at 95% and Lieberman at 75%

Nevertheless, Hillary refuses to come out against the war or even take a comprehensible position on it.

[Captain_Amazing]

Ok, but when has “the war” become the only issue that determines your conservativism/liberalism? It’s remarkably frustrating that so many people are taking such a narrow view.

[BobLibDem]

I wasn’t praising either for being more liberal than the other. I’m just saying that both are far too eager to cooperate with the fascists in the White House.

[Captain_Amazing]

I do know that you don’t generally win an election when you have to resort to calling your opponents “fascists”.

[Hentor_the_Barbarian]

@Captain Amazing

I do know that you don’t generally win an election when you have to resort to calling your opponents “fascists”.

BobLibDem, what office were you running for?

[Captain_Amazing]

You don’t generally win debates when you call your opponents fascists either. In fact, you tend to get dismissed by people who are having serious conversations on the issues. But hey, if you want to hijack another thread into a “Bush is evil” bashfest, more power to you.

[BrainGlutton]

@Captain Amazing

Ok, but when has “the war” become the only issue that determines your conservativism/liberalism?

It’s not. But this year, it’s the elephant in the living room. We can’t focus on the economy until we end the war. (Remember what happened to LBJ’s War on Poverty? It failed because Vietnam sucked up all the funding.)

[XT]

@BrainGlutton

It’s not. But this year, it’s the elephant in the living room. We can’t focus on the economy until we end the war. (Remember what happened to LBJ’s War on Poverty? It failed because Vietnam sucked up all the funding.)

While Iraq is certainly sucking up quite a bit of funding, it seems to me the economy is ticking along nicely. YMMV…but I think you dismiss this a bit casually. Its not exactly the same thing as Vietnam from this perspective either, no?

-XT

[XT]

(Oh, and I think the reason LBJ’s War on Poverty failed is also debatable… )

-XT

[BrainGlutton]

@xtisme

While Iraq is certainly sucking up quite a bit of funding, it seems to me the economy is ticking along nicely. YMMV…

:dubious: Yes, it varies by SES/income level.