LIBERALISM, THE NEW FORCE IN DEMOCRATIC POLITICS?

A Thesis on Liberalism in Our Times


Will the Presumed Dead Be Revived?

This is the kind of question that the Republicans have been asking themselves for way too long. To make sure that wouldn’t happen, they came hammering spikes into anything that resembled a liberal or progressive agenda in the expectation that that would do the trick.

Would it?

Let’s look back as to how this happened. Back before CE (Clinton Era), the Democrats had tried unsuccessfully to take the party back from Republicans and it didn’t work. The reason why: The liberals and those who called themselves liberals were at war with each other. Some had become tired of the increasing solipsistic views of those who were trying to piece the party together; others found that the coalitions that the democrats were trying to form had the effect of actually becoming vehicles for advancing their own agendas.
This resulted in “splintering” small factions banding together for their own individual ends which became the basis of the Rainbow Coalition, which was no coalition at all but a springboard for narrow agendas that didn’t embrace enough people to make a difference and alienated others..

As a result, those who considered themselves theoretical and intellectual democrats were starting to drift away from a party made up increasingly of “new” democrats—or the disenfranchised who felt part of no party.

At the time, there was much interest in “hyphenating” no American was simply an American, he was an Afro-American, Hispanic-American and so on. But the intellectual democrats were not really buying their arguments. As a result, the Party went through an inversion; its head separated from its body and it turned inside out with its smallest factions taking control. .

In the process, several of the leaders of this newly reborn party said and did things that alienated the intellectual liberals who thought that within the democratic party that they had a home for life. Almost in an instant, all support for the new party vanished. The liberal intellectuals had evanesced like a wisp of smoke and the party fell into infighting that decimated the strength of the party and diminished it in the eyes of the faithful. Old time democrats ran for the doors and started to consider that perhaps the “other” party might not be so bad after all.

When Clinton emerged, there was in effect a party in name only. To his credit, this brilliant strategist saw the need to bring the party to the center where heretofore the party stood for little, now it could embrace the middle.

However, Clinton’s middle was too far to the right for most of those who still respected their own liberal credentials. In our time, Clinton’s right had moved to the right of the then centrist part of the Republican party. The liberals were vanquished and had no place to go. Although they were few in number, they possessed the heart and soul of the Party. Clinton’s decision to broaden the rich of the democratic party, at the same time robbed the party of much of its philosophy other than that manufactured by the new democratic party leaders and their consultants and it rang hollow to the liberal elements still hanging on..

Nevertheless, the party made up in numbers what it lacked in spirit.

The Republicans in the meantime rejoiced in the fact that the Liberals had disappeared; and while they disparaged them most, they knew that the liberal agenda was the soul of the democratic party and as long as they could keep those inclinations buried by attacking them over and over again, the democrats would never come together as a coherent integrated party that was truly the sum of its parts.

But the times they are a’changing.

Because nothing has worked for the democrats, there is a willingness to consider new directions, and perhaps changes in leadership.

With the appointment of an outsider like Dean, who could not be considered a liberal by the wildest imagination, he still was from being considered mainstream; interestingly, however, Dean still resonated with a large body of voters who felt that nobody represented their interests in government.

In the wings, of course a new generation of liberals has been born and they hankered for a shoot-out over ideals and recognition. They were emerging from years of being overshadowed and denigrated by Republicans who hated everything they didn’t understand. In some cases, some of those Republicans once had liberal credentials and like the smoker who gave up smoking become the worst zealots.

However, the truth is that these new democrats—the progressives and liberals may be the democratic force to be reckoned with in the upcoming election.

We see them everywhere. They are dominating the grass-roots and, surprising as it may seem, they seem to be gravitating upwards in defiance of physical laws.

Why?

The Democratic Party, such as it is, seems rudderless. It was clear to most that the Democrats have stood for very little in the past two elections.

The liberals and progressives, on the other hand, stood for everything worthwhile and didn’t mind making their feelings known. They are ready and eager to assimilate the latent power of the party, and harness it for liberal, progressive causes.

In the end, there are the Party’s real heart and soul and they have been living without a body for too long.

Will it work? Who can say? But Nature abhors a vacuum and stranger things have happened. Meanwhile, we look at every event as a precursor of what might happen and try to discern meaningful patterns out of what now seems like nothing but loose ends.


Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon