David Sirota has an interesting graph on his Web site tracking the use of the term “center-right” in political discourse after the election. The upshot, he writes, is that he made a prediction two weeks before the election that “if Obama wins, expect more frantic talk from the fringe about how electing a black man billed as an Islamic Karl Marx obviously means our country is more conservative than ever.”
Lo and behold, his prediction bore out:
So we’re not talking about theory anymore – we’re talking about empirical fact. The media has exponentially increased the amount of times it claims that this country is a “center-right nation” – at the very same time public opinion data shows the country is a decidedly center-left nation. In short, we have the two hard data points proving that as the country has become more progressive and validated its progressivism on election day, the media has increased its claims that the nation is conservative.
Sirota is basically correct in his assessment, in my view, though he doesn’t go into detail about why it might be that everyone in the press seems to want to pretend that this country is basically “conservative.” Part of the answer is undoubtedly that many Americans self-identify as conservatives while actually supporting what the press would call “liberal” positions. The demonization of liberals has been systematic and ongoing for decades.
But it is worth pointing out that this demonization is present with most intensity and viciousness not among some fringe groups — as Sirota claims — but in the heart of the respectable mainstream. Witness the case of The New Republic’s James Kirchick, writing in the NY Daily News:
Barack Obama isn’t even President yet, and he’s already angering some of his most devoted followers on the party’s left wing. This is the mark of what could be a very successful presidency.
“With its congressional majority, the Democratic Party has refused to seriously try to end the war, to stop the bailout and to stop the trampling of civil liberties, just to name a few off the top of my head,” wrote David Sirota on the popular liberal blog OpenLeft, decrying the serial betrayals of Obama and the congressional Democratic majority. The Democratic Party, he wrote, has “faced no real retribution” for its manifold heresies, something that Sirota believes he and his band of angry bloggers must change. “We better understand why this happened,” he fumed.
Allow me to provide an answer. You don’t matter.
…
Given the intensity of blogger rage over Lieberman, one can understand how their defeat at the ends of their own party would lend itself to hyperbole, but when did the “American people” appoint Markos Moulitsas their spokesman? And while there are many ways to interpret the outcome of this year’s presidential and congressional elections, that voters across the country wanted Joe Lieberman to be stripped of his committee chairmanship is not one of them.
Indeed, the only people who seemed to give a fig about Lieberman were the “Netroots.” Along with abandoning Iraq to Iran and Al Qaeda, punishing the “traitor” Joe Lieberman was their paramount concern (know that in the minds of Netroots, Lieberman hasn’t only committed treason against the Democratic Party; a quick perusal of the more popular liberal blogs will also find the words “Zionist” and “Likudnik” attached to his name). Most Americans probably recognize Lieberman as the guy who ran with Al Gore in 2000. But to the Netroots, Lieberman is an obsession, an individual who inspires mania. He is the worst thing possible: not only someone who disagrees with them about foreign policy, but a liberal who disagrees with them on foreign policy.
That’s right, you non-mattering demonic liberals you — i.e. arguably a supermajority of the U.S. population — by supporting the withdrawal of the military from Iraq you are in favor of “abandoning Iraq to Iran and Al Qaeda.” If you happen to think that Joe Lieberman should be published for deploying the vilest of attacks against Obama — who made a point of helping defend Lieberman against Ned Lamont and his netroot supporters — then you’re some kind of (implicitly anti-Semitic, or anti-Semitic by association) nut.
Personally, I don’t really care that Lieberman has been allowed to keep caucusing with the Democrats. There is something to be said for reconciling after a tough election with your opponents. What bothers me is that Obama’s cabinet is increasingly shaping up to be precisely the sort of center-right cabinet that commentators like Kirchick are ready to praise.
Shouldn’t an Obama cabinet include officials who are unapologetic liberals? That is, not a cabinet of only liberals, but a cabinet where the voices of what Kirchick would call the Democratic party’s “left wing” (the Kuciniches or even Edwardses of the party) are audible. The so-called left wing partly contributed to helping get Obama elected. Is it unfair to ask for a voice — not dominance, mind you, but just a voice — at the table? Is there some left voice in Obama’s cabinet I’ve missed? If the left doesn’t get a voice, how should it respond?
Update (11/23)
Glenn Greenwald addresses the question posed by my post and comes to a conclusion I largely agree with:
So many progressives were misled about what Obama is and what he believes. But it wasn’t Obama who misled them. It was their own desires, their eagerness to see what they wanted to see rather than what reality offered.
…
It goes without saying that there will be Obama policies, both in the foreign policy and domestic realms, that are vastly superior to what we’ve seen the last eight years and to what we would have seen had McCain/Palin won…
But Barack Obama is a centrist, establishment politician. That is what he has been since he’s been in the Senate, and more importantly, it’s what he made clear — both explicitly and through his actions — that he intended to be as President. Even in the primary, he paid no price whatsoever for that in terms of progressive support. As is true for the national Democratic Party generally, he has no good reason to believe he needs to accommodate liberal objections to what he is doing. The Joe Lieberman fiasco should have made that as conclusively clear as it gets.
The point isn’t that this reality should just be passively accepted and nothing done about it. The point is that for anything to be done about it, the reality needs to be accepted. The campaign we began earlier this year with Accountability Now and are now vigorously developing and pursuing — to devote all resources and energies to defeating incumbents in primary challenges — is grounded in the premise that one’s political beliefs and principles will be ignored until there is a price to pay for ignoring them. Democrats don’t perceive there is a price to pay for ignoring progressives, and so they do. That isn’t surprising. What would be surprising is if, under those circumstances, anything else happened.
I have to say, I hate this whole way of thinking about what’s going on right now with Obama and the new Democratic majority in Congress.
First of all, I want to echo Greenwald’s point that progressives weren’t misled by Obama. If anyone can point to a specific example of Obama actually walking back any of his campaign promises, then I think those specifics should be hashed out — but the idea that Obama has somehow betrayed his progressive base by choosing center-left advisers and Cabinet secretaries strikes me as a hysterical reaction to Obama’s first few weeks as president-elect.
David Axelrod has said it over and over again: There is one person who will be setting policy in the Obama Administration — and that is Barack Obama. Obama’s advisers and secretaries work for him, and given the impressive mandate Obama earned in the recent election, his employees should feel motivated to help Obama implement Obama’s vision. I’m not saying Obama’s selections aren’t important — but it’s just wrong-headed to make the generalization that Obama’s selections broadly reflect the ideology he intends to implement. This is especially true now, when circumstances at home and abroad are causing policy makers to throw all the old assumptions out the window.
I sincerely believe Obama is choosing his staff based on his need for competance. He needs people around him who have a deeply-rooted understanding of how to get things done in Washington. This means there may not be much room for people who have never — Never — had a voice in the White House because they were too left-wing for Bill Clinton and too young for Jimmy Carter.
When people on the left give the impression that they feel betrayed by Obama at this early stage of the game, they only diminish their own credibility to express more legitimate concerns later on.
This country may not be “center-right,” but it is a country that elected George Bush twice — so the country is willing to elect right-wing presidents. (How soon we forget!) People who feel betrayed by Obama because he’s too “centrist” for them are woefully short-sighted. If Obama succeeds in his effort to “change the trajectory” of American politics toward the left — a move that will be hugely beneficial for many generations of Americans and people all over the world — Obama will succeed because his administration will be perceived as successful by a solid majority of Americans — including at least some Americans who voted once or twice for George W. Bush, and would be willing to vote for a Republican again. To succeed, Obama must be the President of the entire country — not just the fraction of America that hated the Bush administration and couldn’t imagine voting for a Republican presidential candidate. (Like me.)
I’m not saying that Obama should triangulate and sell-out the left just to make himself popular. I’m saying that Obama’s critics should wait until they are actually betrayed before they start complaining about betrayal. Otherwise, it gives the impression that these people on the left expect to be betrayed, and are going to complain no matter how hard Obama pushes in advocacy for their agenda.
Comment by Ian — November 25, 2008 @ 7:34 pm
I agree with your comment, Ian, although I would also add that appointments do matter to the degree that they are each responsible for their individual autonomous areas in the government. Obama will lead partly by trusting these people to do their jobs as they see fit.
Even the most micromanaging president can’t control everything under his purview. I think criticizing Obama’s selections is fair enough, though we should be careful not to criticize Obama for things he hasn’t done, while remaining aware that the history of one’s choices may shed light on one’s future choices.
All in all, I think Obama has not misled anyone in this election. He has always been completely open about his beliefs and what he intended to do. Whether he keeps all his campaign promises remains to be seen. I hope he does.
Comment by Lee — November 25, 2008 @ 7:43 pm