Healthy Politics Needs a Robust Opposition

I am concerned that this November too many center-right independents and moderate Republicans who have come to disapprove Bush's policies will nevertheless vote for Republican candidates because they like them as individuals. But it's not about the individual. The individual candidate by him or herself is powerless.

The individual candidate cannot be considered in isolation from his political allegiances. What matters most in politics is not the individual, but which faction has the power to implement its  (overt and covert) agenda. The individual matters primarily in relationship to which power faction's agenda he aligns with, strengthens by his allegiance, and is in return empowered by its support. Every individual candidate is beholden to the factions with which he aligns. Our votes are not about electing individuals, but about empowering or disempowering factions by strengthening or weakening their ability marshal majorities to support their legislative and other policy agendas.

We know what the concrete agendas of the factions that empower the Bush administration are now. We know their culture, and we know the interests that they serve. We have a choice in November either to continue to empower these factions or to disempower them by either sustaining or taking away the GOP congressional majority. That should be the primary consideration for all voters this November.  It's not about liking the individual candidates, but about whether the candidate will align with or oppose the factions that empower Bush administration policies.

Any candidate, Republican or Democrat, who continues to support the administration's failed policies, should be removed from office if he can be replaced with a candidate (unless he is criminally bad) who promises to oppose it. A faction to counterbalance the extremism of the current GOP leadership might emerge from within the Republican Party at some time in the future, but there is no such GOP faction now strong enough to push the administration in a saner direction.  The only realistic counterbalance comes from the Democrats.

In any event, this is why I think Lieberman deserved to be removed. The primary last week was not a referendum on whether he's a good guy or not.  It was about his past and continuing support for a failed policy that a majority of Democrats  in Connecticut (and Americans in general) no longer support. Hillary Clinton and other Dems who continue to support Bush's war should be removed for the same reason. One could argue that Lieberman supports the war for principled reasons and Clinton for reasons of political expediency.  But the more important factor here is that both supported a failed policy and both refuse to admit it and work to support another approach. Their motives matter less than their actual positions.

They have a right to their opinion; they have a right to argue for it and try to convince their constituents that they are correct, but if the voters disagree, the candidates should surrender with grace. If anything disqualifies "good guy" Lieberman from serious consideration for re-election, it is his choice to run as an Independent, which proves he is not a good guy.  This is not about him as an individual; it's about the health of Democratic Party and the country's need for it to provide a robust opposition. His repudiation of the election results shows that he cares about himself more than he does his party. This is not an isolated incident. His refusal to give up his senate seat while running for Vice President in 2000 demonstrates the same kind of selfishness, because had Gore/Lieberman won, the seat would have gone to a Republican appointed by the GOP governor. 

The independents about whom I spoke earlier might argue that he has a right to make his case to the broader Connecticut voting public.  Why shouldn't Connecticut voters beyond the Democrats be given the chance to retain their three-term senator?  Fine. But I would question the thinking of any voter who would support him unless such a voter wants to continue to empower the current GOP power structure in Washington. A vote for Lieberman now has become essentially a Republican vote. The Democrats need seats, and if Lieberman wins, he will be preventing them from holding on to a very important one. If I'm a Bush-supporting Connecticut Republican, I'm voting for Lieberman, not my party's candidate.   

In American politics there has been way too much attention paid to individual personalities.  Standing alone, no politician can accomplish anything; his or her power lies in the factions with which he  or she aligns.  It's the faction that gets particular policies enacted, and so the primary consideration for electing, re-electing, or voting someone out of office is not individual traits of the individual  candidate, but the faction with which she aligns herself.

Now both  Lieberman and Clinton are currently aligned with the DLC faction within the Democratic party.  Many in the media punditocracy have tried to make the case that the DLC offers a middle choice, and that the more Democrats move away from DLC positions, the less likely they will win in November.  I find the logic ridiculous. The DLC, in effect, has become a faction supporting failed GOP  policies, and the failure of the GOP is a failure shared by DLC Democrats.  But their failure is worse, because in their compliance with the GOP agenda, they have failed the entire country. They have promoted a homogenization of politics so that now when the country needs an alternative, none within the Democrat party has been able to get its legs. The Dems are so subordinated to the GOP agenda, that they cannot extricate themselves effectively enough to offer an alternative when GOP policy and governance fails. 

The health of the system requires that robust parties counterbalance one another and offer the electorate alternatives.  The DLC approach blurs differences and relegates the Democrats to a passive and ineffectual political role.  There is a robust counterargument to be made by Democrats, but the DLC has promoted a compliant, emasculated role for Democrats, and Joe Lieberman is the posterboy for that emasculation.

The mistake made by those who think the Democrats will lose if they move away from the center is their assumption the the DLC defines the center.  They don't.  They represent an emasculated opposition that nobody can support with enthusiasm.  There are sensible alternative positions on the central issues of the day that a majority of Americans will accept if someone has the courage, imagination, and communication skills to present them.   Feingold,  Edwards, Gore, Obama are Dem leaders who have the potential to do this, and everything I've heard from Ned Lamont so far suggests that he can make the case as well.

To characterize Lamont as a radical lefty is facetious, and it is simply to accept what GOP propagandists want you to believe.  And that's what worries me about November.  The Dems have not figured out how to defend themselves yet from GOP propaganda and negative branding.  The polls might say that people prefer Democrats now, but come November voters in the undecided middle who determine electoral outcomes see the election as this candidate vs. that candidate, and party affiliation is not their primary consideration.

It should be because the most important issue this November should be empowerment of disempowerment of the administration. But I fear that too many people will chose individual Republicans once again, not because they like their party's policies, but because the Democrats who make the most sense are the ones who will be most energetically vilified by media pundits circumscribed by Beltway conventional wisdom,  and the GOP domesticated candidates like Clinton and Lieberman will continue to define the pundit-defined center whose main role is to empower a disaster-prone GOP.   

The point is that Democrats will not be taken seriously if they are not serious.  They will be taken seriously, not to the degree that they rubber-stamp GOP policies, but  to the degree that they fight to make the case for a sensible alternative to the current insanity that all sane Americans would repudiate if given a choice.  Until they do, the GOP remains for too many the default.
 

Comments

[Matt Zemek]

Jack,

What does your post have to say on the subject of pro-war Maria Cantwell?

Vote for the (D) next to her name, or vote her out because of her support for the war?

[Mike McG...]

"In American politics there has been way too much attention paid to individual personalities. Standing alone, no politician can accomplish anything; his or her power lies in the factions with which he or she aligns. It's the faction that gets particular policies enacted, and so the primary consideration for electing, re-electing, or voting someone out of office is not individual traits of the individual candidate, but the faction with which she aligns herself."

Sounds like a kinder, gentler formulation of Paul Krugman's contention that "Centrism is for Suckers."

Such a formulation works equally well for the 34% who define themselves as conservatives as the 18% who self-define as liberals. It totally disempowers the 40% who call themselves moderates and reject litmus test voting. (Citation: The Harris Poll)

For me, the war is the preeminent issue; my vote is reliably Democratic in any case. But I *can* understand the broad appeal of a candidate like Lieberman to CT moderates whose views don't fit comfortably in either of the approved factions.

I also think those who want to write DNC types out of of the Democratic party are clueless about the national electorate.

[Jack Whelan]

Matt--

I'd vote Cantwell out in a heartbeat if there were a Lamont-like candidate to replace her who could win in November. Obviously if the candidate is likely to lose to a Republican in the general election, it's a net loss.

Mike--

My point is that the center-right DLC defines the center by default and that its premiere role in defining the Democrats response to Republican policies has emascualted the possibility for a formulating a credible center-left policy. In effect their cooptation of party legitimacy has come to define anyone who is to their left as radical left when in reality they are center left. I believe that if a robust center-left alternative were presented, most Americans would embrace it.

I would also agree with Krugman that in this time of national emergency, centrism as defined by the media is for suckers if in effect centrism empowers the more radical program of the right wing factions currently in power. That's the whole point of the post. Moderates waste their vote if it doesn't change the balance of power. What worries me is that centrists will naively vote as you suggest they will--for the comfortable candidates like Lieberman thinking they are voting centrist but in fact empowering extremism.

We are in a national emergency, and our choices should not be based on what we're comfortable with but with doing what it takes to stop the radical right from continuing to aggregate power. Have you seen the latest on the London Bomb scare? From Andrew Sullivan's blog:

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2006/08/the_uk_terror_p.html

We'll see how this turns out, but it's not possible to be too cynical about everything these people say and do. Nothing is more important than taking the car keys away from them and making sure they don't get hold of them again. It's up to the moderates to see this, and it's their very moderation that I think will make them unwitting enablers of this nightmare.

jw

[Slim Teens Shaved]

well.. it's like I knew!