June 10, 2006

6/10: TWIB Notes

Libertarian Dem or Liberal Fundamentalist?

In his keynote address to the YearlyKos convention Markos Moulitsas declared: "The blogosphere may be the only place where people from all corners of the party's ideological spectrum can get together and fight over the details, before we come together on Election Day to fight for our Big Tent Party. Popular movements are rarely as practical as ours."

Underscoring the practical side of his movement Markos writes on page 37 of Crashing the Gate: "The Democratic Party stands for everything, yet it stands for nothing. It's a gaggle of special and narrow interests, often in conflict with each other, rarely working in concert to advance their common causes. Members of each group – environmentalists, pro-choice activists, civil libertarians, plaintiff's attorneys and so on – promote their agenda above all others and show little or no understanding of the larger progressive values they share with other groups. And so the whole is never really greater than the sum of its parts."

Illustrating his point, on page 40 Markos described a "Center for a New American Dream" conference in Monterey, California where "single-issue dogmatists" demonstrated all that was wrong with the Democratic Party. Example A for Markos was NARAL and NOW celebration over their success in pressuring Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI) out of a potential challenge to Sen. Lincoln Chafee (D-RI) due to Langevin's less than pure pro-choice record. Markos lauded the rest of Langevin's record and found "plenty for any good progressive to like." The larger lesson Markos took from the story is that Dems ought not sacrifice winning candidates to the whims of single issue groups.

There's just one problem. Substitute "Iraq" for "abortion" and "CT" for "RI" and suddenly Markos becomes everything he hates about the Democratic Party. Now Markos may claim he's just a big tent progressive trying to influence the Dems the way Grover Norquist influences the GOP, but look at his pre-YearlyKos manifesto, "The Libertarian Dem." In the post, Markos tries to locate the unifying theme to his support of Jon Tester, Jim Webb, and Paul Hackett and labels them all "Libertarian Dems." Markos explains: "Libertarian Dems are not hostile to government like traditional libertarians. But unlike the liberal Democrats of old times (now all but extinct), the Libertarian Dem doesn't believe government is the solution for everything."

As Ezra Klein quips over at TAPPED: "From second-term Bill Clinton's mouth to his ears." Klein argues that Jon Tester, Brian Schweitzer, Jim Webb, and Paul Hackett don't share anything like an ideology but rather "a muscular authenticity." Klein may be right about those three kos-picked candidates but throw Ned Lamont into the mix and the common denominator punches you in the face (hint it starts with "I" and ends with "q").

The New Dem Dispatch highlighted this point on 6/2 under the header: "The Return of Liberal Fundamentalism." In language eerily similar to Markos' they write: "One of the major reasons for the DLC's founding in 1985 was to resist what we called "liberal fundamentalism," a conformist tendency to stifle dissent among Democrats and require adherence to litmus tests devised by interest groups and ideological advocates."

Like Markos' defense of Langevin the NDN goes on to point out that while they don't agree "with Lieberman's views on Iraq in every particular" Lieberman votes "with Democrats 90 percent of the time." The NDN finishes, "A party with no room for Joe Lieberman...is a party with no prospects for a majority."

So how practical is Markos' new progressive movement? Do they have any ideological coherence outside of withdrawing from Iraq? Just look at the comment board from Markos' Libertarian Dem post, there are clear divisions among his followers over major issues like trade, taxes, and labor. Iraq is an important issue, but one issue does not a movement, nor a party, make.

NOTE: We asked Markos for comment on this post, and when we get any we will post it ASAP

UPDATE: Zachary Drake of http://zdrake.blogspot.com/ and zdrake on DailyKos responds:

I don't know how Markos will resond to your assertion that he is applying an Iraq litmus test to all Democrats, in contradiction of his "big tent" Democratic philosophy. But here is my personal response: What makes Lieberman so hurtful to the Democratic party is not his stance on the Iraq war. Other Democrats like Hillary Clinton have a similar stance on the war, and they do not attract the ire that Liberman does. We may disagree with Clinton on this issue, but we're not funding a primary challenger or otherwise trying to get her out of the Senate.

The reason Markos, myself, and other members of the progressive movement want to take Lieberman out is that despite his voting record, he often offers the Republican extremists "bi-partisan" cover, and says things like "we [Democrats] undermine the president's credibility at our peril." This propagates the ludicrous Republican meme that it is somehow wrong to criticize Bush. He, on the other hand, is often heard criticising Democrats, and seems more concerned with ingratiating himself with the administration than with the Democratic party. He hasn't even agreed to support the winner of the Democratic primary if it isn't him! He has been unwilling to rule out running as an Independent agaisnt the Democratic candidate. That is why we don't like him. Not because he fails some issue-based litmus-test that we're secretly holding everyone to.

To futher illustrate this point, I offer the example of Senate Minority Leader Harrry Reid. Ideologically, he's more conservative than the Netroots Left would like, and as far as I know he's more conservative than Lieberman. But he's in the tent because he's been willing to fight the Republicans. Not as much as the netroots left wishes he would, but we know but he's on our side. We don't have that confidence in Lieberman, and there's no reason a Sentor from blue-as-it-gets CT shouldn't be a reliable Democrat, both in voting record and in public stance.

No matter how big we make the tent (and I think it should be big), we can't include someone who is taking an axe to the tent itself! And Lieberman has been willing to do so with staggering regularity. The common thread that unites the candidates supported by the Netroots is that they're proud to be Democrats.

Posted by at June 10, 2006 04:01 PM