WHO YOU CALLIN' A CENTRIST?

Harold Ford burnishes his "moderate" credentials-- loses TN senate seat but wins DLC chair

Nothing gets me crazier than when I'm with a bunch of really smart progressives and they start using the reactionary frame of calling right-wing Democrats like Harold Ford or Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson "moderate." They're not moderate; they're the extreme right-wing of the Democratic Party; well, Lieberman isn't part of the Democratic Party but he was the extreme right of it before Connecticut voters tossed him out. The others, along with many DLC and Blue Dog members, are. In a day and age when members' entire voting record is easily accessible, there is not reason to call someone like Jim Marshall (D-GA) or Chris Carney (D-PA) or Dan Boren (OK), Boyd Allen (FL), Gene Taylor (D-MS), Bud Cramer (AL), John Barrow (D-GA), Heath Shuler (D-NC), Al Wynn (D-MD) or Dan Lipinski (D-IL) a moderate. Well, there is one reason: you accept the radical right's frame of political polarity.

Yesterday George Lakoff went to town on the whole idea with a short piece called No Center, No Centrists. I love the way he began: "'Centrism' is the creation of an inaccurate self-serving metaphor, and it is time to bury it." Let me get the shovels, please.

There is no left to right linear spectrum in the American political life. There are two systems of values and modes of thought — call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there are lots of folks who are what I've called "biconceptuals": progressive on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don't form a linear scale.

...American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas-- the ideas this country was founded on and that carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care.

The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on.

Empowerment include roads and bridges; public education; government-developed communications like the internet and satellite communications systems; the banking system; the SEC and institutions that make a stock market possible, and the court system, mostly about contracts and corporate law. Progressive government makes business possible. No one makes any money in this country without the progressive empowerment by government. A progressive foreign policy is not based solely, or even mainly, on the state-- about the "national interest" defined as our military strength and GDP. Progressive foreign policy focuses on individual people's interests as well as national interests: on poverty, disease, refugees, education, women's and children's issues, public health, and so on.

Lakoff explains that using the frame of some kind of phoney-baloney "center," is an attempt to make progressives look like non-mainstream kooks and extremists. Glenn Smith takes the argument further-- and right to the heart of reactionary Democratic politics, the DLC, a corporate interest group deep Inside the Beltway Democratic Establishment. The call themselves "moderate" and "centrists" to marginalize the progressive heart of the Democratic Party to better serve the interests of their corporate (and Republican) paymasters. In their world, Rahm Emanuel, Harold Ford and Joe Lieberman is where it's at; Howard Dean and the grassroots Democratic wing of the Democratic Party are a threat. They don't represent values, only strategies and self-interest. And, as Lakoff reminds us, "Their concentration on laundry lists of policies rather than vision, values, and passion has not helped the Democrats electorally."

The reason the DLC has been attacking progressives, Smith argues, is that DLC members have major conservative values and are threatened by the progressive base. Some of those values are financial: Wall Street, the HMO's and drug companies, agribusiness, developers, the oil companies, and international corporations that benefit from trade agreements, outsourcing, cheap labor abroad, and practices that harm indigenous populations but bring profits. A powerful motivation for the party has been that, if they take such positions, they, like the Republicans, can get big money contributions from Wall Street.

But there is more involved here than money. The DLC seems also to share the foreign policy idea that we should be maximizing our "national interest"-- our military strength, economic wealth (measured by GDP), and global political clout (presumably coming from economic and military clout). This is opposed to a foreign policy that maximizes the well-being of people, both at home and abroad.

But worst of all, the DLC has been cowed by the conservatives. They have drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. As Harold Ford intimated in his debate with Markos Moulitsas: To win you have be a hawk on foreign policy, a social conservative on abortion and gay marriage, and not raise taxes. Nonsense.

Even worse, Ford is suggesting that those in the party who don't hold those views say that they do. There's a name for someone who goes against his principles to pander for votes. It's not a nice name.

In all the commentary about that debate, an important aspect has gone without comment. Markos certainly bested Ford. But to do so, he also had to best the moderator, David Gregory, who insisted on using the conservative-tainted word "liberal." Over and over, Markos resisted Gregory's frames. Gregory was not using Markos' frames and Markos insisted on his own.

It is important to stand up to the DLC, and to the idea that there is a unitary mainstream center, that they are it, and that progressives are extremists and deserve to be marginalized.

Bob Fertik of Democrats.com is advocating a practical approach to the fake Dems who try to pass themselves off as "moderates" while supporting Bush Regime extremism: primaries. I agree with his premise and if you check out his chart you'll notice a hint or two of some collaboration between us. He talks about Democrats who routinely betray progressive values and backstab mainstream Democratic policies to support Republicans on crucial issues. And he offers alternatives to these fake Dems-- even beyond Donna Edwards' race to unseat Al Wynn and Mark Pera's race to unseat Dan Lipinski. Check out his site and let him know what you think.


UPDATE: THE POST USES THE FRAME TO DESCRIBE THE ODIOUS MARK PENN AS THE NEW KARL ROVE

Everything I just said-- and, more impoirtant, Lakoff just said-- about the insidious nature of the false "centrist" meme, can be summed up in the first paragraph of a column on campaign strategists in today's Washington Post.

The most obvious heir to a position of Karl Rove-like influence is Mark Penn, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's top political adviser. Penn, the rare pollster who is also the chief strategist of a campaign, reinforces some of what liberals do not like about Clinton: He is a centrist who has pushed the New York Democrat to the middle and advised her not to apologize for her vote to authorize the war in Iraq.

Many actual moderate Democrats have shied away from getting behind Hillary's campaign because of the slimy and unscrupulous nature of the Beltway insiders like Penn she has chosen to surround herself with.