Center-Left Betrayal

[Paine]

Lieberman was not a creature of neoliberalism. Just stop. He was a creature of the insurance industry being located in Connecticut.

Here is where we can find common ground, I suspect: Max Baucus. He wasn't a creature of "neoliberalism,: but he was who he was because of the bizarre electoral system we call "The Senate." It's no secret that businesses find it easier to purchase influence at the state level than at the federal level (one reason big business is happy to endorse "state's rights" most of the time), and it's even easier to buy a candidate from a small population state where out of state funds can swamp donations from in-state. So Baucus had no choice but to favor business interests. He would have lost his seat otherwise, because all that money would have gone to his rivals if he didn't hold up his end of the bargain to some extent.

There's a reason why the most liberal Senators tend to come from big states (Vermont excluded for a number of reasons). It just costs so much more to buy Diane Feinstein than Max Baucus, and you're competing with so many other interests. So the Senate is wonderful for Big Business, because it gives the inexpensive-to-buy Senators as much power as the hard-to-buy.

You not being able to understand Joe Lieberman as a creature of neoliberalism is indicative of our disagreement. Don’t think we’ll be able to make progress on this thread if you can’t comprehend that.

 

[superrific]

What would you call the ideology of the men who held the presidency from 1977-1993? Bill Clinton was not the first neoliberal.

If you're going to contend that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were ideologically simpatico, then you aren't living in reality and conversation is impossible.

If you knew your history, you'd know that the policy wing of Reaganomics was largely composed of people who deemed themselves "neoconservatives." And you'd know that there was a caesura in that movement. All the 1970s "neoconservatives" (and here I'm referring to the historically accurate meaning of the phrase, not the pejorative meanings that were attached to people like Rumsfeld) were one-time socialists who were turned off by the anti-intellectualism and hopium of the New Left. Well, many of them were friends, but they split. Irving Kristol and Podhoretz became Reaganites. Moynihan remained a stalwart liberal, or "neoliberal" in your parlance.

 

[Paine]

If you're going to contend that Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan were ideologically simpatico, then you aren't living in reality and conversation is impossible.

If you knew your history, you'd know that the policy wing of Reaganomics was largely composed of people who deemed themselves "neoconservatives." And you'd know that there was a caesura in that movement. All the 1970s "neoconservatives" (and here I'm referring to the historically accurate meaning of the phrase, not the pejorative meanings that were attached to people like Rumsfeld) were one-time socialists who were turned off by the anti-intellectualism and hopium of the New Left. Well, many of them were friends, but they split. Irving Kristol and Podhoretz became Reaganites. Moynihan remained a stalwart liberal, or "neoliberal" in your parlance.

No one is contending that they were ideologically simpatico. I get that you’re a smart person, but you also need to realize that there are other smart people on this board who have thought out their positions and researched them.

To assume I don’t know about things that I do know about is really condescending and makes me not want to engage with you.

Anyways, the Wikipedia page for neoliberalism is available for free if you’d like to read it. To say that Reagan and Clinton share no ideological foundation is equally as absurd as claiming they were ideologically simpatico. Which no one did, by the way.

I’d just ask that you take me at face value and not map your prior assumptions about whatever leftists or socialists you’ve dealt with in your life onto me.

I’m a 25 year old Carolina grad from a small town in eastern NC. I came by my politics honestly and have great conviction in them, just as you do yours.

 

[superrific]

You not being able to understand Joe Lieberman as a creature of neoliberalism is indicative of our disagreement. Don’t think we’ll be able to make progress on this thread if you can’t comprehend that.

Then make your argument. Don't just assert it and expect me to swallow your party line. Tell me in what way specifically Joe Lieberman was a creature of neoliberalism. You don't even need to get into a specific biography of the man. Here's his political biography.

Lieberman was elected as a Democrat in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as majority leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as the Connecticut attorney general from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican Party incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006.

 

[superrific]

No one is contending that they were ideologically simpatico. I get that you’re a smart person, but you also need to realize that there are other smart people on this board who have thought out their positions and researched them.

To assume I don’t know about things that I do know about is really condescending and makes me not want to engage with you.

Anyways, the Wikipedia page for neoliberalism is available for free if you’d like to read it. To say that Reagan and Clinton share no ideological foundation is equally as absurd as claiming they were ideologically simpatico. Which no one did, by the way.

I’d just ask that you take me at face value and not map your prior assumptions about whatever leftists or socialists you’ve dealt with in your life onto me.

I’m a 25 year old Carolina grad from a small town in eastern NC. I came by my politics honestly and have great conviction in them, just as you do yours.

I thought you were the new alias of a poster from the old board named Ovshinsky.

You make a good point about not mapping prior assumptions onto people. That's fair. By the same token, it's hard not to do that, at least to some extent. When you've had the same conversation with people 10 times, it becomes harder to be patient. And that's not necessarily fair to each new interlocutor, but is it not understandable? I should try harder to treat posters on their own terms. In return, could you recognize that I have a lot of experience? That doesn't make me necessarily correct, but I've lived through "neoliberalism." I've studied with and taken classes with some of the supposed neoliberals. I've written about some of these issues professionally. And I don't take well to being dismissed as someone who can't "comprehend," something. The only thing I've ever studied that I've had trouble comprehending was graduate level quantum mechanics, which is one reason I'm not a physicist.

 

[Paine]

Then make your argument. Don't just assert it and expect me to swallow your party line. Tell me in what way specifically Joe Lieberman was a creature of neoliberalism. You don't even need to get into a specific biography of the man. Here's his political biography.

Lieberman was elected as a Democrat in 1970 to the Connecticut Senate, where he served three terms as majority leader. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980, he served as the Connecticut attorney general from 1983 to 1989. He narrowly defeated Republican Party incumbent Lowell Weicker in 1988 to win election to the U.S. Senate and was re-elected in 1994, 2000, and 2006.

Lieberman supported:
School vouchers for charter schools
Reducing the capital gains tax
Social security privatization

If any policies are more indicative of neoliberalism than those, I’m not sure what they’d be.

He was also chairman of the DLC for five terms, an explicitly neoliberal group.

 

[Paine]

I thought you were the new alias of a poster from the old board named Ovshinsky.

You make a good point about not mapping prior assumptions onto people. That's fair. By the same token, it's hard not to do that, at least to some extent. When you've had the same conversation with people 10 times, it becomes harder to be patient. And that's not necessarily fair to each new interlocutor, but is it not understandable? I should try harder to treat posters on their own terms. In return, could you recognize that I have a lot of experience? That doesn't make me necessarily correct, but I've lived through "neoliberalism." I've studied with and taken classes with some of the supposed neoliberals. I've written about some of these issues professionally. And I don't take well to being dismissed as someone who can't "comprehend," something. The only thing I've ever studied that I've had trouble comprehending was graduate level quantum mechanics, which is one reason I'm not a physicist.

I’m not that poster, rest assured. Just didn’t want to be as public as I was on the other forum.

I’ve also had this same argument with countless people, so I get frustrated with it as well. I also don’t really like the message board formats for conversations like this, to be perfectly honest. I more so treat it as a diary for my thoughts on politics and culture since I don’t really have any place else to publish them.

 

[superrific]

Anyways, the Wikipedia page for neoliberalism is available for free if you’d like to read it. To say that Reagan and Clinton share no ideological foundation is equally as absurd as claiming they were ideologically simpatico. Which no one did, by the way.

1. You implied the ideological simpatico. The language you used does so. The casual lumping of Clinton with the 1977-1992 presidents does so. If you didn't mean it, then fine but I don't think I was being unreasonable in reading that in. On the other hand, you're right that I might be reading more into your posts because of past experience arguing these points.

2. Of course Reagan and Clinton share some ideological foundation. Neither are Maoists. Both believe that markets create prosperity (they do). Reagan was a creature of anti-communism and he wasn't exactly a well-educated guy - especially not compared to Clinton. Reagan was a true ideologue. Clinton was, and is, more of a policy guy.

 

[rodoheel]

Yes. Republicans are definitely more to blame for anti-union policies.

But policies that allow unions to get big haven't worked as advertised for the reasons I described. Just like big companies can be less responsive to their customers than the smaller companies doing similar things, unions can fall into the same trap. If workers don't have anywhere else to go, why are the unions incentivized to improve?

Thanks. What I'm trying to understand is: what are the "policies that allow unions to get big"?

 

[rodoheel]

Maybe people like big TVs. I mean, are we really going with "brainwashed" as the explanation for why Americans like to buy things? Is that something that is capable of brainwashing?

Brainwashing is possible for things that depend on knowledge. The knowledge can be skewed and twisted and sometimes just outright denied. It's less clear that "brainwashing" can affect people's fundamental values and desires. You need a better theory than "brainwashing."

I am a fan of Marcuse's book One-Dimensional Man, which is basically an exegesis on consumer capitalism. He approaches it the right way -- that consumerism is a cultural issue, in a reinforcement loop with capitalist enterprise and especially the increasing sophistication of advertising and marketing over the course of the 20th century. Brainwashing makes it sound like intentionality. It wasn't. It was systemic.

I think you misunderstand my post. I was referring to people being brainwashed into opposing things like free healthcare and other forms of public welfare, not being brainwashed into liking big TVs.

 

[superrific]

Lieberman supported:
School vouchers for charter schools
Reducing the capital gains tax
Social security privatization

If any policies are more indicative of neoliberalism than those, I’m not sure what they’d be.

He was also chairman of the DLC for five terms, an explicitly neoliberal group.

Lieberman never supported SS privatization. Look, I don't like the guy but we have to be honest. You think Al Gore would have chosen a SS privatizer to be his VP in 2000?

My point about Lieberman wasn't so much about his policies -- which did generally fit into what you folks call "neoliberal" -- as about asking why those were his policies. Was it because he was an ideologue, or because he wanted to win Senate races? He defeated the Republican incumbent in 1988 by a tiny margin, and wikipedia tells me that was in some measure because he had support of the Cuban community in CT. Thus was he hostile to Castro for his entire career. Might he have been that way regardless? Perhaps. But in a democracy, you can't lose sight of the constituents. His constituents wanted him to be anti-Castro and he was.

This is a microcosm of one of my most passionate objections to the entire concept of neoliberalism. It attempts to lump "center-left" Democrats in with the Republicans of the era, which erases the actual history of what happened. The DLC wasn't some cadre of corporate-trained ideological puppets of big capitalism. They were guys who wanted to win elections. The elections were hotly contested (in theory; sometimes Dems got killed) and they had real consequences.

You're not old enough to have lived through Reagan/Bush. I did. Back in the 1980s, the Braves were the worst team in MLB and I rooted for them; I was also a Dem, and I don't know which was more depressing. We got pummeled in 1984. I mean, it was a thorough trouncing. Then we thought we would do better in 88, and we got killed again. Mondale and Dukakis were the left's candidates and they were disasters. When Clinton emerged in 92, from what had appeared to be another GOP coronation, it was like the most exciting thing ever. We won! And more importantly, the GOP establishment lost!

After 1988, when Bush landed a rhetorical blow by calling Dukakis a "card carrying member of the ACLU," basically no politician in America wanted to be known as liberal. Nobody wanted to be known as liberal. Liberals on my college campus went out of their way to find other terms to describe themselves. It was a dirty word in a way that you probably can't imagine. It was the DLC that helped rectify that problem -- but to do it, they had to throw out a lot of the old "liberalism." Fortunately much of that was bad anyway.

There was no way for progressives to win elections in America in the 1980s-90s. There just wasn't. The tack to the center was to avoid getting routed all the time. It remains true that progressives can't win big elections. Massachusetts can give us Warren (though she is less popular there than most Dems), but Michigan can't and never will for the foreseeable future. Every Dem has to win Michigan. So Dems can't be as progressive as you like. That's not ideology. It's politics.

 

[superrific]

Thanks. What I'm trying to understand is: what are the "policies that allow unions to get big"?

There are no such policies. This poster, as usual, doesn't know what he's talking about. Unions are actually affiliations of tiny unions that represent individual bargaining units. The reason for the affiliation is that individual bargaining units have no leverage. The baggage handling union at Laguardia cannot strike effectively. They will just be replaced and nobody will even notice. It's when all the baggage handlers affiliate together that they can get something accomplished.

There is competition between unions. When I lived in NYC, the door staff for my apartment building unionized. They were courted by two distinct unions. It was small bargaining unit.

The reason that there's not more competition, especially on a national scale, is the same reason why we have two political parties: unions don't want to split the vote. And in particular, there have long been outfits called "company unions." In the old days, they were unions in name only, when in fact they really worked for management. IIRC the Wagner Act eliminated these forms of company unions, but they can still exist in watered down form. And what a company union can do that management can't is use unfair election practices, since the company union is considered distinct from management (so long as it retains a nominally independent structure).

Thus, competition among unions has the primary effect of decreasing the organizing power of workers. The AFL and the CIO merged for a reason (they used to compete!).

 

[Paine]

We have a different understanding of what motivates political decision making in this country.

I believe Lieberman was an ideologue, and the end of his career proved that.

Even if he weren’t, what forces exert influence our politics the most? Is it the will of the people? Are Senators perfect maps of what their constituents want?

Or, perhaps, are there wider socio-economic forces at play?

 

[superrific]

We have a different understanding of what motivates political decision making in this country.

I believe Lieberman was an ideologue, and the end of his career proved that.

Even if he weren’t, what forces exert influence our politics the most? Is it the will of the people? Are Senators perfect maps of what their constituents want?

Or, perhaps, are there wider socio-economic forces at play?

1. I'm not going to argue any further about Joe Lieberman.

2. Senators are, of course, not perfect maps of their constituents. There are a lot of factors that influence politics. Some are laudable, some are not. Some of the ones that are laudable in theory can be horrible in practice. If politics were simple, we'd have it figured out by now.

3. My frustration with the left comes from their inattentiveness to the role that the voting public plays in shaping the nation's governance. And that's in part by necessity. Progressives love to style themselves as the party of "the people," of "true democracy." Maybe not as much any more, but I cancelled my subscription to the Nation in the 90s because I became so sick of leftists talking about their niche ideas as somehow representative of the popular will. The classic leftist narrative is of a committed band of publicly-minded activists relentlessly fighting off oppression to achieve good results for the people . . . regardless of whether the people actually like those results. Well, if that's your self-narrative, then it becomes inconvenient when the voters reject your ideas. Hence it becomes all about the media, or the corporations buying both parties, and so on and so forth.

That's ultimately the problem with the idea of "neoliberalism." The alternative to Reagan was never, ever going to be socialism -- not "democratic socialism" or "Scandanavian social democracy" or anything else. It was never going to be progressivism. The items on the menu were Reaganomics and Clintonomics. Contentions that they were fundamentally the same are not historically accurate and they are rather insulting to many people who spent a lot of time fighting to defeat Reaganomics.

4. One thing that changed my thinking about politics was reading about the 1968 Dem convention. The cops were hostile af to the protesters, and I agree with the characterization of the events as a police riot. But why? The protesters were there ostensibly advancing the interests of the working classes. Police are working class. Why did the police hate the leftists with such a virulent passion? Why did the police feel the desire to crack open protesters' skulls. Maybe it was because the protesters didn't actually speak for them? I did a lot of reading after that, and what I found was the now-accepted narrative of working-class resentment toward the populists who were supposedly championing their interests. Some of that was sociological (i.e. class- and race-based), but it was also because the progressives were out of touch with what the working class population really wanted.

Of course, this phenomenon is not new. Marx called it "false consciousness." That's all well and good if your plan is to take over the world by force, but if you're trying to win a democratic election, "false consciousness" is not necessarily a helpful concept. In practice, it amounts to dumping on the values that people find to be important, and thus losing votes.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

Thanks. What I'm trying to understand is: what are the "policies that allow unions to get big"?

The American model is in many ways a feudal model. Workers pay dues to the local and the boss of the local kicks up money to the regional and national organization. As long as dues are kicked up, some of the high up bosses let the local bosses do what they want including hiring their family and friends to local union hall jobs, taking a bribe from a company hoping to get a less arduous union contract, etc. The European model is more professionally run in a more bureaucratic model. It doesn't seem intuitive that a union run in a more top driven fashion that is further away from the union voters would drive a more responsive and successful union but the proof is in the pudding.

So a policy change would be instead of having members vote for their local leadership, you could have union members vote for national leadership and have them appoint local leaders who may be more qualified to negotiate the finer points of a contract versus the guy who was popular among his fellow pipefitters.

But of course voting for national leaders might very well lead to disconnection from the local concerns so the solution might be smaller, more regional or specialized unions that still operate from the top down but are simply much smaller.

 

[Paine]

1. I'm not going to argue any further about Joe Lieberman.

2. Senators are, of course, not perfect maps of their constituents. There are a lot of factors that influence politics. Some are laudable, some are not. Some of the ones that are laudable in theory can be horrible in practice. If politics were simple, we'd have it figured out by now.

3. My frustration with the left comes from their inattentiveness to the role that the voting public plays in shaping the nation's governance. And that's in part by necessity. Progressives love to style themselves as the party of "the people," of "true democracy." Maybe not as much any more, but I cancelled my subscription to the Nation in the 90s because I became so sick of leftists talking about their niche ideas as somehow representative of the popular will. The classic leftist narrative is of a committed band of publicly-minded activists relentlessly fighting off oppression to achieve good results for the people . . . regardless of whether the people actually like those results. Well, if that's your self-narrative, then it becomes inconvenient when the voters reject your ideas. Hence it becomes all about the media, or the corporations buying both parties, and so on and so forth.

That's ultimately the problem with the idea of "neoliberalism." The alternative to Reagan was never, ever going to be socialism -- not "democratic socialism" or "Scandanavian social democracy" or anything else. It was never going to be progressivism. The items on the menu were Reaganomics and Clintonomics. Contentions that they were fundamentally the same are not historically accurate and they are rather insulting to many people who spent a lot of time fighting to defeat Reaganomics.

4. One thing that changed my thinking about politics was reading about the 1968 Dem convention. The cops were hostile af to the protesters, and I agree with the characterization of the events as a police riot. But why? The protesters were there ostensibly advancing the interests of the working classes. Police are working class. Why did the police hate the leftists with such a virulent passion? Why did the police feel the desire to crack open protesters' skulls. Maybe it was because the protesters didn't actually speak for them? I did a lot of reading after that, and what I found was the now-accepted narrative of working-class resentment toward the populists who were supposedly championing their interests. Some of that was sociological (i.e. class- and race-based), but it was also because the progressives were out of touch with what the working class population really wanted.

Of course, this phenomenon is not new. Marx called it "false consciousness." That's all well and good if your plan is to take over the world by force, but if you're trying to win a democratic election, "false consciousness" is not necessarily a helpful concept. In practice, it amounts to dumping on the values that people find to be important, and thus losing votes.

Once again, I think you’re strawmanning a lot of positions that I don’t have.

One way that the left approached politics in the past is not indicative of the way I approach politics or even how the modern American left does.

These terms have become so devoid of meaning that it’s impossible to get someone’s actual policy positions out by using them.

The modern left is quite different from the left of the 1960s and has learned from their mistakes. There’s a reason a lot of lefties from that time period are conservatives now.

The New Left is not treated kindly by socialist literature today. I reject advancing leftist politics through the university as the New Left tried.

If you’re curious about my political positions on things, or how I think leftists should reach out to the voting population, you can just ask! You don’t have to assume what my beliefs are.

 

[superrific]

Once again, I think you’re strawmanning a lot of positions that I don’t have.

One way that the left approached politics in the past is not indicative of the way I approach politics or even how the modern American left does.

These terms have become so devoid of meaning that it’s impossible to get someone’s actual policy positions out by using them.

The modern left is quite different from the left of the 1960s and has learned from their mistakes. There’s a reason a lot of lefties from that time period are conservatives now.

The New Left is not treated kindly by socialist literature today. I reject advancing leftist politics through the university as the New Left tried.

If you’re curious about my political positions on things, or how I think leftists should reach out to the voting population, you can just ask! You don’t have to assume what my beliefs are.

1. I don't straw man. If I haven't accurately represented your positions, it's because maybe I don't know them -- as you suggest. That's what discussion is for. I thought you said earlier that you don't like message board discussion, but if you'd like to explain your ideas I would like to hear them.

2. I haven't seen much learning from the modern left on the points that I've highlighted, but again I'm willing to listen and learn.

3. Please keep in mind that the audience for a message board conversation isn't just the participants. It's everyone who is reading the thread. So sometimes I generalize my arguments somewhat so that they can speak to a broader audience. The risk in doing so is what you've noted, that I might think I'm responding to your points when I'm actually responding to something else. I'm aware of that issue and I try my best to do both at once (one reason my posts are long) -- to be particular and general at once.

4. What was your handle on the other board?

 

[Paine]

1. I don't straw man. If I haven't accurately represented your positions, it's because maybe I don't know them -- as you suggest. That's what discussion is for. I thought you said earlier that you don't like message board discussion, but if you'd like to explain your ideas I would like to hear them.

2. I haven't seen much learning from the modern left on the points that I've highlighted, but again I'm willing to listen and learn.

3. Please keep in mind that the audience for a message board conversation isn't just the participants. It's everyone who is reading the thread. So sometimes I generalize my arguments somewhat so that they can speak to a broader audience. The risk in doing so is what you've noted, that I might think I'm responding to your points when I'm actually responding to something else. I'm aware of that issue and I try my best to do both at once (one reason my posts are long) -- to be particular and general at once.

4. What was your handle on the other board?

Like I said, I changed my name for privacy reasons so I don’t want to reveal what my username was on IC. You could probably figure it out by my writing style and political positions though.

The modern American left is very amorphous, so I’d be curious as to who you’re looking to to see if the left has changed since the 1970s.

I’m more than happy to discuss my positions on things, I’m not a fan of the point by point detailed back and forth since I’m typing on my phone lol. Unfortunately my personality forces me to respond because I enjoy talking about it overall and don’t get much opportunity to do it in my daily life.

 

[superrific]

The American model is in many ways a feudal model. Workers pay dues to the local and the boss of the local kicks up money to the regional and national organization. As long as dues are kicked up, some of the high up bosses let the local bosses do what they want including hiring their family and friends to local union hall jobs, taking a bribe from a company hoping to get a less arduous union contract, etc.

This is not accurate. You're describing the mafia, not the vast majority of labor unions in America (which were not in league with mafia interests).

 

[superrific]

Like I said, I changed my name for privacy reasons so I don’t want to reveal what my username was on IC. You could probably figure it out by my writing style and political positions though.

The modern American left is very amorphous, so I’d be curious as to who you’re looking to to see if the left has changed since the 1970s.

I’m more than happy to discuss my positions on things, I’m not a fan of the point by point detailed back and forth since I’m typing on my phone lol. Unfortunately my personality forces me to respond because I enjoy talking about it overall and don’t get much opportunity to do it in my daily life.

Yes, after my first guess was wrong, I think my second guess is accurate. I wanted to get some confirmation.

Forget the modern American left as a whole. Talking about "the left" at such a high level of generalization is rarely elucidative and I shouldn't have taken us into that rabbit hole. At the same time, epithets like "neoliberalism" don't get anywhere. That phrase is triggering for me, because it represents a mindset that -- in my estimation -- cost us the 2000 and 2016 elections. In both elections, there was a contingent on the left screaming, "the parties are the same" and their refusal to align against the GOP brought us W and then Trump.

So if you could avoid using the term neoliberal (which is mostly a made-up pejorative), and be more attentive to specifics, I'd appreciate it.