From The Magistrate: A Short Note On The Democratic Party And The Progressive Left....

[wyldwolf]

In consideration of the latest 'progressive vs moderate' whatever on DU, here are some blasts from the past from the Magistrate.

I think it is quite fair to say the Democratic Party is not an ideal medium for securing a variety of progressive and left-rooted measures, and I do not, personally, view it as such.

It is, however, and however unfortunately, and however imperfect an instrument for it, the only tool available at present, in our political system as it is actually constituted.

Accepting that there is an imperfect fit between the Democratic Party and the furthest aims of left and progressive people, several things must be acknowledged.

First, it has to be acknowledged that left and progressive people really do not have solid ground to proclaim they and only they are true Democrats, or are the real base of the Democratic Party, and that people who are left of center or center-left or even centerists are not really Democrats.

Second, left and progressive people need to consider whether the tactic of attacking people who are perhaps a bit to the right of them, though generally well to the left of a national average, or of the average in the locale where they reside, as rightists who do not belong in the Democratic Party, is likely to expand and increase their influence in the Democratic Party, and advance the prospects of actually getting laws and regulations they would like to see adopted come to pass.

Accepting these things would shift the focus of debate to pragmatic questions, and entails acknowledging facts of contingency. It highlights that the real debate is not so much over what should be done, as it is over what actually can be done, in present circumstances. Obviously, views will differ concerning what is or is not possible at present, over what a practical and achievable goal might be, and over what the best means of getting the best possible result would be. Put bluntly, it is here, and most particularly in the last of these things, that most of my disagreements with our President and our Party center: I would prefer a more combative attitude, prefer a staking out of initial positions much more in advance of what an acceptable final compromise would likely be, and suspect more could be got than Party leadership seems to suspect, or even seems in some cases to desire.

Argument by hyperbole is fun, and used sparingly, can be quite effective in getting someone to see, and take, a point. But taking argument by hyperbole for one's principal means is like serving a dinner composed of mounds of spice and little else; it will not be palatable and will not fulfill the purpose of a meal. People who habitually argue by hyperbole tend in time to lose consciousness they are employing a rhetorical device, and come to take what began as deliberate exaggerations for effect to be statements of fact, accurate descriptions of people and events. When they do, to put it bluntly, they come to appear as clowns at best and as demons at worst, and in either case, forfeit all credibility with people who do not already agree with them, and lose any ability to sway people to come to agreement with them from a neutral, or even a hostile, view."

And for good measure, his take on another 'I'm more progressive than thou' dust up on DU in 2006 when figures like Jimmy Carter, LBJ, Bill Clinton and JFK were called 'DINOs' and Republicans.

Another is the perennial brouha here about what constitutes a "real Democrat", most of which is conducted along lines that bear very little relation with the actual states and history of the Democratic Party. The idea that figures like Presidents Kennedy and Johnson were not "real Democrats" is nothing but the punch-line to a very poor joke, although it is certainly true that they embraced many policies and ideas that some of our radicals today detest. But that latter is hardly an indication they were not "real Democrats"; rather, it is an indication that such radicals are somewhat out of step with the Democratic Party as a real institution and political force, as opposed to an ideal item they imagine not only to be fact, but to be wholly agreeable to them. The fact is that the Cold War was fought by Democrats as well as Republicans, and was a solid item of Democratic Party identity and policy in those days. The faction of the Democratic Party that opposed the Cold War had its politiocal trial with the campaign for President of Sec. Wallace in 1948, and failed utterly, gaining the votes of only a handful of people. What is repudiated at the polls by the overwhelming preponderance of Democratic voters cannot be the real face of the Democratic Party. It really is that simple.

That Presidents Carter and Clinton could be described from some vantages as centerists is hardly sufficient to establish as fact a claim they were not "real Democrats". Such a statement depends on assent to the proposition that the Democratic Party is an organ of the far left, and there really is not a trace of support for this notion in history. The fact is that the Democratic party occupies, and has throughout the latter portion of the twentieth century and into our present days occupied, a position roughly analogous to that of a moderate Social Democrat element in European politics, which is very far from a radical left view, and during that period in Europe has been taken as the chief enemy by the radical left. It seeks a degree of reform and mitigation of the capitalist order, not its complete restructuring or overthrow. This is both a fairly popular view among the people, and a position of long and distinguished pedigree on the left, dating back almost to the origins of the modern left in the mid-nineteenth century. The schism between reformers and revolutionists is a very old one among leftists, and is one that the revolutionists have tended to be on the losing side of in all polities containing a reasonable degree of democratic representationalism in their governments.