Have Liberals Won?

Dana Hunter has an interesting rant about an article by Michael Lind at Salon which is entitled: Relax, liberals. You’ve already won: No matter who prevails at the ballot box in November, John McCain or Barack Obama, the four-decade-long conservative counterrevolution is over. While I have my disagreements with the call-to-arms theme in her analysis, I do appreciate her drawing the piece to my attention.

While it is at times difficult to follow just who Lind is claiming victory over, he uses the term ‘radical right’ often so I am going to make the assumption that he is talking about the nexus of evangelicals and neo-conservatives. Both of these groups dominated conservatism under George W. Bush and if that is the group he is claiming victory over, I will conditionally agree with him. The evangelical wing of the Republican Party is on life support and neoconservatism is DOA. Are radical elements of conservatism gone forever? Of course not.

Lind spends a lot of time noting examples of where ‘radical’ conservatives failed in their efforts to kill entitlement programs, internationalism in foreign policy and other halmarks of ‘liberalism’. I’ll give him these points. Where I will caution modern liberals is to make a jump in logic and claim a lack of success for radical conservatives equals a victory for modern liberalism. This is something we see time and time again from liberals who do not understand American politics and who constantly misread the electorate.

I would also disagree with Lind’s interpretation that either side can ever declare permanent victory. This statement by Lind is an extreme exaggeration:

But in the last decade, even during the seven-plus years of the Bush presidency, the center of American politics has moved considerably to the left. Whether Obama or McCain wins the White House, liberalism has already won the national debate about the future of the country.

I do not believe that the ‘national debate’ is over, nor do I believe it will ever be over. The truth is that our system depends on an ebb and flow of ideas from both extremes of political thought. What is even more true is that Americans are a people that do not like extremes or a lack of contrary opinions.

Second, even if we give him a pass on his victory claims, just what brand of liberalism is the winner? It is certainly not the liberalism of Humphrey, McGovern, Carter or Mondale. It is also not the liberalism of Pelosi, Reid or even Obama. No, the so-called liberalism that has triumphed over attacks from the extreme Right is the ‘liberalism’ of Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower. These three men, more than any others in the 20th century defined our course in the world and we are still following their lead. But they were not liberals in the modern sense. No, they were true Centrists. Lind seems to agree:

By rejecting the radical right, the American electorate has not endorsed bold new initiatives. The public has merely signaled its support of the older New Deal/Great Society/Civil Rights liberalism that the right sought to uproot.

There is no real debate in this country over the existance of a social safety net for our older citizens. The debate is only about how best to provide that. Likewise, there is no real debate over internationalism. We all know we need to work with other countries and even under Bush we work with dozens of countries every day in various ways. The debate is about how best we do that.

Despite what the extremist want us to believe, America works because most Americans are Centrists. We like to hear both sides and more often than not, our feelings lie in the middle. Lind is welcome to call the policies of Roosevelt and Truman and the bi-partisan cooperation of Eisenhower ‘liberalism’ but even he knows it is not the extreme form that defines today’s Left.

For the moment, however, the prospects for the moderate, reformist center left are better than they have been in nearly half a century.

A ‘moderate, reformist center left’? Doesn’t seem like quite the big, bad machine that liberals fantasized about for the last eight years. But that is the reality of American politics. We like moderation and we like Centrism.  (Polling actually indicates that the American middle is slightly right-of-center but if Lind wants to claim the ‘center left’ is dominate, I think we can give him a pass. )

On one point I would agree with Dana Hunter. The Left should not be complacent, but neither should moderate conservatives. Radical conservatism is not going away. If history has shown us anything it is that radicalism in all its forms doesn’t die, it just sleeps. All opposing views should be on guard. But we also need to guard against radical liberalism as well, because it is equally dangerous.

If Dana would also prefer to drive a stake into the heart of moderate, traditional conservatism, then she also misreads the American mind. We need conservatism as much as we need liberalism if for no other reason than because they balance one another. That’s the way our Founders intended things.

Lind makes one last point which I liked:

In 1951, political scientist Samuel Lubell argued that America’s two-party system is divided between a dominant “sun” party and a subordinate “moon” party, writing that “it is within the majority party that the issues of any political period are fought out; while the minority party shines in reflected radiance of the heat thus generated.” Even if there is a Republican in the White House, the major controversies in the next few years, from the debate about deficits and entitlements to the future of U.S. foreign policy, are likely to be fought out not between the parties but among rival wings of the dominant Democratic party itself.

Provided Obama wins in November, yes, rival Democrats will debate our future, but conservatives will also weigh in. The beauty of conservatism since 1968 is that it repairs itself quickly and I think it does a better job of reading voters. That’s why we lead 5 to 2 on turns in the Whitehouse over the last 40 years.

Lind is welcome to claim victory for liberals, but what he really does is demostrate the American middle is stronger than ever and modern radical liberalism is no more en vogue than modern radical conservatism.