Allan Grayson’s recent “Die Now” speech got me thinking again about one of my favorite topics: the Democrats’ refusal to use “populist” language.
Decades ago the Democratic committed itself to a weird form of cool, unemotional, above-the-battle wonk politics. It’s a weird mix of Gandhi, Orwell, genteel mugwumpery, value-neutral ideology, and trust in manipulative administration by experts. Democrats think that they’re 17-dimensional Zen chess masters who can defeat their enemy without moving a muscle. Which they might be, for all I know, except for the winning part.
Since 1968 that strategy hasn’t worked at all well, and since the coronation of Speaker Gingrich in 1992 it hasn’t worked at all. The Republicans have been having tremendous fun teasing Democrats with lies and insults to see if they’ll stamp their little feet and start crying in frustration , or maybe send a stiffly worded letter.
Historically, most of America’s progressive energy has come from borderline demagogues who often worked outside and against the two parties. FDR started off planning to be a horrible president, but he didn’t get his way.
P.S. Lest I seem unsophisticated, the onset of the Democrats’ weird mental deficiencies coincided with their decision to cozy up to big business and ask for money — “Liberals are not afraid of bigness”, as Hofstadter said.
The party pros are actually tough guys who’re getting theirs. It’s the rank and file who are weenies.
Trollblog 
October 4, 2009 at 8:42 pm
Lately I’ve been engaging in a bit of research into the Black Robe gang (ie judiciary). Check out the confirmation hearings for Reagan’s boy Rehnquist and Scalia: EVERY f-ing senator, GOP and Dem voted to confirm Scalia. About half the Dems even confirmed Rehnquist, notwithstanding his right-wing past and Ted Kennedy’s grandstanding opposition, or Rehnquist’s known associations to Nixon, and J-Edgar’s posse.
October 4, 2009 at 11:37 pm
I will never understand the Democrata. Karp’s default theory for cases of this kind s collusion.
October 5, 2009 at 12:41 am
A difference may be noted between the Demos from big states like CA or NY, IL, and the demos from rural areas, say Nevada. The marxist hepcats and Kossacks may not care for a Harry Reid, but his voting record is in line with FDR/Truman tradition.
Compare Reid to a DiDi Feinstein or the Clintons, however, and he seems nearly like a leftist. Yet the media spins Reid as a centrist, and DiFi’s still loved by CA liberals, even though she’s supported Bush consistently, voted for FISA/PatAct, refunding the war, and Bushco’s tax slashes, and also against a public h-c option. She and her sleazy husband Blum have pocketed millions from the IWE, and are still running defense scams, mostly through SoCal aerospace. She’s like the Nixon of CA. Pelosi’s about the same.
Yes, you’ve heard this before–and may think it trite, populist, or non-PC, but the Demo hacks refuse to take that sort of Tammany-like corruption on. A Digby or Kossack might mention it on occasion (when pausing during the health-care pathos), but it’s no big deal. Some hick GOPer screws a latina maid, though, and they have a fit. Even some leftist libertarians have a better sense of political realism.
October 5, 2009 at 1:28 pm
It’s the rank and file who are weenies.
Yep. Solve that problem and you’ll go a considerable distance toward solving the rest.
I do love me some Grayson. The fact that I’m reflexively a little offended by his lack of precision makes me, in the end, love him that much more. Human decency is all well and good, but sometimes a blunt instrument is required to get the job done.
October 6, 2009 at 5:10 pm
Hi John!
Just wanted to tell you that I have read some Charles Taylor recently – I asked you about him on LH – and can only recommend him to you. I’d prefer him to any contemporary German philosopher – even Ernst Tugendhat, I think. And Taylor is certainly more relevant and more accessible than Peter Sloterdijk, who just recently made a bit of a splash by intoning some of the prayers that make up the songbook of Austrian economic theory.
October 6, 2009 at 8:15 pm
Yeah, I actually haven’t read a lot of Taylor but when I do, find myself agreeing most of the time. That actually makes it less fun for me, given my temperament.
The biggest difficulty I have is that Taylor assumes a considerable degree of good will, a little like Rawls, and as far as I know (I may be wrong) doesn’t ask “What does someone who thinks this way behave in the face of a world populated in considerable part with predators and frauds with violent agendas?
October 6, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Charles Taylor upholds Hegelian doctrine, JE. Tan Romantico! Not really a Rawlsian sort–he’s not concerned too much with economic justice, but with Der Geist. Taylor’s a PoMo, but of a peculiar, xtian, anti-rationalist sort.
Rawls may have been naive, but was a rationalist of some sort–though he doesn’t really specify his rationalist criteria (though I have read that in his later books he did).
October 6, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Perezoso, that’s far off the mark. I don’t know where you got it from. You are married to a strong fact-value separation which makes you unreceptive to someone like Taylor, but that’s a bizarre reading.
October 6, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Hah. I’ve been reading his breezy treatment on Hegel over the last few months, and trying not to puke.
Why don’t you read Rawls, instead of making guestimates. Or at least the wiki
October 7, 2009 at 12:49 am
Neither Rawls’ method nor his results appeal to me.
There’s nothing Hegelian about the Taylor I’ve read so far.
October 7, 2009 at 1:03 am
He wrote a long book on Hegel: “Hegel”. Google it.
Like many of the postmodernists, Taylor insists secularism and rationality (including science) created all modern ills. Actually he’s more religious now than he was back in 70s, in his Hegel-Heidegger phase.
Had we stuck to the Church (at least the mainstream, traditional sort–Church of Roma, jews, muslims), the great disasters of the 20th century would have been avoided, according to Taylor.
I don’t buy that line. Really it’s nearly a type of spiritual extortion, fairly common among the sort of religious left. Just pal up with padre, preacher, rabbi, entrust Social Justice to the religious, and everything will be kosher. BS.
October 7, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Perezoso, why should I care about the Hegel book? I’m not studying Hegel. And you misrepresent Taylor’s other views. You’ve let the Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch take over your mind.
What I like about Taylor is his attempt to make the philosophical description of humankind less individualistic, less reductionist, more comprehensive, more accurate, and more useful.
October 7, 2009 at 1:24 pm
Stras, Abb1, if it makes you feel good to reduce all discussion of the Democrats to “they’ve sold out” and “they’re reactionaries”, continue to do so, but preferably somewhere else (though I’m not banning you or anything).
The topic I chose to write about today is a weakness Democrats have that prevents them from attaining even their own limited goals. Obama is at risk of becoming a failed President, on his own centrist terms, because he chose to work in a bipartisan way.
As far as the “sold out” charge goes, it’s true and I’ve made it many times myself. My modification of this charge, made on the basis of Karp’s “Indispensable Enemies”, is that the particulars of the party system and the American system of government produce outcomes that are not optimal even for big business as a whole.
Business as a whole would have been better off with a better stimulus plan, and business as a whole might well be better off with single-payer or the public option. But our governmental system allows particular interests to game the system at the expense of everyone else, including other monied interests.
And by now the people who funded the Republican Party are starting to see that the monster they’ve created, the winger right, is starting to get out of control. (That may be why Obama won.) But I’m more pessimistic than a lot of people about the Republicans self-destructing; if the economy really does go bad, it seems likely to me that we’ll have more and crazier crazies, not less.
October 7, 2009 at 2:48 pm
But I’m more pessimistic than a lot of people about the Republicans self-destructing; if the economy really does go bad, it seems likely to me that we’ll have more and crazier crazies, not less.
And, alas, no viable liberal party to at least try to channel craziness to constructive ends.
There’s Grayson and then who else among the Democrats?
One thing that discourages me about the Democrats (and frightens me about the Republicans) is that they really did seem to be running their best available candidates last time around. Why aren’t there more Graysons out there – more pissed off Dems – among the leadership? It seems like a significant constituency that’s just waiting for representation on a national level.
October 7, 2009 at 3:14 pm
the Python’s Spanish Inquisition sketch
The comfy chair! Not really my favorite form of manga. Did you see the pic of, what, five or so US Supreme Court justices waddling on their way to La Misa? That’s the comfy chair. Any non-papist should wince at the majority of conservative catholics now roosting on the Supreme court (especially considering those old crackers Jefferson and Madison, et al–not a catholic among them). What’s more, the Anglo-American common law has little to do with the catholic-code law, which is actually fairly liberal in ways–. Scalia and Co enjoy the best of both worlds.
For that matter, Taylor even betrayed Hegelian tradition with his move to the papal monarchy. Hegel the Lutheran had nothing but scorn for catholic tradition. He detested the schoolmen and Aquinas, and claimed they misread the greeks. Hegel supported the French Rev., at least initially, because he agreed with the jacobins’ anti-clericalism. Same for GWFH’s salute of Napoleon (tho’ Nappy later brought back the papists, in typical french aristocratic style).
October 7, 2009 at 5:34 pm
John, you wrote: “My modification of this charge, made on the basis of Karp’s “Indispensable Enemies”, is that the particulars of the party system and the American system of government produce outcomes that are not optimal even for big business as a whole.”
So I looked up Karp on Amazon. One reviewer says: “It’s balderdash. But the other Karps are magnificent. Read them.”
Hm. There is C. Wright Mills’ book about the U.S. elite. I’d combine a substantially modified form of its thesis with some insights from Mancur Olson and Seymour Martin Lipset. They are supposed to be totally incompatible, but I don’t buy that. Karp, though, seems to have taken one fact – the indisputable “relative autonomy” of the political system – and mixed it up with some interpretations that have a somewhat wild ring to them.
Does Karp really say – as one of the Amazon reviews alleges – that LBJ escalated the Vietnam war so as to counterbalance his Great Society policies? I mean, that is basically a claim that LBJ was a moron (rather than someone who looked after the best interests of the political class as a whole). Then there is that bit about FDR packing the Supreme Court with judges that supported the progressive agenda. What else, exactly, did Karp suppose he should have done?
Another point: I’m German. Germany’s Nazis weren’t optimal for Big Business, either, but that didn’t prevent Big Business from financing and supporting them. They did not represent the “system”. In fact, they relied on their ability to distance themselves from it. Movement conservatism does seem to share that particular feature (No, I’m not calling movement conservatives Nazis. Let’s just describe them as Poujadistes. That’s probably quite accurate.) The point is: even the unlikeliest social and ideological coalitions can prevail. The conditio sine qua non of their victory, though, is that they can decide the blame game in their favour. In terms of American politics, the issue seems to be who gets to spend the most money in the least nepotistic and fairest ways. And it does look like the crazies are only interested in spending money in rather pointless ways – such as bombing foreigners. Or – if they don’t particularly like the loss of troops involved in that – selling those bombs to some supposedly friendly foreigners at discounted prices so those foreigners can do the bombing to some other set of supposedly evil foreigners on their own initiative.
If I were an American, my main political concern would be to get out of the global policeman-business. Progressives will either understand that or fail. Once politics is transformed into a “the empire is permanently at war”-scenario, some sort of Dolchstosslegende will become entrenched in the end. However, if the Democrats get out of the wars, the anti-welfare crazies stand no chance. Even Whitaker Chambers – definitely a certified member of that crowd – knew that. So, progressives, prioritize! How about supporting Democrats only on condition of their non-interventionist credentials?
October 7, 2009 at 5:57 pm
THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN CONSIDERABLY REWRITTEN
Kraft’s book was overdone, and I reviewed it that way, but his basic point was good.
It gives people a triumphant little Marxist orgasm to say that the state (and the parties) are nothing but tools of the ruling class, but it’s worth looking at the particulars to figure out what residue there actually is. It’s the same kind of thing as some forms of neoclassical economics, which describe frictionless formal systems without asking about the behavior of actual systems in the actual world.
For example, Karp argues that while the political process in the late 1800s favored the monopolies, in some cases it favored monopolies that didn’t exist yet and were brought into existence by Congress. Being a slave of a future ruling class is a bit different than being the slave of an existing ruling class, don’t you think?
In the case of the Nazis I would say that the Nazis were not simply a tool of big business, although big business did support them. Business was certainly better off under the Nazis than under the Communists, but there were costs for them too.
I’d say the same about the present American right wing. I suspect that at the moment they’re more cost than they’re worth, and I think that a lot of the business conservatives are bailing out.
Jorg, I agree with you that militarism is the real problem. That and race. I’ve had a strong reminder recently that imperialist thinking goes very deep in the populace now. Few seem doubtful about a permanent state of war.