Fear of losing …

Posted by Joshua Holland at 11:29 AM on February 27, 2006.

Americans, overwhelmingly, see Democrats' failure to articulate a coherent set of messages as a sign of weakness.

It's a legitimate criticism, but one that puts the cart before the horse: Democrats' fear of losing, rather than passionate belief in advancing a progressive agenda, is what makes their positions so muddled and tentative in the first place.

Last week I wrote about the Maryland Senate race, a race in which Congressman Ben Cardin's supporters have effectively marginalized the campaign of Kweisi Mfume by saying he can't win in the general. At this point, that narrative can kill any Dem in a primary fight -- look at what it did to Howard Dean's campaign (I know, it was one among many factors, but still).

That comes froma deadly fear of losing any more ground to the right. Dems have been beaten up for years at the ballot, while scoring well on the issues that matter most to Americans in poll after poll. It's traumatized many of them; they're terrified of losing those last blue islands in the bright red electoral map, and that's led too many of them to take a much more tentative approach to politics than those of us in the grass-roots are looking for. Hence, the idea that the Democratic coalition is essentially schizophrenic: a pro-business elite pushed from the left by its foaming-at-the-mouth lefty base.

But that simplifies the real conflict within the left. As many others have noted, our differences aren't as much ideological -- although differences in ideology exist -- but tactical. Do you stand up for a set of progressive values and passionately oppose the right's agenda -- and let the chips fall where they may -- or do you "triangulate," and come up with ways to peel off those lower-income red-state voters?

It is the latter approach that has prevailed, and it's left Americans unsure of just for what Democrats, and progressives, really stand. That's as true for many of the mainstream liberal organizations outside the Democratic Party infrastructure as it is for those within the party.

Now, contrast that approach with the conservative groups that exert so much pressure on the Republican Party. The Club for Growth endorsed -- and threw buckets of money at -- Pat Toomey (now president of the organization) during his Pennsylvania primary battle for the Senate against the very popular Arlen Specter. If Toomey had won the primary, he would have been slaughtered in the general, but they didn't care. Right now, Club for Growth is backing the very right-wing Steve Laffey's primary challenge against Lincoln Chaffee in Rhode Island, where polls show Laffey will be crushed by either one of two Democratic opponents. The Christian right does the same thing, to a degree. They don't care about winning one or losing one specific race -- they're trying to advance a political agenda.

The good news is that groups like MoveOn and Democracy for America are starting to get it. MoveOn is supporting progressive Dems over their corporate opponents in primary challenges for the very first time. Money from the grassroots has poured into the Texas 28th CD, where Henry Cuellar, a right-wing Democrat who supported Bush in 2000 and who got a standing ovation from corporate lobbyists after he had worked so hard to push CAFTA through congress, is being challenged by Ciro Rodriguez, a Dem with a good labor record. Expect to see big bucks flowing from the netroots and grassroots to Ned Lamont, who's challenging Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut primary.

This is a positive development for the left as it will be, eventually, for the Democratic Party as a whole.

Think about how important it is that we support real progressives. If, as many indications suggest, the Democrats make real gains in 2006 and 2008, the question arises: then what will they do? They're going to be stuck with a huge deficit, they're going to need to extract us from Iraq and figure out how to inject some commonsense into the War on Terrrr and they're going to have to look hard at an economy with a middle class that's disappearing into the smoke and mirrors of globalism. How will they cope with those issues if they don't have a coherent governing philosophy? They can't -- lacking a progressive vision for how to mend the damage done by years of Clinton/Bush, the best they can hope to accomplish is putting a bandage over the arterial spray and muddling along until they get beaten by a right that knows for what it supposedly stands.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.