Sunday, November 21, 2004

Hamas and the Evangelical Right

In this commentary (also reprinted in a comment on this post) from The Nation, Barbara Ehrenreich brilliantly likens the ascendancy of the American evangelical right to that of the Hamas movement. What she means is that the Christian right in the US, like Hamas in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has succeeded not by appealing to the faithful so much as by creating an alternative welfare system that serves as the safety net for those -- and there are more and more in the Territories as well as in the US -- who are on the edge of (or already facing) economic catastrophe. And, like Hamas, the evangelical right in America also advocates the destruction of the existing system of social welfare, which would further increase the movement's power. The struggle for equitable and sustainable Palestinian-Israeli coexistence, as well as the battles in the ongoing culture war in the US, will prove all the bloodier and more intractable if progressives on the left do not understand the marketing and economics lessons taught by the successes of these savvy and intensely focused religious movements.

--Lincoln

Sunday, November 07, 2004

A New Progressive Populism

I agree with Arianna Huffington in her op-ed piece (also included as a comment on this post) about the need for an entirely new Democratic strategy. It's not that Kerry himself was necessarily a bad candidate -- although it was shameful that he didn't mention Palestinian rights and otherwise aped Bush's aggressive disregard for human rights in the "war on terror." The real problem, however, was that the Democratic Party as a whole, with the Kerry campaign and Terry McAuliffe spearheading it, chose the most timid approach to electoral politics because they were focussed excessively on undecided voters and reaching across the political divide as a first priority.

Amardeep Singh satirically envisions a counterstrategy to this failed Democratic campaign in calling for a "vast left-wing conspiracy". I wouldn't argue with him -- in fact, it's too bad that Nader didn't have this kind of a sense of humor.

All that said, however, I've seen a lot of 20-20 hindsight prognosticating on the Web. It's not entirely clear to me that there was a potentially winning strategy in this election for the Democrats. In this election we faced two political factors that I think the left has yet to come to terms with: the first is the "lingering halo" (as Paul Krugman puts it) of 9/11 that accounts for much of Bush's emotional appeal. It is the appeal of fear. In 2008, that may not be as much of a factor (depending, of course, on events in the next four years), and if it is, the Democrats need to do a much better job of explaining why Bush administration policies fail to keep Americans "safe."

Secondly, and more importantly, a large section of the country has turned rightwards, part of a long, slow pendular swing that's been going on for decades. If the left wants to win future elections and reverse that pendular motion, it is going to have to understand how the right has managed to appeal to so many (white) suburbanites, rural and religious folks. I can hardly describe to denizens of New England or California what it is like living out here in Alabama. The ideas and norms are so different from those of Blue States and the Democrats seem so out of touch. I was at the Democratic Party's election night event in Mobile -- it was a sparsely attended and subdued event even before it became clear that a Republican sweep was in the making. And in Alabama, that sweep was like a hurricane -- the state's supreme court is now composed, for the first time ever, of all Republican judges. Not a single Democrat. Bush won 63% of the vote here, much higher than predicted. And this in a state that still has more registered Democrats than Republicans due to its historical Democratic leanings.

I think that in addition to creating new alliances among progressive groups that have never before worked together, the left is going to have to learn about who comprises the right, what animates them, and how to speak to them. (I was even imagining writing a new political drama entitled "Their Town"). Religious groups, here as in Israel, are not monolithic. They are as complicated as any other demographic, and the left needs to learn how to communicate with them (Gramsci, the Italian political theorist, understood this very well, as Thomas Frank pointed out in a recent editorial. Some would argue that the left will never appeal to "evangelicals" more than the Republicans do, but I would counter that such religious blocs are actually heterodox and that we can't simply write them off.

Huffington makes a different point, and I strongly agree: the left needs to motivate its own base by putting forth bold ideas and vision. Grass roots groups (like Jewish Voice for Peace, for example) must take part in this. We need to mobilize a new kind of progressive populism that appeals to people's basic sense of justice and equality. Let's remember, though, that we progressives will remain a minority unless we understand our audience and can appeal to them with ideas that make so much "common sense" that they put our adversaries, the parochial and narrow-minded promoters of "divide and control" wedge issues, on the defensive. I believe we can succeed, and so can progressives as a whole, if we connect with those who are already sympathetic to us as well as those who are unconvinced but willing to listen.

--Lincoln

Wednesday, November 03, 2004

Kerry's concession speech

I just watched John Kerry's concession speech on TV -- one of the very few events of this election that I saw on television. If you didn't see it, I recommend doing so. Tears welled up and dripped down my cheeks as I watched him. He didn't read from a teleprompter, so it seems, and yet he was tremendously eloquent and inspiring. He was above all gracious in defeat, calling on Americans to unite in the name of our democracy, reminding us that our efforts to change America's future have meaning, and thanking those who worked so hard for him. I mourned an opportunity lost. Behind Kerry's eloquence I heard what was for me the most compelling aspect of his person and candidacy: his compassion. If there was one feeling that he conveyed with conviction in each of the debates, it was this ability to empathize with the struggles and suffering of others. I have no idea what a Kerry presidency would have been like, but it is this quality in Kerry the man that gave me the most hope for us as a nation. As a Vietnam war protester and member of that part of his generation whose revolutionary activism never translated successfully into mainstream power (today is yet another confirmation of this idealism cast aside), what remains consistent and appealing about Kerry -- what seems never to have been lost as he transformed himself from an oppositional activist into a national politician -- is his compassion. Will Bush, the triumphant icon of "passionate conservatism," ever be able to live up to something like this empathic ideal? I can only hope so.

Lincoln