George Will is consistently, if unintentionally, hilarious. In his worldview, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are wildly popular in Democratic circles simply because they are women, and Sherrod Brown labors on unloved for no other reason than his genitalia.
I’ll let George Will in on a little secret. Sherrod Brown is popular among politically-engaged progressives. If he, and not Elizabeth Warren, challenged Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he would get a lot of support from opinion leaders on the left. But the politically-engaged left is quite small in terms of the actual amount of votes we can provide to a political candidate. What we’re good at is organizing, and that can translate into votes over time.
Here’s another secret: Hillary Clinton is wildly popular even among progressives. You might not realize this if all you do is read left-leaning blogs written by progressives who are still angry about the war in Iraq or the repeal of Glass-Steagall.
Finally, Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is not based on her gender. It’s based on the ferocity with which she defends the little guy and rails against injustices in our country. In this, she shares a lot in common with Sherrod Brown, which is why progressives like both of them.
Are progressives so preoccupied with gender that they prefer Clinton’s risk-averse careerism, or Warren’s astonished tantrums about the obvious dynamics of big government, to Brown’s authentic progressivism? Yes.
Actually, no.
Progressives like all of them. It’s just that Sherrod Brown is the least famous and has the lowest name recognition.
>Finally, Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is not based on her gender. It’s based on the ferocity with which she defends the little guy and rails against injustices in our country.
PRECISELY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And anyone (anyWill) who doesn’t get that is a clear example of the failure of the GOP to understand the demographics they’re turning off so badly.
I don’t read George Will, ever. However, I will agree with aforementioned opinions about why Elizabeth Warren is so liked on the left. She is a bonafide liberal as is Sherrod Brown. I’ve never gotten why Wall Street and business types hate her so much. I sorta do get their objections on a political level but not to the degree that they seem opposed to her. Says more about them than it does about her.
Since I personally think that “progressive” is a more milquetoast label than is “liberal” I’d apply it to Hillary. After all she was a Republican in her younger years, right?
It couldn’t be that her substantive criticisms are dismissed by Will as tantrums because she’s a woman, now could it? Whatever shreds of intellectualism Will possessed were blown away long ago by those winds of ignorance that billow conservative sails.
In other words; he’s an old fucking tool.
Yeah, “astonished tantrums” is incredibly condescending and arguably sexist — would he have said that about a man? — but I’m a little surprised that he didn’t stoop to “hysterical shrieking”.
Nice follow-up to his recent explanation of how resentful he is of college coeds who claim they have been sexually assaulted.
George Will really, really hates women.
Um… huh? Can you provide any examples of this? The validity of that statement has to turn on the meaning of “progressives”, “organizing”, or both. But it seems to me that we “progressives” consistently get rings organized around us by the mainstream Democrats and the right wing both (and especially the latter).
To figure out why that’s true, and what to do about it, would be a useful exercise but to tell ourselves that “we’re good at organizing” is just not supported by the facts and gets in the way of our responsibility to face reality: if we were any good at organizing we’d have some power, some mass following, or both. But really we have neither.
President Howard Dean…
Senator Ned Lamont…
Representative Darcy Burner…
Yeah it’s almost enough to make you think that we r doin it rong…
No, it’s all the false consciousness out there…
And that’s the thing that drives me the craziest when I read these conversations — here at Booman Tribune, Balloon Juice, etc. It’s always put down to false consciousness: if only these people could understand their class interests; if only they would vote for Democrats.
The economic system in the US started to fall apart in the early 1970’s. Reagan came along in 1980 and made everything worse. We’ve spent the last 40 years saying the same things, doing the same things, with very little to show for it.
Could it be that we need to re-examine what we’re doing rather than doing it all once again?
I wouldn’t use Lamont as an example of progressive ineptitude in organizing. Quite the opposite, actually. Progressive organizing, especially writ broadly to include normally disengaged progressives, was key to Obama’s success. Progressives were also successful in putting non-progressives like Jim Webb and Jon Tester over the top in primaries and the general election.
Progressives didn’t get Dean nominated, but they did get him to be DNC Chair.
In any case, if Sherrod Brown were to run for president, I think a lot of very talented progressives would race to help his campaign. Beating Hillary is probably not doable, but that’s not because progressives lack the talent for organizing. It’s because Hillary has managed to win support from every sector of the left and even from the center-right, and it’s just not possible for a progressive to win if Hillary is strong with progressives (who, I must remind you, are primarily not white boys with Ivy League degrees).
Boo, I think you need to come up with a more rigorous definition of “progressive” and a more rigorous definition of “organizing”. Because the only way I can understand what you’re writing here is that you assume “progressive” to mean “liberal, only moreso” and “organizing” to mean “campaigns”.
Whereas I don’t think “progressive” (or any other label for that matter) has any meaning outside of some kind of a specific political program. And you’re not “organizing” in any useful sense of the word if you’re not building some kind permanent organization based on support for that program.
Campaigns aren’t organizing because they aren’t permanent. That’s one of their biggest weaknesses: all the structure, all the thought and effort and investment are torn down the day after the votes are counted. Next year it’s all built up from scratch again. This isn’t how the right wing behaves, they have permanent infrastructure operating all the time. “Progressives” have campaigns, and the Democratic Party. In which there’s a small “progressive” rump but it’s only amounted to anything from about 1970-72 and again during the Jesse Jackson “Rainbow Coalition” era. And we know how both of those turned out.
After all the sturm und drang of that campaign, if there wasn’t some kind of a permanent organization left behind then I’d say it was a perfect example of ineptitude in organizing. It was a great as agitation, it was great as lobbying, but what did it accomplish and what did it leave behind?
OFA was a campaign machine par excellence. I know that some attempts were made in some localities to keep it alive after the election but they fizzled out. If you know of exceptions that are up and running still in 2014 I’d be interested in hearing of them. I heard rumors of attempts made, that fell apart when people objected to the amount of control that Chicago demanded over the program. So again you have to define “progressive” and you also have to consider to what extent “progressives” (as opposed to not-particularly-progressive top leadership) controlled that group. And you have to explain what’s left of that group today. Campaign operations get torn down after elections to prevent organizing not to facilitate it.
Well good. Tester’s and Webb’s votes mattered in some cases I’m sure. But again, where is the permanent organization? Where are signs that some kind of mass following for a progressive political progam was being built? Lacking these, what’s changing as the years go by? By any definition other than your own, how is this anything but inept?
Great, we can build OFA again. But this time it will be over when the primaries are over. Do you really think this is progress?
“Beating Hillary is probably not doable, but that’s not because liberals lack the talent for elections.”
Why do you even bother handicapping this stuff? It seems so pointless. I just got done reading two long and thoughtful posts by you on the control the intelligence bureaucracy has over the whole government, now you want me to care about Hillary, or Sherrod, or Elizabeth? As though you’re not just fine with doing the same thing we’ve been doing every four years for the last forty? And wondering why nothing gets any better?
If that’s not fundamental ineptitude then where exactly does ineptitude begin?
I think what I basically mean by progressive is people who are on the left-wing of the Democratic Party.
Most of these people are people of color or religious minorities. But it also encompasses the scientific and academic communities. And it definitely encompasses the labor movement. In general, these folks are outside of the Establishment, although the highly-educated white folks in the sciences or academia or with liberal arts degrees are somewhat established.
There is huge overlap in their basic belief systems, but there can be vast variations on things the religiosity or economic populism. In general, they are cosmopolitan, tolerant, pro-choice, pro gay rights, pro-science, and basically reality-based. They tend to be highly skeptical of power, anti-war, and preoccupied with the plight of those who exist on the margins of our society. They’re advocates for the poor and critics of our police and judicial system. Obviously, they tend to favor the most generous safety net and health care programs, and they are generally critical of corporatism.
They share more in common with the progressives of Teddy Roosevelt’s era than the liberals of Franklin Roosevelt’s era, mainly because they won’t have anything to do with the Jim Crow half of FDR’s coalition and they’re more prone to utopianism than pragmatism.
So, that’s what progressive means to me. I am a progressive, but I am also steeped in the liberalism of FDR which makes me more pragmatic than many of my progressive compatriots.
Then I think you’ll have to agree that the progressives, the left wing of the D.P., are weak, weak, weak. Your progressives are a hodgepodge of different class backgrounds, different interests, different agendas. Lacking any organization of their (our) own, lacking any commonly-held social or historical analysis, lacking any commonly-held strategic vision, lacking any tactical plan beyond the nomination or election of a candidate who once elected is perfectly free to betray any promises made or implied while the Party “fucks us off until the next time because it knows that it can and we’ll show up anyway”, to quote a comment below this one. Your progressives agree to support a candidate because that’s about all they can agree on and they work on campaigns because a more ambitious organizational form with a longer timeline would fizzle out (like OFA post-2008, post-2012) or explode.
Forty years in, and this is all we have to show for it. But you’re handicapping this stuff like you’re all set to try it again. Isn’t that the definition of insanity?
Please, no more of “what we’re good at is organizing” because the fact is that we really suck at organizing.
We’re good at working for limited periods of time in Party or campaign organizations doing campaign support work but that falls way short of what we need to be about if we want to think about holding off the right wing, much less advancing a left-wing Democratic Party version of a social agenda
“As though you’re not just fine with doing the same thing we’ve been doing every four years for the last forty? And wondering why nothing gets any better?”
Those with leftist political views who are unwilling to concede that governance under the Obama Administration is MUCH better than governance under the Bush Administration have no credibility.
Those who lack the ability to see that Obama and his first Congress prevented a second Great Depression from taking place are willfully blind.
Those who lack the willingness to concede that the Affordable Care Act and the rest of the record of Obama’s first Congress were outstanding results which were delivered almost entirely by liberal/progressive organizing are quite deluded.
Those who fail to see the importance of putting forth worthwhile Supreme Court and other Federal Judicial nominees, and executing Administrative control of all Federal regulatory agencies which is superior to what today’s radicalized right-wing movement demands, are dangerously misinformed.
Yes, Obama’s unwillingness to rein in the national security state has traveled from disappointing to infuriating. That does not mean that today’s overall Executive governance is the same as what we would have gotten out of a President McCain or Romney, or what we would get out of the Republican Presidential nominee in 2016.
And what is the basis for that support? Accomplishments? Can anyone name even one large positive one? No, it’s that siren call of “electability” once again. As if primary voters in either party haven’t used that same criteria for the past few decades. Funny how one party always gets it wrong every four years.
Democrats/liberals/progressives are always active during elections to defeat Republicans, but they would have had no chance against George Allen if not for 1) the 2006 tide against Republicans 2) an attractive candidate, particularly for the MIC heavy VA 3) macaca.
It’s midsummer 2014 and not 2016 — a whole lot can happen between now and then to make Clinton look as “electable” as Goldwater was in 1964.
We’re good at the precinct level. We show up no matter what, knock on doors, work the phones, do the unpaid grunt work. Then the election is over and the party fucks us off until the next time because it knows that it can and we’ll show up anyway. I believe that a dash of populism with a lot of support for labor would pay off fairly quickly. Unfortunately, our party’s leadership has moved so far past the center that in the 1960s they’d be damned good Republicans.
To figure out why that’s true, and what to do about it, would be a useful exercise but to tell ourselves that “we’re good at organizing” is just not supported by the facts and gets in the way of our responsibility to face reality: if we were any good at organizing we’d have some power, some mass following, or both. But really we have neither.
Would you kindly explain to me WTF you’re talking about? The Democratic Party of 2014 is significantly more to the left economically and socially than the Democratic Party of 2008 — let alone that of 1992-2004. The leftist elements of the Democratic Party were able to block Clinton from the Presidency because she was too much of a warhawk. The leftist elements of the Democratic Party stopped the Syrian escalation dead in its tracks. When was the last time that happened?
As much as liberals love to masturbate to their persecution fantasies of being an embattled sect constantly battling off Blue Dog quislings, the fact of the matter is that the current centrist leanings are due to political inertia and pluralistic ignorance, not some sinister conspiracy by Emanuel and Cuomo. The fact that the Democratic Party abandoned the 50-state strategy, which like the Confederatization of the GOP will only increase the relative power of its off-center wing in the long run, is ample evidence that the moderate and centrist wings of the Party are a paper tiger.
Or had staff that didn’t know a caucus from a convention.
You can’t get a Purple Heart for a self inflicted wound, and you don’t get the Bronze Star for watching the enemy shoot himself.
I’d hope Brown got his profile raised by his smack down of Inhoffe.
Congress-on-Congress violence gets 30 seconds, after the police shootings, and before the weather and sports.
The average punter thinks we live in a monarchy anyways.
Maybe the average punter is seeing something we aren’t.
Oh, I missed that! Got a link? I like Sherrod Brown not only for his liberalness, but for his ability to speak concisely and clearly. I do so appreciate those qualities in a politician.
“George Will is consistently, if unintentionally, hilarious. In his worldview, Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren are wildly popular in Democratic circles simply because they are women, and Sherrod Brown labors on unloved for no other reason than his genitalia.”
Nice to see somebody is reality based.
Yes, funny.
“Elizabeth Warren’s appeal is not based on her gender. It’s based on the ferocity with which she defends the little guy and rails against injustices in our country. In this, she shares a lot in common with Sherrod Brown, which is why progressives like both of them.”
Not because she’s an Indian?
Give it up, you’ll never knock Will from his perch.
Clinton is popular with progressives, and in spades.
A claque of foul mouthed goobers had been raising a stink at the Daily Kos about how No True Progressive would have anything to do with Clinton the Bloodthirsty Warmonger Neoliberal Third Way Sellout Bitch, which got so disruptive that Kos did the clever and put up a poll.
With over twenty five hundred votes cast, 91.55% dedicated progressives expressed support for a Clinton run at the presidency while the 8.45% Cheneyesque dead enders refused to support her under any circumstances.
As Citizen Kane put it in his headline: FRAUD AT THE POLLS!