We're all painfully aware of these exit polls from the '04 election:
Which of the following best defines your political leanings?
Conservative: 34%
Moderate: 45%
Liberal: 21%
Paul Waldman at The American Prospect this week posted a brilliant article entitled "The Liberal Moderates". Waldman investigates this "median voter theory", and discovers that these self-identified "moderates" are really liberals.
Why are Liberals not identifying as Liberals?
Because, Republicans have waged war on Liberals and WON! It's time to wage war on Conservatism itself. Start fighting this war or continue to lose every battle.
...who is the actual median voter in America? At this moment in history, that voter is pro-choice, wants to increase the minimum wage, favors strong environmental protections, likes gun control, thinks corporations have too much power and that the rich get away with not paying their fair share in taxes, believes the Iraq War was a mistake, wants a foreign policy centered on diplomacy and strong alliances, and favors civil unions for gays and lesbians. Yet despite all this, those voters identify themselves as "moderate."
It's not Bush, Cheny, Rove, Libby, DeLay, Norquist, or Pat Robertson. It's the whole Conservative movement. Republicans have waged war on Liberals for YEARS.
Unlike liberals, conservatives don't simply criticize specific candidates or pieces of legislation, they attack their opponents' entire ideological worldview. Tune into Rush Limbaugh or any of his imitators, and what you'll hear is little more than an extended discourse on the evils of liberalism, in which specific events are merely evidence that the real problem is liberal ideology. Liberals may write best-selling books about why George W. Bush is a terrible president, but conservatives write best-selling books about why liberalism is a pox on our nation...
[...]
Indeed, large portions of the conservative movement can be understood as an effort to crush liberalism in all its manifestations. Conservatives understand that their main enemy is not a law, government program, or social condition they don't like. Their main enemy is a competing ideology, and that is what they spend their time fighting.
So what are we supposed to do? One thing that we can't do, that will consistently fail, is to move to the "center":
There is no doubt that the difference between the number of people who tell pollsters they are conservatives and those who say they are liberals should be a matter of concern for Democrats. But if they respond to that concern by "moving" to an imagined "center" -- in other words, by making their positions on issues more conservative -- they will find themselves in an even worse hole than they are now. The Democrats' "liberal" problem isn't about issues, it's about identity.
The rebranding of our movement as "Progressive" instead of "Liberal" is a start. We're for progress, the future, moving ahead. The conservatives are stuck in the past, but here's the conclusion and it's gripping:
the rebranding of the left through the substitution of "progressive" for "liberal" can only succeed if all on the left agree that they are in fact progressives, and proclaim it loudly. If they accompany that proclamation with a critique not just of conservative policies and politicians but of conservatism itself, they'll find more and more moderates calling themselves progressive. Otherwise, they'll be right back where they started.
There you have it.
The solution?
- Proclaim our Progressivism loud and strong.
- Finally, join the war that's been waged on us for years and provide an endless stream of fact and messaging on the Dark, Weak, Ignorant, Childish Failure that is the Conservative movement.
Until we begin to wage war on the Conservative movement, we'll keep chopping heads off the hydra, but the beast will just sprout more.
So, let's get to it. While many fight battle after battle pitting candidates against candidates and organizations against issues, let's go to the root.
Here are a bunch of books that don't exist, but very much should:
- Conservative Hypocrisy
- Conservative Lies
- Ignorance and Arrogance in Conservative Foreign Policy
- The Conservative War on the Middle Class
- How Anti-American Conservativism undermines the US Constitution
- Conservatism and the Creation of an Illegal Elite
- The New Conservative Heredetary Aristocracy and Why it's Unconstitutional
- Conservative War Profiteers and their Blood Money
- America's Greatest Weakness: Conservatism
- Conservatism and the End of American Prosperity
- The Death of the American Family and How Conservatism Caused It
- The Conservative Culture of Hate
- The Conservative War on Language, Information, Journalism and America
- Conservatism and the End of American Humanity
- Conservative Causes of Polution, Deforestation, Poverty, Disease, Starvation and Genocide
- The Sickness Unto Death: How Conservative Cronyism Destroyed American Government
- What Middle Class? How Conservativism Gave the Future to Greedy Billionaires
well... you get the idea. GO WRITE THEM!