I wrote this comment elsewhere, but thought it might be good to post it in expanded form as a diary. As many have suggested elsewhere, many democrats seem to suffer from a sort of Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to conservatives. Many of our rank and file and elected officials seem to think that:
If I'm only nice and don't directly express my positions, values, and aims they'll agree with me or deliberate with me and we can form a compromise!
Follow me below the fold to see why I think this is such a bad idea.
Too many democrats, both among the rank and file and our elected officials, have internalized this sort of thing. It's the same psychology that leads them to believe that they can't openly advocate for progressive aims or that we have to run the minute that there's any suggestion of "stoking class warfare" or "socialism". In other words, too many democrats take the attacks of republicans seriously, internalizing them, and striving to avoid anything that associates them with these things. As a result, they are necessarily led to abandon their own platform and adopt conservative frames.
Over the years I've learned, through a lot of anguish, suffering, and frustration, that if someone is in polar opposition to you they will never reach consensus with you and will always find a reason to disagree with your positions. They've already concluded that you're wrong and are therefore impossible to persuade. They'll always find something to disagree with, always something to criticize. This is why "bipartisanship" in this climate is a fools errand. There is no possible way democrats could express themselves that republicans won't find objectionable... Even if the democrat is advocating positions that they have advocated (exhibit A: Obama putting forward Dole's health care plan), they will still find a way to treat it as objectionable. This is because they are interested in maximizing their power and the power of their tribe, not in governing.
I have this theory that there's a sort of very primitive "primate ethics". I strongly suspect that hairless apes such as ourselves only respect and trust other hairless apes that appear strong and who seem to stand for something. I suspect this has a lot to do with our evolutionary lineage and is a brute, very basic thing about human psychology. And, if this is even somewhat true, this would be one of the key problems with the Stockholm Syndrome so many democrats suffer from. People don't fail to support democrats because "they're too liberal or progressive" and "America is a conservative or center-right country". No, at the primitive hairless ape primate ethics level, they don't support democrats because democrats too often appear to fold under the slightest threat and to compromise on everything, never demonstrating any strength or commitment to anything. It's not the content of the positions that matters so much for many of our fellow hairless apes, but whether or not people feel safe and protected by the person claiming to lead them in a world that is very precarious and difficult to understand. If this is true for a large portion of our population, than bipartisanship and constant compromise is one of the worst possible strategies for achieving electoral success.
To many fellow citizens Democrats, and especially the president, appear to the public like the father in the first Back to the Future, McFly, caving to the bully Biff at every turn. McFly tries all sorts of things to appease Biff, doing his homework, being friendly to him, complimenting him, and so on. He believes that if he only does what Biff demands, if he's only nice enough to Biff, then Biff will lay off. However, the more McFly does this, the more Biff disdains and tortures him. We all hate Biff of course, but there's a way in which we hate the character of the father even more. We experience utter contempt for Mcfly, even while empathizing with him, and many of us somewhat feel that he gets what he deserves for being such a doormat. Moreover, when push comes to shove and we're wondering whether we'd prefer to have Biff or McFly taking our back, we choose Biff. Isn't this part of why the "non-ideological center" supported Bush? Why support someone that caves to such ignorant bullies. Complaining about this primate psychology makes about as much sense as trying to change the movement of the stars. It's just the way things are. People supported Obama during the primaries and the election because he stood for something. We all find him likable enough, but now he appears to stand for nothing.
I think we arrive at this way of thinking honestly. A number of democrats advocate progressive policy precisely because of the life they've led and witnessed. Many of us know what it means to suffer, either economically, due to sickness, our through marginalization, and are therefore more empathetic because we are capable of imagining the suffering of others. This also entails that we approach others with kindness and goodwill as this is the way we would like to be treated. However, this backfires on us because 1) many of the others we're struggling against do not relate to us with good will because they are only interested in advancing their own power and exploitation of others, and 2) because it makes us appear like McFly to those voters we would like to persuade.
In a recent diary, APA Guy, much to my astonishment, relates how he had internalized conservative ideology due to how he had grown up.
Being from Indiana, I was raised as a conservative. In school, kids sang all the little racist songs and tossed around gay-bashing insults as some sort of stamp of honor among the ignoramus class. Needless to say, it was very difficult to get a good taste of progressive values that didn't include some negative and demeaning mention of hippies and Woodstock.
Accordingly, my values as a Democrat dictated a more moderate approach to policy evaluation and those who promulgated them. People like Evan Bayh became my model for what an "ideal" and "acceptable" Democrat was. Acquiescing to Republicans on issues ranging from taxes (supporting tax cuts for billionaires) to wars (Iraq) to a woman's right to choose became part of my value system.
Diaries like APA Guy's are one reason I still hold out hope. I think one lesson we should draw from APA Guy's self analysis is that contempt for hippies, charges of socialism, charges of stoking class warfare, etc., are ideological tools that the ruling class (the oligarchs and plutocrats) use to intimidate progressives, cow the populace, and advance an agenda that is in the interests primarily of the plutocrats rather than the vast majority of Americans. The truth of the matter is that there is a concerted class war in America and that we ignore this and pretend it's not there to our own detriment. In The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey's character says that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince us that the devil doesn't exist. Well the greatest trick the plutocrats have ever pulled is to convince the American people and many democrats (!) that there is no class war, no class inequality, or that class warfare is never to be spoken of. However, nearly every problem faced in this country goes back to class warfare in some way or another. Nearly every problem we face, at the end of the day, boils down to the plutocrats trying to divest the working and middle class of prosperity, genuine freedom, protection, and representation in our country so that the oligarchs might pursue the concentration and expropriation of capital all the more ferociously.
So long as we run every time the plutocrats cry foul, saying that we "hate business" or are socialists, we end up standing for nothing. And so long as we appear to stand for nothing, we can't build coalitions of support from among the American people. And so long as we don't build these coalitions, we cannot maintain power in government and pass the legislation we're aiming for. We need to stop behaving like McFly and stand up proudly for what we are and believe. We'll hear a lot of catcalls from those plutocrats that stand to lose something if we're represented (what else is new?), but we'll also earn respect and support.