Here’s my response to Matt Bennett of Third Way. It’s also a response to journalists like Joe Klein that call left-wing bloggers ‘extremists’. Bennett makes a fine case for moderation or centrism. But he doesn’t address the issue of combating radical Republicanism. How do we do that effectively?

If you want a $500/week raise, do you ask for $500, or $750? If a house is listed at $180,000 do you offer to pay $180,000 or $168,000? If you want to pull our troops out of Iraq, do you get bogged down in how to do it, or do you set the policy first and figure out the details later?

Let me be clear about this, because politics is the art of the possible. And after all the partisans get done foaming at the mouth, reasonable people have to sit down and work out a compromise. The problem, for a progressive, can be seen by an analogy about our $180,000 listed house.

If the Iraq War Supplemental bill is the house, then Bush was asking for $180,000, no strings attached…give him the money. Now, we had Dennis Kucinich over in one corner saying don’t even buy the house…offer nothing…walk away. And then we had people like Russ Feingold saying that the house wasn’t worth a dime over $150,000. And we had more ‘centrist’ Democrats offering $168,000. The problem came from people like Joe Lieberman that said we should pay the full price…hell, better even if we make it $200,000.

At the end of the day, we wound up buying that house at full listing price. And that’s what happens when moderates stake out the final goal as the negotiating stance. The goalposts move and progressives get screwed. We can take same way of looking at things and apply it to Bennett’s other talking points.

  • We are pro-choice, but we also believe that progressives must acknowledge the moral complexity of abortion;
  • We are strong advocates of sensible gun safety laws and policies, but we also believe that the Second Amendment confers an individual right to bear arms (a right that, like all rights, come with restrictions and responsibilities);
  • We abhor the Bush tax cuts and economic policy, but we also believe that progressives must respond to middle class anxiety by offering not just an expanded safety net, but a ladder of opportunity for success;
  • We believe this country must forcefully combat global warming, but we also believe that nuclear energy must be an important part of that mix; and
  • We have always strongly opposed the Iraq War (from our founding in 2005 and, as individuals, from before the war began), but we also believe that progressives must have national security strategy that seeks to put us back on the offense against our nation’s real enemies: al Qaeda and its allies.

So, the Third Way is pro-choice but they insist that progressives must acknowledge the ‘moral complexity of abortion’. You know, Progessives are human beings. We are aware of the moral complexity of abortion. We don’t go around telling people that the personal decision to end a pregnancy has no freaking moral complexity. We tell people that it is none of their damn business whether someone else gets an abortion or not and that there is no law or series of laws that would outlaw abortion that could conceivably be enforced without immense privacy invasions that would essentially amount to state-sponsored terrorism. Okay? What purpose is served by constantly talking about how ‘icky’ abortion is? Answer: none. Less than none. Because you’ve just lost the moral high ground. You offered full list price. You want abortion safe, legal, and accessible? Talk about why you want that, not about how it troubles you.

Same goes for guns. The Second Amendment authorizes a militia. The Supreme Court doesn’t say it authorizes individual citizens to own a howitzer. That is why places like New York City have strict gun laws. When you say the Second Amendment ‘confers an individual right to bear arms’, you’re paying full list price. Either that, or you are just pandering. Personally, I am not a gun control guy, but I can tell you how to negotiate…and this ain’t it.

Same goes for the terrorists. Stop talking about them. Where are they? 19 guys, six years ago. GET THE FUCK OVER IT. You want a tough national security message? Here it is: I WON’T PISS MY PANTS. Okay? Tell people that. That’s a message. George W. Bush pissed his pants on 9/11. And he has been trying to get YOU to piss your pants ever since. Maybe he thinks if we’re all wet down there he won’t have to feel like such a girl. Who knows what goes on in that simian brain of his.

Here’s the deal. Let’s say you want something like universal single-payer health care or the end of the fricking hopeless clusterfuck in Iraq. Ask for it. Don’t ask for what is possible. Ask for what you fricking WANT. Here’s the reason why: you’ll get MORE that way. MORE of what you WANT. And sooner.

That is the problem with centrist media hogs and braindead thinktanks. They start out with a solution; they only think in terms of how it will all shake out. Do you see Republicans asking for compromise? No. They never do that. And they have been getting more than their fair share for a long time now. Bush’s 51% mandate got a hell of a lot, didn’t it? LEARN FROM IT.