Matt Yglesias was at Netroots Nation, and I wasn’t this year, so I’ll have to take his word for it that the conventioneers were depressed. It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. I’ve been immersed in progressive politics for seven years and I’ve never seen such bitching and moaning and infighting as I see around me today. Some of that depression is warranted. Look at the state of the economy. Look at the quagmire in Afghanistan. Look at the state of political discourse in this country. But a lot of progressive opinion leaders have developed a relentlessly negative narrative that is being sopped up by loyal readers.
I basically agree with Yglesias’s essay, which mirrors much of what I’ve been saying for months. I am one step above labeling people a bunch of ungrateful wretches, but there is blame to go around. The administration deserves plenty, and I think Matt is on to something here:
On the other side of the ledger, the Obama administration points to an impressive array of accomplishment. Their health-care bill is the most significant progressive achievement in more than 40 years. Financial regulation, the new START treaty, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, etc. are nothing to sneer at. But something the administration barely seems to recognize is that political activists do not live on policy accomplishments alone. Small donations, volunteer time, and even voting itself are undertaken primarily in exchange for psychological benefits. People engaged in the process want—need—to feel good about themselves for doing it.
This is something candidate Obama understood very well. People felt happy about the idea of being part of the election. But since taking office, the White House has largely avoided offering this kind of succor to the progressive base. The president likes to present himself as a “pragmatist” uninterested in questions of ideology, and his political strategy is largely organized around a posture of unctuous reasonableness in which he never loses patience with the opposition or affiliates himself emotionally with the passions that drive activists. This pose has bothered many for a long time, but with the progressive tide receding it’s becoming a real problem.
Again, this is mainly a problem not of style but of an infantile need to be hugged and patted on the head on the part of a bunch of cry babies. But the cry babies are also an important constituency who have the best track record of being right of any political group in the country. In the vast majority of cases, policy would be better if their advice was followed (or if it were possible to follow their advice). Progressives haven’t gotten what they wanted, at least not in untarnished form. They need a jolt. They need something that tells them that the president shares their objectives. And nominating Elizabeth Warren to head the Consumer Financial Protection Agency would be just what the doctor ordered.
I hesitate to even say that because the Joe Liebermans of the world seem to make it their mission to find out what would make progressives happy and then make sure that it doesn’t happen (remember Medicare expansion?). Sometimes I think progressives could get more by asking for the opposite of what they really want. Sometimes I think they’d find a way to complain even if they one day got what they really want. ‘If the president wants Warren then Rahm wants Warren then there must be something wrong with her.’ I can see it now.
The one thing I don’t agree with Yglesias about is the inevitability of big Republican gains this fall (especially in the Senate). We should not succumb to that stinking thinking. Because, aside from the defeatism, doesn’t this sound like something I just wrote earlier today?
Nobody knows exactly what the midterm elections will hold, but it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to know it’ll involve Republicans gaining seats. That means that the comprehensive climate bill that died this week won’t be coming back. It means that the outlook for immigration reform will only get bleaker. The outlook for bills on gay rights will only get bleaker. The outlook for labor-law reform will only get bleaker.
In the course of things, this results in a considerable degree of ill will toward Barack Obama and his administration.
It doesn’t have to be. But if you don’t get over your depression and inspire others to get to work, that’s going to be the self-fulfilling reality.
