why kos creeps me out
Kos has a quick and interesting post up today about the role of Libertarian Party "spoilers" in the Midterm elections. He points out that Libertarians garnered enough votes to equal the margin of victory for Democrats in both the Missouri and Montana Senate elections. That's significant given the 51-49 split in the Senate.
It's all well and good until he gets to his analysis:
"The theocon and neocon takeover of the Republican Party has left many of its more Libertarian members adrift with few alternatives. I clearly hope the Democratic Party becomes more Libertarian friendly over the coming years, but that's a long-term project. In the meantime, the Libertarian ballot line (when available) can be an apt protest vote."
Woah. The Democratic Party should not become more "Libertarian friendly". If there is a long term project for the Party, it is to move it back to it's roots as a defender of both economic and social security. In many senses, making the party more "Libertarian" is the DLC's agenda: an anti-welfare, free trade, anti-regulation, party that uses anti-statist rhetoric to defend free speech and abortion rights. That's what made us a minority party.
If anyone needs a reminder of where Libertarians are at, check out "Republican and Democrat Lovefest over Socialized Healthcare", a post on their official Party blog.
Moulitsas has raised this bizarre assertion many times. His most detailed discussions of the issue usually revolve around issues like gun control. Here he's generally right: the Democratic Party should be reaching out to the folks who get worked up about their guns. However, the ones who are now abandoning the Republican Party to the -right- shouldn't be the target. What it will take to appeal to them will mean an abandonment, both in electoral and moral terms, of the rest of the Democratic base. That's not the way to get to a strong majority.
The way to reach out to them while keeping the other crucial parts of our base together is to offer an alternative to the corporate-dominated trade policies and public sector destruction that has been dominant in Washington for the past twenty years. The lives of rural and small town America have been damaged, far more than the urban bloggerati recognize, by libertarianism in practice. A strong message on the economy is what's needed.
Let's remember who the Libertarians are. In terms of their activist base, there is a reason that the Libertarian party is attractive, almost exclusively, to middle class white guys and some college students. Their worldview rejects the experiences of the poor, people of color and women. It rejects a recognition of systems of inequality and power. A Democratic Party which is more interesting to them cannot simultaneously be more engaged with those struggles against inequality. Perhaps Moulitsas feels some kindship with this view of the world. I sure as hell don't.
posted by daraka kenric at 2:25 p.m.
2 Comments:
This doesn't seem to be so much about libertarians abandoning the republicans to the right as it is abandoning them to the center on social issues. Sure, they are leaving because the Republicans have become a big government party, but its a very different big government. They are not leaving because they want the republicans to regulate less, they are leaving because the fundies have gotten the republicans to turn the government in big brother on security, sexuality, marriage, the press, etc. It may be a good chance for the left to talk about ways that we oppose big government. Sure we want social provision and regulation, but in non-economic areas the left is where the anti-government argument lies - we don't want have our tax money spent on a huge military and unnecessary wars. we don't want the government in our bedrooms telling us who can marry, who can raise children, or how to get it on. we don't want the government regulating our reproductive decisions. We don't want the government to tamper with the press. We don't want the government tapping our phones, reading our emails, or detaining us without charges. There is quite a long list of government powers that the left would diminish and the republicans have intensified, which leaves us with a good opportunity to either flip the big government argument on its head, or make it moot. Sure, we don't want the objectivists in the democratic party, and we don't want the party to stand for small government in all respects. But from my experience, there are a lot of people out there who *think* they are libertarians because they are for broad civil liberties, privacy, and against authoritarianism and repression by the state. The democrats can certainly stand for all that without backing down on regulation and economic security, and it may bring over people who are disillusioned seeing that the republicans talk the talk but don't walk the walk.
The confusion on this has a lot to do with how invisible the democratic left is. There is still this simplistic view that the left is for regulation of everything and the right is for total freedom, because there is no distinction made between economic and social policies, its either regulation or lack thereof. This is the trick in the old libertarian political test, where you end up either a libertarian or a communist. What is invisible are the options for economic regulation but social freedom (democratic left) and economic freedom but social regulation (religious right). People who had fallen in with the right because they percieved it as being for economic and social freedom are feeling a bit of a bait and switch, cause the republicans had all the power and we ended up with social repression. Maybe there is a way for democrats to capture the fallout by appealing to their opposition to social regulation and repression, but still stay firm on the positive role for economic regulation and provision.
fredag, februar 02, 2007 2:42:00 p.m.
If they are abandoning the Republicans to the center, why did they vote Libertarian instead of Democratic? The Democrats make no bones about their defense of civil liberties and sexual freedom. Do you really think that these folks in Montana voted Libertarian because they hate the Republican position on gay marriage?
We're only guessing here without more data: these are empirically answerable questions if we could get our hands on some exit polls. However, my -guess- is that these folks picked the Libs rather than the Dems as a protest vote because they are also anti-statist when it comes to the economy.
But, agreed, the silence of the Democratic Left is a problem.
fredag, februar 02, 2007 5:20:00 p.m.
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