Taking Your Ball And Going Home: Not Effective Strategy

I responded to this comment of Freddie’s with a one-liner, but I wanted to say more because I think the argument he’s making allows us to clarify the nature of the underlying disagreement. First:

When you treat anyone who criticizes Democrats and pushes them towards a more liberal direction as a traitor who’s no better than Rand Paul, you’re preempting any chance that Democrats will feel pressure to change.

This notion of “criticize them, but criticize them at the right time”– that right time never comes. Ever. It’s just a lie to say that these people accept and support criticism of Democrats when the time is right. Look at 2012. I was told all year that absolutely any mention of Obama’s foreign policy, no matter how bad I thought it was, represented being a traitor to the cause and no better than a conservative Republican.

This, of course, is a completely false characterization of the nature of the disagreement. Needless to say, criticism of Democratic public officials is not merely permissible but frequently necessary, in an election year or any other time. With the possible exception of some commenter at a blog somewhere, nobody is saying otherwise. What people did argue against deBoer is that his argument that progressives should withdraw their support from the Democratic Party was foolish and immoral. Trying to conflate “criticism” with “advocating throwing elections to Republicans in exchange for nothing” is a neat but dishonest trick. It would be foolish to say that because one harshly criticizes Obama’s foreign policy that one is therefore indifferent about other issues of social justice. It is simply accurate to say that when you want the left to try to install Mitt Romney in office or take Ron Paul seriously, you’re practically indifferent to many major issues of social justice. (Admittedly, there is a weaselly, passive-aggressive version of this argument, the “of course Obama is far better than Romney and it would be terrible if Romney won, but I cannot personally sully myself with a vote for Obama” routine. To which I would say that onanism is better confined to the privacy of one’s home.)

It should also be noted that while criticism of Democrats from the left is never problematic in and of itself, it doesn’t follow from this that all criticism of Obama allegedly from the left is therefore right. If our comments section is any indication, “hippie-punching” has gone from a useful term describing people who wish that people who were right about the Iraq War should shut up to an assertion that once any criticism preemeptively declares itself as being “from the left” it is therefore beyond criticism. This is both silly on its face and particularly dumb when applied to disputes that are tactical and not ideological. When Matt Stoller can’t see the difference between Sam Alito and Sonia Sotomayor, or thinks it’s plausible that Romney could govern to Obama’s left, he’s not criticizing Obama “from the left”; he’s criticizing him from the “I have no idea what the hell I’m talking about.”

So far, so familiar. But this I found particularly striking:

I took part in a primary campaign, and the usual suspects among Connecticut’s wealthy Democrats– who dominate that party– worked tirelessly to attack Lamont and his supporters. You have no idea how aggressive, ugly, and condescending they were. Hell, there was a brief, hypothetical discussion about a possible Elizabeth Warren primary of Hilary, and the “progressive” internet lost its shit, called people asking for it dreamers, “emoprogs,” or (one more time!) no better than conservative Republicans.

The uncited and almost certainly imaginary people criticizing a possible Elizabeth Warren primary campaign in 2016 are just a classic deBoer generalization based on nothing, so I have nothing to say about it other than that Warren running would be great.  But the first part is what’s remarkable to me. Progressives should give up on primaries of crappy blue-state politicians because a successful primary of particularly odious Democratic incumbent was met with…condescension from Lieberman supporters? I mean, my God, yes, when you attack the Establishment the Establishment is going to fight back. That’s a reason to quit? It’s the ironic mirror image of Lieberman in 2004, permanently embittered because liberals wouldn’t support the nomination to which he believed himself entitled. It’s true that because of the quirks of Connecticut election law Lieberman was able to run and win despite losing the primary, but that’s atypical. It’s also a good illustration of avoiding pundit’s fallacies is important — given his rather Coakleyesque general election campaign, I’m not sure Lamont understood what a strong base of support Lieberman still had in the state in 2006. It’s incomprehensible that Lieberman was once an immensely popular figure in Connecticut, but he was. It was still a risk worth taking, and there’s no reaon not to try again in more favorable circumstances.

Politics is about conflict. If you’re a progressive, it means losing a lot. Suck it up rather than retreating to foolish, counterproductive, self-aggrandizing tactics and strategies.