Puget Sound Liberals

I have recently read several books (Matthew Kerbel (ed.), Get This Party Started, How Progressives Can Fight Back and Win, James Carville and Paul Begala, Take It Back, Our Party, Our Country, Our Future), and Paul Waldman, Being Right Is Not Enough, What Progressives Must Learn from Conservative Success which recommend strategies that Liberals must adopt to win. With our fall elections approaching, these and similar books are particularly relevant. Before summarizing their conclusions, I will present my manifesto which stems from their conclusions.

I'm Dave Thomas, a Proud Liberal and Happy Warrior. My slogan is not "Don't get mad, get even." My slogan is "Don't get mad, get ahead." Don't just win. Win big. Don't just win the election battle. Win the war by destroying conservatives' ability to wage war for the foreseeable future. Turn their present lack of credibility into a deserved image of pathetic ridiculousness that normal Americans won't support.

We Liberals believe in one America where all Americans have the freedoms and opportunities to successfully fulfill our American dream. In cooperation with our families, relatives, neighbors, friends, colleagues and others at home and abroad, we want to be secure and prosperous. We want contribute to the welfare of our fellows and future generations. These are our deeply held moral values.

Conservatives don't believe this. Their every action is dedicated to destroying our American dream.

Conservatives Have Lessened Our Security and Freedom

Conservatives have gravely harmed our security and freedom. Incompetent protection against terrorism. Misdirection and weakening of our military. Unnecessary death and injury to our fighting forces. Incompetent homeland security. Alienation of our allies. Massive debt. Erosion of our environmental, technological and economic base. Massive pollution. Increased exposure to climatic catastrophe. More dependence upon foreign oil. Increased foreign debt. Reduced access to health care. Reduced access to education, from preschool to higher education. Insecure jobs. Increased bankruptcies. Loss of pensions and attacks on our social security. Destruction of our safety net. Degradation of our civil liberties. And much more.

Conservatives Have Lessened Our Prosperity

Conservatives have gravely harmed our prosperity. They have exported our jobs without providing better ones. Rewarded less productive people at the expense of more. productive people. Given tax breaks, subsidies and favorable regulations or deregulation to industries which exploit their consumers. Refused to enforce regulations and collect unpaid taxes. Allowed corrupt business leaders to ruin their companies, investors and employees. Rewarded companies who register in foreign islands to avoid American taxes. Created massive federal debt, while reducing public investment. Wasted and privatized our natural resources. Produced a weak economic recovery with stagnant incomes. Threaten a return to stagflation, featuring both inflation and recession. Wrecked havoc with our retirement and safety net. Soaring prices of petroleum, transportation, housing, health care, and education. And much more.

As always, Conservatives have killed the golden goose. They give tax breaks mainly to the rich instead of investing to make our economy more productive. This harms all of us. In the long run, even the rich prosper less as the return on their wealth declines.

Conservatives Have Divided Us

Conservatives have separated us from the rest of our world's people, each other and our government. Conservatives have alienated our allies. Diverted resources from our poor and middle-incomed people to the rich. Tried to impose their extreme religious doctrines upon us. Filled our air waves and book shelves with hate for our thinkers and scientists, our government and social service workers, members of our press, our union members, our poor, our women, our gays and lesbians, our immigrants, and our ethnic groups. The have accused liberals of treason. Proposed divisive legislation. Denied legitimately elected liberals participation in government decision-making. Greatly increased privacy for government while reducing privacy for people. Refused to allow investigations of their failures.

Conservatives Have Violated Our Moral Standards

Our basic religious belief is that we should love God, all of God's creation, including our fellow man and ourselves. We should be one people of God, working together to preserve and enhance God's creation. We should use our God-given freedom to love rather than hate. To create harmony rather than disharmony. To unite rather than divide. To create rather than destroy. To care for others rather than denigrate them. To especially help the less fortunate, making sure that no one is left behind. To help those who oppose us to see the light. To protect and promote justice.

Many of us do not express these beliefs in religious language. But our dedication to competently enhancing freedoms and opportunities for all, especially those with fewer freedoms is simply another way of expressing the same values. So is our talk of justice and peace. Our liberal religious and liberal secular political values are the same. There are no differences. We should not be divided by our different forms of expression.

Conservatives have massively violated our moral standards. Their religious don't believe in a loving God, but a pride-filled vengeful God. Conservatives don't believe in preserving and protecting this world. Conservatives view this world only as testing place for entering into another fantasy world. Conservatives even believe their fantasy world will come about through the destruction of this world. They create doctrinal ideologies which deny carefully scientifically produced knowledge.

Religious conservatives don't worry about the greedy exploitation and ruination of our God-created world. No problem, since the ruination of our world will hasten the coming of their fantasy world.

Religious conservatives don't believe in loving all of God's people, but only those who avoid the sins they define. The sins they define are strange elaborations of minor bible passages, which don't include the many passages in which God, his prophets and Jesus tell us to love our world and our people. They are obsessed with the supposed evils of sex, while ignoring the evils of corruption, injustice and war. In spite of their tortured denials, religious conservatives hate the people they define as sinners and seek to punish them, including with torture and death.

Religious conservatives define people as sinners, even when their supposed sins are behaviors over which they have no control. Conservatives don't trust that people want to behave well. They don't trust that many people with education (about consequences and ways to change their behaviors) will improve their behaviors. They want to deny access to knowledge of contraceptives, on the false premise that such knowledge promotes promiscuity. They want to invade everyone's privacy to identify and punish those don't behave in accordance with their strange beliefs. Many are hypocrites who practice the same behaviors they would punish in others.

Religious conservatives relegate women to subservience to men. They want power over all who don't hold their weird beliefs. They are masters of intolerance, prejudice, discrimination and division. They lack compassion for anyone other than their true believers. They foster a Culture of Discontent, in which they whine that they are victims of liberal attacks on religion, in spite of the fact that most liberals are religious.

Many traditional conservatives and libertarians are not religious. These conservatives are not obsessed with sex. They are obsessed with greed. They do not worry about the greedy destruction of our world. They would grant more freedoms and opportunities to corporations than to people. They oppose regulations which require corporations to quit imposing their costs on their workers, consumers and others. They seldom criticize our massive corruption of public officials paid off by powerful corporations and the rich. They accept our government secrecy which protects our corruption.

Secular conservatives are also intolerant. Living in homogeneous rural areas, small towns and suburbs, they are prejudiced and discriminate against our diverse ethnic groups, immigrants, people with fewer freedoms and opportunities and many others not visibly prevalent in their communities. They are uncompassionate toward these groups and denigrate those who are compassionate. They want fewer taxes on themselves and more taxes on others. They oppose rich kid's taxes (estate taxes) on unearned and untaxed income. They want fewer government programs to assist the less fortunate, but support farm, military, retirement and other programs from which they benefit.

What conservatives really stand for is Deception, Incompetence and Corruption. Maybe also for obsession with sex, greed, intolerance and divisiveness. But more than three nouns destroy the impact, although I wish we could come up with three or four nouns which form a great acronym. I believe deception, incompetence and corruption imply much more and will resonate with the public. Who can support any of these three, even conservatives? They can't ignore such accusations.

We also need a few nouns to describe what we stand for. How about Honesty, Responsibility and Fairness? These directly counter the nouns describing conservatives above. Who can oppose these three? One way to ask if these fit with public opinion is to ask, "How would moderate conservatives respond?" Many would affirm these values, although they might have narrower definitions of responsibility and fairness than we would.

Other possibilities are strength, freedom, opportunity and compassion. Honesty and Responsibility imply strength, without implying power hungry ruthlessness. Fairness implies freedom, opportunity and compassion. Freedom can be attacked as licentiousness. Opportunity is confusing, since the conservatives have used it, although primarily for opportunities only for those with enough resources to take advantage of them. Liberals have long been derided for our passionate bleeding-heart compassion. Many people may think fairness will benefit them, but compassion will only benefit a less fortunate minority. Integrity might substitute for Honesty, but may seem too hoity-toity.

Maybe progress which would indicate enhancing freedoms and opportunities. But like reform, progress has no meaning unless it is further defined. What is to be changed and what is to be kept?

It is important to get this right. What do you think? What three or four nouns would you suggest we use to indicate our values?

We should be ashamed that we haven't stood up for our moral values as did centuries of liberals before us: John Lock, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Tom Paine, Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson, Eugene Debs, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King and countless others. Some of us have stood strong: Robert Byrd, Paul Wellstone, Russ Feingold, Barak Obama come to mind. But there are many others. But not enough of us have stood up. Have too many of us worried about offending perpetually offended whiney victim conservatives? Have we worried that public opinion won't respond favorably to our criticisms of Conservative thinking? Can we afford to only play defense?

Like Harry Truman, we need to give them hell. Or as Harry said, give them the truth and they'll think its hell. Let's give our conservatives something real to whine about. Let's see who the public likes better, us happy warriors or those whiney victims.

I invite you to go back to read the above again. For each passage, ask, "Is this the truth? Can you think of evidence that it is true? Do you think that most American people who aren't knee-jerk conservatives will believe it? Do you think it will offend anyone other than ditto-head conservatives? Should we be loudly proclaiming these thoughts?" If your answer to any of these questions is no, inform me. I don't mean quibbles that the above doesn't include enough nuances and footnotes. Too many of these hurt John Kerry. Your comments will be published in our newsletter.

I hope you will all be inspired to express the thoughts that you find most compelling, in blogs, letters-to-the editor and other forums. I hope you will not just relate these to national politics. Relate them also to state and local politics. Let's throw our conservatives on the defensive for a change. Political contests like football games are won by both good offense and good defense.

Matthew Kerbel writes on page 178 of his book,

"Party elites and grassroots supporters together need to:

• Claim the mantle of a proud progressive tradition rooted in the values of fairness, global leadership, and community.
• Embrace conviction, but distinguish it from required orthodoxy and remember that conviction projects strength.
• Recognize that disagreements over policy priorities are inevitable and healthy and need not conflict with the development of a progressive message based in principle.
• Craft the language of political discourse in a clear, direct manner with a message rooted in progressive values and a long history of progressive accomplishments

At the same time, each needs to address challenges to doing business as usual, in order to:

• Have the strength to confront entrenched party interests when they stand in the way of advancing progressives' political prospect
• Have the courage to ease away from centralized control of grassroots organizing by campaigns and hub institutions like the Democratic National Committee, and the wisdom to appreciate how to maximize the organizational power of the Internet
• Embrace the potential of weblogs to instigate political action and the political value of electing candidates beholden to the money and labor of ordinary individuals.
• If progressives are able to do this, we will begin to present a strong, principled, and effective face to voters who will be ready to look at us anew."

Wow! I entirely agree. The 12 other chapters by various authors provide detailed analysis of our recent history and potential which support Kerbal's seven political strategy recommendations. This is a must-read for liberals who seriously want to win.

Paul Waldman presents a remarkably similar list of strategies that progressives must do:

• Create a single progressive movement - not a collection of interest groups - devoted to the twin goals of fighting conservatives and advancing a progressive world view
• Agree on a core set of progressive principles and create a progressive master narrative that unifies them
• Understand that political success comes not from the details of policy plans, but from the communication of character and values
• Stop pandering to the voters who dislike them the most and find new ways to create a lasting majority
• Devote themselves not to short term victories but to a long term vision of the progressive America they want to create - even if it takes decades to get there
• Stop worrying about whether the elite media approve of them
• Stop being timid and become warriors for their cause

Like Paul Waldman, James Carville and Paul Begala particularly emphasize that we liberals must go on the attack. We must pick issues where conservatives are vulnerable to public opinion and craft careful messages which will resonate with public opinion. We must frame the issues we choose and present them as stories which root them in the values which we share with the general public, not as itemized lists of policy recommendations which will turn off members of the general public, including most liberals. If liberals are able to do this, we will begin to present a strong, principled, and effective face to voters who will be ready to look at us anew."

We must deemphasize issues which conservatives have already framed and won public opinion and issues (often pushed by interests with whom we generally agree) in which little will be gained even if we win. We should discuss:

• Making abortion rare, not partial birth abortion
• enforcing gun control laws, not passing more of them
• protecting equal rights for gays and lesbians, not yet marriage for them
• contrasting our faith in a loving God with the conservatives' fearsome God, not removing the 'under God' from our pledge of allegiance
• our patriotic support for strong military, intelligence, and homeland security agencies which are appropriate to overcoming real threats and our support for our men and women who serve in them, not letting our support appear flakey because we disagree with the misdirection of these agencies by conservatives
• passing public campaign funding rather than focusing upon particular instances of special interest gifts, meals and travel
• making us energy independent rather than criticizing our love for the flexibility of automobile travel
• how we can effectively develop and use news media rather than complaining about conservative bias. Never whine, just attack and propose alternatives.
• fair taxation and tax enforcement instead of imposing taxes directed directly at the rich
• extending Medicare to all to make businesses more competitive rather than insisting they pay for health care, which should be publicly paid for anyway

Don't let the perfect be the enemy of progress toward the possible. Go with and guide the flow of public opinion, rather than allowing us to be viewed as extremists. As public opinion catches up with us, we can add proposals that the public doesn't favor now.

Kerbil and the authors of the articles in his book and Waldman almost exclusively use the term 'Progressive'. Carville and Begala refer to Democrats and occasionally Liberals. I have searched, but failed to find any difference between the values that Liberals and Conservatives seek to realize. Unlike the term 'Progressive', the term Liberal' ties us to a three centuries of victorious struggles. Conservatives have demonized 'liberal' because it ties us to these struggles that have broad public support. If the term 'Progressive' comes to have similar acceptance among the general public, our conservatives will demonize that term also.

Progressives sometimes contrast themselves with Conservatives, saying they want to go forward while Conservatives want to go backward. Nothing is entirely new, but the New Conservative vision of the future is very unlike anything that has predominated in our U.S. in the past: A unilateral foreign policy is new. Domestically, they want to dismantle safety net measures that go back to the founding of our republic. Their attack on our constitutional rights is unprecedented. Seldom before have we ever seen such extreme partisanship. Conservatives also want to go forward, just in a different direction.

I also prefer the term 'liberal' because it's an in-your-face attack on conservative demonization of us. As we reframe the conservative misleading framing we should particularly reframe our name. As the general public becomes impressed with messages which we effectively compose and disseminate, our messages will seem particularly miraculous coming from us demonized liberals. Conservatives will lose credibility on this issue as they have on so many others.

Am I sure? No. But it is worth considering. At least in our neighborhood, we have found lots of Proud Liberals, and heard only temporary minor objections. People are displaying 100 of our 'Proud Liberal, Time for a Change' yard signs and 200 'Proud Liberal' bumper stickers in many different Puget Sound neighborhoods.