"A Dirty Word Gets Clean" Digby's got a good point.

[madfloridian]

Good for her. I openly and proudly identity myself a liberal, even in this fundamentalist right wing area in which I live....with a Southern Baptist Church on nearly every corner. I especially emphasize it to former Southern Baptists I see. When I was recently in the hospital some of these groups would walk the halls and go in rooms to see if they could pray with patients. I told them they should have gotten my permission via a nurse before they walked in.

When word gets out you are a liberal everyone around here wants to pray for you.

Anyway, back to Digby. She's right. More and more are wearing the liberal label after it's been abused for years.

A Dirty Word Gets Clean

Hmm:

The shift toward greater liberal self-identification has been led by Democrats. Currently, 43% of Democrats say they are liberal, a nearly 50% increase from 29% in 2000. Over the same period, the percentage of Democrats identifying as moderate is down to 36% from 44%, and conservative identification is down to 19% from 25%.

U.S. Political Ideology — Recent Trend Among Democrats



Now, we don’t know exactly what they are defining as “liberal.” I would guess more than a few define it as President Obama’s philosophy which I think is more accurately defined as “moderate.” (He said himself that he would be considered a moderate Republican back in the 80s.) It is curious that this increase in self-defined liberals seems to have jumped just in the last couple of years, so it’s hard to say it’s all Obama driven.

In any case, there are two factors here that are of interest. The first is that the demonization of the word itself seems to have faded a bit. If 43% of Democrats are now willing to call themselves liberal it is obviously no longer a shameful label. I don’t know why that’s happened, but perhaps it’s just as simple as the fact that the conservatives have been making such asses of themselves in recent years that normal people are no longer as influence by their opinions.

When I came to DU in 2002 I was terribly afraid of the word "liberal". Where I live it was taking a chance to mention it, still is sometimes....and still is in our neighborhood.

I am not fearful of it any longer, and I am proud to give myself that label.

[Tx4obama]

1. Matt Santos on the definition of Liberal

" ... I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor. "

From The Debate episode, season seven of the West Wing
"The Debate" between Arnold Vinick and Matt Santos
Written by Lawrence O'Donnell

[madfloridian]

2. Absolutely perfect response.

Love it. I remember seeing that once. It gets better with time.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

23. Fantastic scene from a wonderful show!

[ohheckyeah]

3. My brother asked me one time

if I was a liberal...I replied, "Yes, a whale saving, tree hugging, bleeding heart liberal." He's still trying to get over it.

[madfloridian]

14. I think I shocked my mostly Republican family.

The funny thing is it never came up before until Bush came along.

[ohheckyeah]

15. My siblings think I'm a heathen...

AND a liberal. I'm not sure which they think is worse. My parents are, fortunately, more liberal.

[Spider Jerusalem]

4. It's possibly driven by the GOP going full-on batshit over the past 5 years or so.

There are very few sane or moderate Republicans left. The few there are are being increasingly alienated by the nutters pulling the party further into stark raving insanity. The rise in "liberal" self-identification probably has something to do with "conservative" increasingly meaning "narrow, intolerant, Christian fundamentalist religious ideologue".

[billh58]

5. Kennedy’s Elegant Quote in Defense of Liberals and Liberalism

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label, "Liberal"? If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But, if by a "Liberal," they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people - their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties - someone who believes that we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say that I'm a "Liberal."

John F. Kennedy
Accepting the New York State Liberal Party 1960 Presidential Nomination
The Commodore Hotel, New York, NY.
September 14, 1960

http://www.cafepress.com/truthmonk/6042957

Liberals represent everything good about this country, and are the exact opposite of the Republican right-wing neoconservative movement to destroy the USA and its democratic form of government. The Koch Brothers are a great example of the definition of "domestic enemy."

[madfloridian]

6. "Liberals represent everything good about this country"

I agree.

[madfloridian]

7. If being liberal is a good thing....

why do so many of us who claim the label proudly feel so uncomfortable here now?

[BrotherIvan]

9. And why are smears such as "far left" and "fringe left" let stand?

There is quite a bit of liberal on display. It comes from a certain quarter of "reasonable" "reality-based" centrist. There is quite a bit of pushback, but fighting against moderate Democrats is almost as tiring as fighting against Republicans and not nearly as satisfying as squishing a winger.

Love your post

[Blue_Tires]

8. kick

I remember this being the first board I felt comfortable identifying myself as 'liberal'

People have forgotten how toxic that word had become since the mid-90s when the GOP started their stranglehold on congress...

[madfloridian]

21. Don't forget the Dem think tank DLC started attacks on liberals in the late 80s.

DLC goal was to make the Dem party business-friendly, to ignore "traditional interest groups."

The Democratic party leaders in the late 80s wanted to be "ideologically freed" from taking positions that made it hard to win. Basically that meant they could be more like the Republicans in policy and not worry about it...the money would be coming in anyway.

Seems to me they have succeeded. The party appears to be able to ignore their activist base and can concentrate on the corporations and rich folks who provide them sufficient money.

The New Democrats, the DLC were pushing these policies which were at the expense of the working, everyday people in the Democratic party. This is not conjecture, not guesswork...we have the very words of one of the founders.

How the DLC Does It

Simon Rosenberg, part of the DLC team, later formed the New Democrat Network.

Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, “We’re trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way,” he adds, “they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win.”

[hootinholler]

10. Welcome back n/t

[needledriver]

11. The caterer had quiche as

a breakfast choice today.

Whenever they do that I try to eat some to keep my "quiche eating Liberal" credentials current.

[madfloridian]

13. How about your "latte-drinking", "volvo driving", and "new york times reading"...the ad

[KoKo]

12. Recommend...

[madfloridian]

16. ....

Thanks and KoKo

[RobertEarl]

17. I deal with lots of centrists

I forget how many times I've had to utter this phrase:

"I'm a Liberal, tree-hugging, environmentalist. You got a problem with that?"

I think DU encouraged me to come up with that.

[madfloridian]

18. I think that is the way Democrats should be.

All that and more....even supporting public education, providing programs for the needy without other resources...so much more.

My brother once called my parents bleeding heart liberals. They did not disagree.

I think Democrats should respect unions. They should not be trying to destroy teachers' unions...or any others at all.

[RobertEarl]

19. Unions are all about the working man

I've never been a paid Union man, but Unions have helped me get a lot of rights for on the job problems.

And a better wage.

I often think about what it must have been like in the early days of the Unions. How, against much opposition from the 'owners', the men gathered together and with unity stood up to the people signing the checks and bashing their heads. I am sure in a past life I was there with them demanding dignity and an end to oppression.

Let it be known far and wide that it is the working men and women in the Unions which made the US into an industrial giant.

[madfloridian]

20. You are right.

Unions helped everyone, helped up grow a strong middle class.

[Qutzupalotl]

22. Limbaugh had a lot to do with tarring the image of the word "liberal."

Now that he's lost credibility, being a drug addict and extremist, his words carry less weight.

But more importantly, it's the words and actions of the party opposed to liberals that have eliminated the stigma associated with the word. Endless wars, oppression of the poor/minorities/gays/women, tanking the economy, saber-rattling ... these things doomed the Republican party and made people gravitate toward the only sane alternative (with a chance of governing). We also have to give credit to sympathetic portrayals of gay characters in the media — this swayed public opinion away from the anti-gay-marriage stance and made choosing simple equality obvious.

So if there are any Republicans here looking for advice, all you have to do is renouce everything you ever stood for, and you'll be fine.