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In reply to the discussion: Why is the American left not as effective as the European left? [View all]Kalidurga
(14,177 posts)236. Well it seems you insist on pushing your agenda on what you think a liberal/leftist is so..
Why is the American left not as effective as the European left?
Whenever I ask this question, there are always a torrent of responses that attribute the American left's relative weakness to external causes: Mainly the wealth, power, and ruthlessness of the (pseudo-)American right. But such explanations only illustrate the real answer - the left in the US has an almost entirely negative self-definition, as a political space where the destructive ideologies of the right are rejected without necessarily having any unified vision of what to do with that space.
This is why the multi-generational failure of the American left to establish lasting foundations of governance in this country is almost universally excused as a product of Enemy Action: "They won't let us do the things we should do!" And for some reason it's usually just left at that, with no further examination. The laziness and childishness of this attitude should be immediately obvious, as well as the fact that it's an excuse for failure rather than a productive thought process toward achieving better results.
"They won't let us do the things we should do!" The problem is not that the Right-wing won't let us do the things we should do, because liberals often do the things that we should do. We get things passed, judges make good decisions like Roe-v-Wade, and the ACA gets passed. But, then the fight is far from over, conservatives do everything they can to undermine progress and even worse than that the American public is complacent for whatever reason, even on issues that affect them directly, waking the sleeping giant is a huge effort, but that is as important to the success of liberal ideals as is electing people that will help us achieve those ideals.
It also can't escape notice that it's essentially false: Contrary to myth accepted by both the left and the right, principled left-wing politicians are not rare in America. What's rare are principled left-wing legislative accomplishments, because the American left doesn't reward leaders who do things - it punishes them, because action intensifies attention, which (under the previously mentioned negative self-definition) causes unreasoning and unprioritized obsession on flaws.
A left-wing legislator who just sits quietly between symbolic speeches, but never once passes or in any way tangibly affects a bill that actually does anything, will not be punished by the left for their laziness. But a legislator who fights actual battles, and causes legislation to be passed that moves the country in some tangibly leftward direction, will not be rewarded for it - they will be tarred with the difference between that legislation and a perfectly ideal conception of what it should be, as if that ideal were a real thing and the bill they passed were a movement to the right for not living up to it.
I would like some actual evidence of this I will even take anecdotal evidence. I want evidence because I have never seen this in my lifetime. I vote for liberals whenever I can and when that isn't an option I will vote for Democrats and when a Democrat works hard to fight the good fight I will send them a letter of thanks and I will vote for them again. I have seriously never seen so much as even mild criticism of a politician from the left or from liberals when they do the right thing. I have however seen the exact opposite of this on DU. I have seen people very critical of Hillary for giving lip service to the causes of the left, but not actually doing anything to advance the causes or fight for the actual liberal principles. And I do believe that for only offering us symbolic gestures Hillary is going to lose the support of Liberals.
This is an illustration of the quixotic, monkish, fantasy-based solipsism in American left-wing politics. It's a mentality that is self-satisfied with inaction - because inaction doesn't disturb the tranquil contemplation of ideal absolutes - while the rigors of actual governance are resigned to right-wing politicians and moderates. Think about this scenario:
Let's say that only 40% of the people have healthcare. The left says 100% of the people should have healthcare. Every once in a while, left-wing politicians introduce legislation (that never leaves committee) providing healthcare to 100% of the people. The fact that these bills never pass does not register with them or their base - the mere symbolic act of advocating them is considered an achievement in itself, sufficient and perfect, because the reality that no one is actually getting healthcare because of them is considered immaterial. None of these politicians are penalized by their base for doing nothing to actually create healthcare for real people - in fact, they're rewarded for "standing firm" in the face of reality.
Are you serious about this illustration? I mean really serious serious. I was thrilled and many many people at DU that I know as far left were also thrilled about the ACA passing. Sure we recognize it doesn't go near far enough, but that is a far cry from punishing anyone who supported it. So, again I would like to see who has been rewarded for getting nothing done and who has been punished for giving us at least a small victory?
Now suppose a pragmatic liberal politician gets a bill passed that increases the percentage of people with healthcare from 50% to 80%, and this is the first time in, say, thirty years that anyone has significantly increased the proportion of people with healthcare. Any remotely sane progressive would be over the Moon at this accomplishment, doublingthe provision of healthcare to the American people, right? But in the negative psychology of the American left, that's not what just happened: That bill did not just double healthcare, it cut it from 100% down to 80%. And thus the liberal politician who just saved millions of lives is not a liberal at all, but some kind of Republican Lite or corrupt Betrayer who "sold out" the remaining 20% in some kind of smoke-filled backroom deal with cigar-smoking Mayflower descendents.
So you still are on this and still no proof of assertion not even a little proof just more screed.
And...this is not an exaggeration of how left-wing politics in America thinks. It's the exact picture. I'm not saying that everyone on the left is guilty of this, or guilty to an equal extent, but it is the general environment. The American left operates like a set of monastic orders, not a political movement. It retreats from the world and from messy reality, content in impotence, seeing it as preferable to guard ideas from the dangers of practical trials than to participate in a "profane" and "corrupt" system that can't possibly do them justice. Needless to say, this is a perfect recipe for self-inflicted under-representation and irrelevance - more perfect than anything the other side could possibly design.
It is, in essence, a Loser Factory: A set of attitudes and cultural prejudices that turn humanistic ideals against themselves, and make people who could do the most end up doing the least. It takes away vital public support from politicians who try to achieve things, making them instead targets of the very people they try to serve, and make useless rhetoric machines incapable of political accomplishment into heroes. There seems to be no analytical ability to distinguish between real liberal achievers and people who legitimately deserve the title of "sellout," and the result is that the latter are empowered because insultingly pitiful fig leaf accomplishments still feed more people than Noam Chomsky monographs recited to empty committee rooms.
Well now we are getting somewhere it's people who admire Noam Chomsky that are the problem, am I right or am I right people. Of course, if we admire Noam Chomsky we can't possibly be fighting the good fight and feeding people, caring for the homeless, fighting for the LGBT community, because we are far too busy reading about his views on Anarchism.
While the left is characteristically fractious everywhere, in Europe it actually has an interest in governing. Relative to our version, it definitely rewards its leaders for winning elections and passing legislation, instead of treating these accomplishments as grounds for suspicion. There are all the same ideals and kaleidoscopic interest groups, but except for the most impotently and irrelevantly radical of them, they don't jealously withhold their ideals from practical politics like some kind of sacred idol - they try to demonstrate their ideals in practice so that other people can see the benefits, and build networks of political support to continue and grow their programs.
When a left-wing leader is elected in Europe, their first order of business is coalition-building to navigate their agenda into effect. They find out who's who and what's what, and figure out how to make something happen. In the United States, it's more like "Well, I'm going to be a tireless advocate for thus-and-such, and if they won't listen, that's their problem." There's no recognition that being a politician (they despise the very word, let alone the concept) is theirjob, not being a motionless totem pole to symbolically represent their agenda. If you added 20 exact copies of Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives, they still wouldn't do anything, because zero times twenty is still zero.
I am really starting to think that this screed is more about attacking actual liberals than about anything a liberal does or doesn't do. Seriously, it looks like someone is calling Dennis Kucinich a zero, it seriously looks that way. I don't even know Dennis Kucinich that well at all, I like what I know about him, I know he is an advocate for liberals and he stands up for us. Even if he doesn't get us much or even if he gets us a lot, he is still a liberal and I would not call him a zero his place on FOX News withstanding.
That's why in America the issues we support, that have the backing of huge majorities of the people, are treated in politics like a radical agenda: Because our left doesn't merely disbelieve in the union of ideals and practical achievement, it won't allow it. Achievement, for all intents and purposes, is the enemy. Achievement is a distraction from basking in moral perfection. So leaders who want to achieve cannot count on support from the left. It can be had briefly, but it cannot form a stable base. There is nothing to gain over the long-term by trying to form a solid political alliance with the left in America - it doesn't reward those who serve it, and does reward those who sabotage it. Like a battered wife, it only feels at home in utter powerlessness, and resents anyone who challenges its comfortable resignation.
The worst part isn't that the American left likes to elect weaklings - it's that they turn against leaders who prove to be strong, almost like clockwork. If you go to any of the more stridently ideological discussion forums and tell the people there that President Barack Obama is a liberal progressive, they're absolutely scandalized by this statement. In their world, opening up healthcare to tens of millions of more Americans, opening the military to gays, preventing war with Iran, using Executive Orders to advance all sorts of labor and environmental objectives, etc. etc. - these things are not liberal achievements because (as with the 100% vs. 80% example above) there is some divergence with a perfect, ideal system that never existed.
Oh please, I have seen all kinds of support for President Obama on the good things he has done. I have been very complimentary myself on the issues of opening up the military, getting DADT struck from the military, I have been a huge proponent of the ACA even if it doesn't go far enough, and I don't even criticize the use of drones, because far fewer people are killed by them than airstrikes on cities that contain a few people who are shooting at our soldiers.
Obama halted the march to war with Iran in its tracks and opened up diplomacy, but because the US still wages war somewhere, on some level, he's Dick Cheney. We have Obamacare, but because it involves mandates and private health insurers rather than a purely public system, it's the same as doing nothing and letting millions die from lack of healthcare. Then there's the ever-present "What has he done for us lately?" which never seems to acknowledge the existence of the other two branches of government, like if Obama were a true liberal President, he would magically overcome a bottomlessly corrupt GOP Congress by the sheer force of his progressive piety.
I think it would be much better to talk to the individuals that are singing what have you done for us lately and who scream that Obama hasn't done enough, gone far enough, rather than attack everyone or a large segment of people who call themselves, leftists or liberals. I have seen this, I have addressed that issue with individuals that do this. I never thought I should write a diatribe aimed at all liberals and leftists because 5% of them are never happy no matter how much progress is made.
The attention paid by the American left to a subject tends to be inversely proportional to its own influence over it, so Congress - which we can affect much more quickly and effectively than any other aspect of the federal government - gets short shrift in these conversations. When it decides (usually erroneously) that the White House is failing to meet its obligations, does the American left then say "Hey, there's a midterm election coming up, let's take over Congress and force the Executive branch to the left from another branch"? Of course not. Because achievement is the enemy.
An achievement-oriented, left-dominated Congress would be extremely effectual - far more so even than having a liberal President - and yet that goal makes a vanishingly small element of political activism and conversation on the left. It would be so effectual that the other two branches, even if in the hands of the radical right, would be constantly on the defensive: A right-wing Republican (but I repeat myself) in the White House would have to practically automate the process of vetoes, and would frequently be overridden; and the Lawless Five on the Supreme Court would have to be in session 24/7 to strike down all the progressive legislation, probably resulting in some Constitutional amendments passing to override them or at least check their radical judicial abuses of power.
Oh this is so rich with fail, I don't know where to begin. It strikes me as more victim blaming as there are so many on the left who have been directly abused by our system. Anyone who isn't a straight, white, christian, normal weighted, male who is middle to upper class and owns a home is likely to have suffered some kind of discrimination and everyone who doesn't fit into that narrow category has been in some way or another been disenfranchised from the political process and this is a majority of the people in the United States, we who don't fit into those narrow catagories are the largest part of the 99%, yet our voices are rarely heard. We are the majority in this country if we all voted together things could happen for the good of us all. But, for so many reasons we remain disenfranchised. Poverty is probably the biggest reason. Poor people have been kicked around so much and have so many more issues on even being able to vote that many give up and I can't blame them. It is convenient for some to do so, it is convenient to blame the victims of the political process rather than invite them into the process. It is a lot less work to blame the victim and it takes a lot few resources to blame the victim rather than spend time and money getting them to the polls, knocking on their doors and giving them a direct invitation to the process. I can see how that is a more attractive prospect, because making allies with people who have been shut out is much harder work, bashing them for being victims is easy.
And as much as I have written in response, nothing I have written is as eloquent as "What a pant load".
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Why is the American left not as effective as the European left? [View all]
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
OP
It's not War and Peace. Read the OP like a grownup, then get back to me.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#46
Dismissing it in its entirety without explanation is "the slightest criticism"?
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#76
sounds like it was written by somebody who came into office as a youngish progressive
nashville_brook
Oct 2014
#7
i've been seeing "the left" get LOTS done -- paid sick time, raise the wage, and GOTV
nashville_brook
Oct 2014
#16
I've seen the liberal leaders whom the left constantly trashes get those things done.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#38
I loathe individual people who care more about their egos than about other people.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#68
Exactly. The OP is a reaction to present circumstances, and argues for changing them.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#70
What do you think the LGBT rights advances came from, the right? Centrists who nattered about
Bluenorthwest
Oct 2014
#25
My point was that these things had been "pushed for" by the left for decades. Ineffectually.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#95
The state senator I vote for every time is consistently the most progressive one in my state.
suffragette
Oct 2014
#106
I love the fact I finally got my teeth taken care of thanks to Obamacare. Too bad you only care
KittyWampus
Oct 2014
#42
And again, you're trolling childish retorts because you have no rational arguments to make.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#157
Well, which is it? Do you not consider yourself American, or do you not consider yourself Left?
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#155
Because Europe's media isn't owned in its entirety by five billionaires, like it is in the US.
PSPS
Oct 2014
#15
Pretty bad. This is takeover of education/history by RW in 35 yrs., corporate media, dumbed down.
appalachiablue
Oct 2014
#146
No backing from the established party. Zephyr Teachout, Barbara Buono who were Both sound contenders
adirondacker
Oct 2014
#26
And to you that's enough, but not to anyone who actually needs help from the government.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#97
"If it's all about money and return on investment and stock shares and all that,
adirondacker
Oct 2014
#45
The bullshit is only going to get heavier and heavier and more voluminous when the 2014
djean111
Oct 2014
#50
I agree with Moyers, but I don't see how this relates to what we're discussing.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#100
also, watch what happens when left congress folk try to form coalitions with libertarian Rs
nashville_brook
Oct 2014
#44
Ludicrous accusation. Constructive, rational criticism = "lefty punching." Sheer insecurity.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#102
You didn't even read the OP. You've made that clear, now stop spamming.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#103
It is TL/DR....but why do you think the "European Left" is so successful? They aren't.
MADem
Oct 2014
#65
They would have to be reversed quite a long ways to become like our systems.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#127
Decades? Berlusconi and Sarkozy were progressive? Merkel is a rightie. Le Pen almost won in France.
MADem
Oct 2014
#119
There are serious cracks in that armor. They aren't new, and they are getting worse, not better.
MADem
Oct 2014
#192
Progress is not a straight line, so there were bound to be reversals for Europe.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#216
Progress may not be a straight line, but when the entire region, pretty much, screams
MADem
Oct 2014
#221
1200 hate radio stations owned, run, and staffed by the looniest of the loony right. Complete
Doctor_J
Oct 2014
#87
Seems to have pissed off quite a few people who see themselves reflected in it.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#131
Yep. And now that you realize that, take the insults (because there was no discussion
Number23
Oct 2014
#152
The Left has to fight a coalition (or, Devil's Brew) now of Republicans and 3rd Way Democrats.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Oct 2014
#111
that's it exactly. As soon as Obama and the rest of the DINOs support Sanders instead of PHARMA,
Doctor_J
Oct 2014
#132
So, the Democrats should form coalitions with the Left instead of the quasi-Republican "moderates".
Tierra_y_Libertad
Oct 2014
#142
Unfortunately, the party seems very comfortable with it's right wing pals and beneficiaries.
Tierra_y_Libertad
Oct 2014
#158
The left will align itself with the Party when it proves itself a reliabale friend
Tierra_y_Libertad
Oct 2014
#187
If the Left is so "ineffective" why does it get blamed when the Democrats lose?
Tierra_y_Libertad
Oct 2014
#229
Yes, Wellstone was definitely one of the last humanist titans in the federal government.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#135
You mean like the way we punished Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders for being effective legislators?
pa28
Oct 2014
#114
Can you support the claim that Warren and Sanders are effective legislators?
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#136
Over a half century of demonization of 'communists' and 'socialists'
Erich Bloodaxe BSN
Oct 2014
#161
The left bears a lot of responsibility for right-wing victories. Denying that would be dishonest.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#190
Why should anyone take this seriously? You offer no evidence for anything you say.
Vattel
Oct 2014
#162
Because it's content with the excuses provided by history and the status quo.
True Blue Door
Oct 2014
#178
You know...you should publish this. It speaks truth to me...if not "truth" at least reality. nt
kelliekat44
Oct 2014
#198
This post is preposterous with the rise of the ultra-nationalists in the EU.
joshcryer
Oct 2014
#209
I'm trying to point that out, pretty much, and getting the "Well but it's a continuum" argument in
MADem
Oct 2014
#222
I suppose if we simply define what would be considered center-right everywhere else in the western
Douglas Carpenter
Oct 2014
#223
Well it seems you insist on pushing your agenda on what you think a liberal/leftist is so..
Kalidurga
Jun 2015
#236