Return of the L Word: A Liberal Vision for the New Century

Chapter 1
RETURN OF THE "L" WORD
Somehow, during the last quarter of the twentieth century in the United States, conservatives stole the high ground of public debate and were able to depict liberalism as tantamount to a sin, a diabolical philosophy whose unchecked expression during the 1960s led the country to the verge of ruin. If something was wrong anywhere in the world, conservative politicians and pundits were successful in portraying it as the fault of devious liberals and their malevolent policies. Daunting social problems such as joblessness, poverty, crime, delinquency, addiction, family dissolution, and terrorism were laid at the feet of liberals. People who subscribed to a "liberal agenda" were depicted as wasteful, weak, unpatriotic, and self-indulgent--hand-wringing whiners who "blamed America first" and despised working people, viewing them only as little more than a source of tax revenue to support their privileged class position as advocates for the undeserving poor.1
That conservatives sought to paint the political opposition in this unfavorable light is hardly surprising. What is truly amazing is their spectacular success at doing so during a period of apparent liberal triumph. As a result of liberal reforms enacted over the course of the twentieth century, Americans in 1970 were freer, healthier, richer, and more equal than ever before in U.S. history. Yet at the moment of liberalism's seeming zenith, conservatives were successful in turning voters away from policies that had brought social and economic well-being to an unprecedented number of Americans. Over the next three decades, an increasingly radical conservative movement took control of the Republican party and sent liberals into full ideological retreat.
With the exception of the anomalous interregnum of Jimmy Carter (notably, a Southern Democrat), the Republican party captured and held the presidency during the 1970s and 1980s; and despite losing it during the 1990s to Bill Clinton (again, a Southern Democrat), conservative Republicans captured the House and Senate in 1994, and by the end of the decade they had achieved de facto control over the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary as well. Even more remarkably, despite the remarkable peace and prosperity of the Clinton years, in 2000 Republicans once again took the White House. With the restoration of the House of Bush, conservative Republicans controlled all three branches of government, a political realignment that appeared to be ratified decisively by voters in the 2002 elections. As President Bush headed into the second half of his first term, liberalism's demise seemed all but complete.
This dark night of the liberal soul, however, sets the stage for an unexpected rekindling of progressive politics, for the setbacks of 2002 finally demonstrated, once and for all, the futility of conservative accommodation. The movement of the Democratic party away from real opposition and its adoption of a strategy of appeasement alienated the party's core constituencies while doing little to appeal to reluctant voters in the political center. In the ideological vacuum that followed the 2002 electoral meltdown, Howard Dean shocked the Democratic establishment by mounting an unexpectedly successful insurgency based on a forceful and unapologetic politics of opposition, vigorously challenging the Republicans and their Democratic imitators at every political turn--social, economic, and diplomatic.
Although he ultimately did not secure the Democratic nomination, Dean's campaign re-energized the party faithful, mobilized new voters, and made a vigorous politics of opposition not only possible, but respectable, thereby opening a new path for Democrats to follow. As a result, from the ashes of the 2002 elections the phoenix of a liberal alignment is poised to arise. Like so many radical political movements, American conservatism has overextended itself. Its takeover of the Republican party has moved federal policies far to the right of the electorate. Conservatives now seek to impose a narrow, fundamentalist morality that is quite out of step with the relatively open and tolerant social position of most Americans. Conservatives also support a retrograde retrenchment on civil rights and social entitlements that is wildly out of touch with the social, economic, and demographic realities of the twenty-first century.
Not only do the radical conservatives who run the country in 2004 diverge socially from the values and sentiments of mainstream Americans, they also have little to offer the country in practical terms. In the United States, the last quarter of the twentieth century was one of unparalleled economic polarization.