The Real Bankruptcy of America

The more I read of things at Asymmetrical Information, the less satisfied I am with the arguments (except the very technical economic treatises, which I don't follow all that well). This one, for example, looks really impressive:

Is the left out of ideas?

That gets batted around every so often, and it (understandably) enrages liberals. And yet, it seems to me that there's a kernel of truth there. Not in the literal sense: liberals do not vote Green or Democrat just because they like the logos. But the left, as a movement, does not have any very coherent Big Idea that it can sell. The Movement doesn't agree on much, except that it hates George Bush. Orwell to the contrary, hate does not sell particularly well in American politics.1 Fear . . . now, fear sells. But only if it's at least quasi-believable, which, to the vast swath of the American public, "George Bush is planning to lynch minorities and put everyone else in illegal detention camps" doesn't. Fear only works if the majority of American voters believe that whatever they are supposed to fear will happen to them, not some comfortably anonymous nobody in a far-off state.

It looks like we're in for a solid critique, once you get past the "Bush-hater" meme-wannabe (tired -- so very, very tired), and the ludicrous notion that hate doesn't sell in American politics -- look how much use the Christianists are finding it. She's right about fear, though. (And it would have been interesting to see her take on the relationship between hate and fear in American politics.)

And yet it just becomes another case of neo-theo-con apologetics. It's only partly that the Left is out of ideas -- and I'm not really sure that's the case. I think the Left is hampered by its philosophy, which is rational and nonconfrontational and basically honest, when confronted by a machine that is none of the above. The Left has not, however, regained a consistent vision, now that their traditional vision is part of daily life. There are a lot of new paths to follow, though, and they're not picking up on it.

Think about it for a minute.

Start with the basics: technology, economy, jobs, environment, energy. There's a lot there that can be melded into a great vision that will resonate. The Right isn't picking up on it. They don't want a new path (nothing that Bush has done has been new -- it's all old ideas that are finally having their day, and for most of them, their day is already past. They're not particularly good ideas -- they're just marketable, which is part of the point, I guess, but let's face it, she's not looking at her assumptions -- the Right is Good, the Left is Pointless -- very carefully.)

I think the underlying problem is that the Democrats need to do some deep thinking on their issues, some rational analysis of what has worked and what hasn't, and from that develop a program that can be reduced to soundbites and photo-ops. That's what the American people will sit still for.

And that shows just how much of a failure everyone's vision has been. (The cynic in me, of course, says that was the whole point.)

(A further thought about hate and fear. Galt [we'll call her Jane Galt, since that's how she bills herself on the blog] avoids that relationship, actually, which only does more to convince me that the piece is nothing more than an apologetics for the Right. Pity.)