The Left (A History of the last 60 years)

Yes, you're right.  Get over it.

If we go back to the Great Depression, the "Left" was made up primarily of real, honest to God Socialists.  I knew a couple of ex-Communist blacklisted screenwriters.  They were devoutly committed to their positions and good for them.  As Leonardo Bercovici said to us, "In the '30s you were either a Fascist trying to conquer the world, or a Communist trying to save it."

But Communism, or at least Stalinism, was not trying to save the world, was it now?

By the 1960s, we had had three decades of a center-left governing coalition called the New Deal coalition, and it brought a remarkable era of growth, both economically and in the welfare state and public spending.  In 1960, there was no reason to think America was not easily the finest country in the world no matter how you defined it.

But liberals knew that the country could always be improved, especially that whole issue down South.  You know... Jim Crow.  So, with liberal earnestness and good intentions, they tackled that problem.  Or thought they did, because while Jim Crow was a Southern feature, racism was universal.  Malcolm X was harder to tolerate than Martin Luther King.

At some point in 1965, Rick Pearlstein pegs the Watts' Riots as the exact moment, the Left split with the Liberals.  The Liberal Coalition had embraced the gradual change of an evolving Social Security system, expanded infrastructure spending, Medicare, union rights, an aggressively progressive tax code and civil rights legislation.

The Left was interested in something else.  Put succinctly: Burn, motherfucker, burn.

The Left saw the whole system as corrupt.  Vietnam was a huge part of that.  But so was the realization that civil rights legislation was not nearly enough to end racism.  Because it had to end this instant.

It was the union members who first looked at the Left and said, "Not for me."  So they voted for Nixon and Reagan (even though Reagan was perhaps their worst enemy).  During the Watts Riots, Lyndon Johnson looked at blacks looting stores and whined, "How can they do this to me, after all I've done for them?"  And the political class turned against the Left, too.

Now, the Left WAS CORRECT about a lot of things.  They were right about Cambodia and Vietnam.  They were right about racism.  They were right about corporate power structure.

But the Left's aggressive brand of "Burn the whole thing down!" did not endear itself to Americans.  Nor, frankly, to Liberals.

And so, the Democratic Party - the party that had created the New Deal Coalition - entered the wilderness, barely eking out a single victory between 1968 and 1992, and only then because of the singular taint of Watergate (the Left had been right about Nixon, too).

The fact is that the mushy middle had too easy a time linking a wonky technocrat like Michael Dukakis to the angry rantings of the Left.  And as long as that was the case, the Democratic Party would not be trusted with the reins of power.

When Clinton took over, he did so from the center.  He benefitted from an insane leprechaun splitting some of the right wing vote, but he ran on competence rather than ideology.  And competent he was.

But the Left had reason to fear and distrust him.  He was cozy with corporations.  He did seem to validate the whole Reaganesque assault on the very idea of government being able to help the average American.

So the Left was relieved when they got a true champion.

Thank you, Ralph Nader!

Actually, that's not snark.  The Left did love Nader subconsciously.  Because Bush turned out to be a perfect storm of rightist bullshit.  Nixonian power grabs, Reaganesque redistribution of wealth upwards, warmongering, bigotry (this time against LGBT) and also he was just a dumb son of a bitch.

All those years being correct had not won the Left any friends.  Was Nader right in many of his criticisms of the two party system?  Yes, he was.  But does anyone remotely think that we would have invaded Iraq if Anthony Kennedy had ruled the other way in Bush v Gore?

So, the Left could now be safely right about everything.  Bush tax cuts?  Terrible idea!  Invading Iraq?  WTF!  Denying global warming?  Are you shitting me!  Stem cells?  Valerie Plame?  Katrina? Privatizing Social Security?  Bushanomics?

And what's more, lot's of people saw that the Left was absolutely correct.  For the first time since McGovern went down in flames, the Left was cool again.  They were the center of the internet universe.  Kos and Hamsher and Digby were at the epicenter of a fundamental realignment that would be led by the Left for the first time ever!

Only... You know.  Not.

Obama is a Liberal.  He's not of the Left.  He's a part of that group that oversaw the evolution of Social Security and Medicare.  That slowly built a consensus around civil rights legislation that took a decade of activism to create.  He has absolutely zero interest in burning it all down.

I think the overboard caterwauling of the Left has happened because Obama has stolen their Fifteen Minutes away from them.  The boring, placid Liberals are back in control of the Party and the Left is once again shown the door.

And what aggravates them most of all is that they are still right about most things.  HCR would have been better with a public option.  Financial reform would have been better with a return to Glass-Steagall.  Taxes should be allowed to return to where they were for the rich.  DADT should have been repealed a long time ago. There should have been official inquiries into torture.

They are right!

But it just doesn't matter.

Because the system IS broken.  Especially the Senate, but the system as a whole is not about doing what is best, it's about doing what you can do in the moment with the fragile coalition that you can scrape together in that moment.  If DADT doesn't pass the Senate before the Lame Duck ends, it won't pass.  Simple as that.  That moment will have gone.  Rand Fucking Paul is not going to vote for cloture on DADT.

But it's the only system we have.  And broken or not, you have to work within it.  Because no one else is really interested in "Burn motherfucker burn."

The Left can still be valuable.  I do think we need more moments like the Bernie-buster the other day.  Precisely because the Left is often right, they should keep agitating and speaking out.

But they need to get over it when their perfect solutions butt up against the realities of an imperfect world.

And realize - in ways that Malcolm X and Abbie Hoffman never did - that the Liberals are not really the enemies of the Left.  They are your exasperated older siblings, not the bully down the street.

Remember that in a family tussle, you are still family.

But those sons of bitches over there on the Right...