Terror and Liberalism

Give a read to Peter Beinart's analysis of what ails the Democrats. It's similar in several ways to the points I've been trying to make here, here, and here, namely that national security is the Democrats' main electoral problem, that though John Kerry was not ideal in many ways the problem is much more structural than personal, and that, paradoxically, the actual views of the Democratic Party's national security establishment are both better on the merits and, in principle at least, sounder politics than the message the Democrats have actually been sending.

I wouldn't put nearly as much weight on dovish sentiments within the base as Beinart does. This was most likely behind some of the things Kerry said and did during the primaries (notably the vote on the $87 billion supplemental) but I simply don't believe that it was a major consideration underlying his general election strategy. This is the sort of question, of course, that some good reporting might resolve, though neither of us exactly seem to have done it. My sense, though, is that we would have heard it reported somewhere if Kerry's communicatiosn operatives were sitting around saying, "hm...this idea over here might make for a good, hawkish message with centrist appeal but we can't afford to alienate Michael Moore!" The account I prefer pertains to the attitudes and interests of Democratic operatives and professionals outside the national security community. In my experience these people simply aren't all that interested in foreign policy and military issues. That's not really an ideological thing. In many ways far-left rank and file types tend to be better informed and more interested in these things than are more moderate liberals (note that "world affairs" was one of Ralph Nader's best issues in 2000). It's a question of temperament. Lots of people with all kinds of ideologies think Medicare reform is boring. I think Medicare reform is boring. I -- like many others -- would rather think and talk about something else. Relatively few people get involved in Democratic politics because they care about implementing the Democratic Party's main ideas on national security, instead they do it to implement the Democrats' ideas on health care, education, the environment, choice, gay rights, or whatever. I stole this thesis from Heather Hurlburt, so you may as well read it from her.

So that, I think, is the essence of the problem. Beinart's positive proposal at the end, though, dovetails about as well with my causal theory as with his:

In 1946, the CIO, which had long included communist-dominated affiliates, began to move against them. Over fierce communist opposition, the CIO endorsed the Marshall Plan, Truman's reelection bid, and the formation of nato. And, in 1949, the Organization's executive board expelled eleven unions. . . .

That absorption mattered. It created a constituency, deep in the grassroots of the Democratic Party, for the marriage between social justice at home and aggressive anti-communism abroad. Today, however, the U.S. labor movement is largely disconnected from the war against totalitarian Islam, even though independent, liberal-minded unions are an important part of the battle against dictatorship and fanaticism in the Muslim world.

The fight against the Soviet Union was an easier fit, of course, since the unions had seen communism up close. And today's afl-cio is not about to purge member unions that ignore national security. But, if elements within American labor threw themselves into the movement for reform in the Muslim world, they would create a base of support for Democrats who put winning the war on terrorism at the center of their campaigns. The same is true for feminist groups, for whom the rights of Muslim women are a natural concern.

I've long felt pretty hopeless about the idea of building an interest group basis of support for an appropriate liberal response to Islamism, but the point about feminist groups is well-taken. In the 1990s, the Feminist Majority Foundation was quite the leader on this topic at a time when there wasn't what one would call an overwhelming level of concern in the USA about the Taliban and they're still doing good work on related topics. This is, potentially at least, a major point of interface between interest-group liberalism and the global struggle with radical Islam. Being an elitist technocrat myself, my tendency is to believe the important thing is to change the outlook of technocratic elites rather than worry too much about the beliefs of the hoi polloi, but there's room for action on all fronts. There's even a website dedicated to the cause that people should explore.