[Mb-civic] Get With It

Fri Nov 12 12:56:59 PST 2004

Leftnecks, Get Local

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
 Posted on November 12, 2004, Printed on November 12, 2004
 http://www.alternet.org/story/20479/

A week of hand wringing has produced a remarkably clear narrative of the
2004 election. The answer for Democrats  according to the pundits' blather
 is that they need to close the God gap. Only by framing progressive issues
in terms of pious morality can the heartland be brought around to vote for
their own economic interests at long last.

But that's simplistic  and not just a little condescending. The notion that
the problem for Democrats'  and the liberals who continue to believe in
them  can be boiled down to "God, gays and guns" doesn't address the way
social issues have provided an infrastructure for the rise of conservative
populism during the last 30 years.

What has driven the right's anger  and activism  is that on many issues of
concern to social conservatives, liberals have fought hard against the will
of a majority of the people with whom they interact every day in their
communities. We may consider some of those issues to be contrived, but we
dismiss them at our peril.

Instead, liberals should start separating substantive policy issues from the
symbolic aspects of public life. We should be fighting on the substance and
figuring out a way to render the symbolic issues moot on the national level.
The answer, I believe, is in a long-held conservative position: states'
rights and local self-determination. Savvy Democrats could shift the terms
of the national debate away from vaguely defined "values" by consistently
stressing that our communities should reflect local values, not those of
either party in Washington. If conservatives were to oppose that ideal,
their intolerance would be brought into sharp relief.

Historically, liberals have resisted states' rights arguments, and with good
reason. The last big battle like the culture wars we see today came during
the civil rights movement. Then, as now, liberals were portrayed as using
"judicial tyranny" and the federal apparatus to run roughshod over popular
and democratically enacted Jim Crow laws. It was the George Wallaces and
Strom Thurmonds who argued for state sovereignty.

While history has redeemed that liberal project, the cultural battles of the
day are more complex. Fighting for civil rights was a necessary crusade,
even when it ran counter to the majoritarian principles upon which
democracies are based. Today, social conservatives feel put upon by the left
for the same reasons we feel put upon by them. Just as I don't want my kids
to have to pray at school in California, the people in Mississippi care more
about their public institutions reflecting their culture than what happens
in Seattle or New York.

Which leaves us an exit from the culture wars. The key to taking these
issues off the national table is to argue  clearly and consistently  that
Alabamans shouldn't legislate in Vermont and Minnesotans shouldn't dictate
to Georgia. States' rights is an idea that progressives can afford to
embrace for the simple reason that we've won the biggest federalist fights 
the battles over race, the legality of abortion and, more recently, the
decriminalization of homosexuality.

That means we have the luxury of leaving many (not all) of the "wedge"
issues to local activists and taking them off the national stage. State
legislatures would still be constrained by the constitution; they could
bring a moment of prayer back to schools but couldn't make it a Christian
prayer. And so long as our essential protections are safe, it doesn't bother
me if courts in Alabama have the Ten Commandments hanging in the lobby. If I
ever find myself in an Alabama courthouse, I suspect the decor will be the
least of my problems.

Localism would also set liberals free to pursue truly progressive agendas in
their communities without risking a nationwide backlash. Recall that some
gay rights activists feared just such an outcome when San Francisco mayor
Gavin Newsom allowed gay marriages in his city. Barney Frank (D-Mass), the
only openly gay member of Congress, told the Boston Globe that he feared it
was a "distraction" that could hurt gay rights activists nationally. "I was
sorry to see the San Francisco thing go forward," he said.

Frank was right to be concerned, as candidates on the national stage were
painted with the broad brush of the "tyrannical" left with its activist
judges. States' rights would allow national candidates to respond that what
happens in San Francisco is an issue that only Californians need to decide.

Coalition-Building, Coalition Breaking

'De-linking' the national debates  even in part  from the culture wars
might also lead to the emergence of a new generation of Southern populists
to challenge the corporatism of the GOP. If you want to know how important
that is, look no further than last week's Louisiana Senate race, where
Democratic candidates Chris John and John Kennedy ran away from the national
party like they were being chased by hungry gators.

They wouldn't need to run from the top of the ticket if that ticket
represented the big tent of localism; they could be part of a progressive
coalition that was economically liberal and also reflected the social mores
of its varied communities. The conservative movement is built on just such
an alliance  known as the "fusionist" marriage of social conservatism to a
big-business agenda.

The potential for a broad, progressive coalition is clearly there. Last
week, new minimum wage laws in Florida and Nevada passed with 70 percent of
the vote. Montana passed a medical marijuana initiative and Colorado voters
called for a five-fold increase in their state's share of renewable energy.
The Democrats should learn from the grass roots efforts that brought about
better policies for those four so-called "red states."

Because at the same time, the religious right is beginning to grumble about
the GOP's big tent  they see that the Republican machine has made enormous
headway in deregulation, privatization and assaulting organized labor, but
aside from throwing the occasional bone to their base, the GOP leadership
pays little attention to the evangelicals' agenda after the ballots are
counted.

That means the Democrats have an opportunity to turn the tables on the
Republicans. If they were to use states' rights to answer those hot-button
social issues, the GOP would suddenly be the "obstructionist" party. And
that plays to one of our greatest advantages: conservatives need a divided
America but liberals don't. Republican leaders know full well that without
the culture wars, their socially conservative base would either start
looking harder at their economic policies, or just stop turning out
altogether.

Making Leftnecks

As a secular liberal myself, I am as loathe as the next lefty to give even
an inch to the religious right. I can't abide their reactionary primitivism,
and I am not sounding a retreat on social issues. But by choosing which of
those issues are significant enough to justify a fight on the national stage
and which ones we can afford to fight locally  even if it means losing them
in some states  we can reach a large swath of voters whose economic ideals
are as anti-elitist as their social views.

We'll make inroads with the Republicans' coalition when we stop telling
ourselves that social conservatives are too stupid to see past gays and guns
to their own interests. The truth is that they have a different idea of
where their interests lie. Our focus should be on where their goals and ours
converge: around healthcare, education, the economy and corporate
accountability, among others.

When we recognize that, we'll smarten up, take some of these hot-button
issues off the national table and start creating what Joe Bageant calls
"leftnecks"  working-class Southern populists. We can build a coalition
that embodies the finest aspects of liberalism: inclusion, tolerance and
concern for the needs of people with whom we disagree. That would take all
of the populist anger that has been shrewdly diverted to the "liberal
elites" and redirect it back where it belongs  squarely toward corporate
control of the American "free market." If the Democratic party is smart
enough, this is an approach that it can use to return to its roots  and
win.