Liberals are the rightwing of the American Left

I prefer “Progressive” to “left-wing” as I am actually more towards the center of the Leftward side of the American political spectrum, not to be confused with some nebulous centrist population that is sometimes Left, and sometimes Right but always a complicated mix and simultaneous rejection of the one, or both. That said, I understand what this author is describing and agree with his categorizations (though I am not used to these framing terms and it is a bit confusing in places):

“The liberal-left divide reshaping American politics”

http://ift.tt/2yP7b5h

Quote:

Trump’s opponents are bitterly split. You can’t understand US politics today unless you understand the rift between liberals and leftwingers. By Pete Davis Roughly speaking, these two sides could be characterised as the “populist wing” and the “establishment wing” of the Democratic party, but even this terminology is a point of controversy between the feuding sides… Discussing a resolution to this conflict is difficult, because even calls for “resolution” can be interpreted as ideological statements. Wanting the Democratic party to survive and unify can be taken as an endorsement of the establishment, because the quickest path to intra-party peace is for the conflict’s leftwing instigators to get in line. Meanwhile, treating the intraparty divide as substantive – arguing that there is, in fact, a significant difference between, say, “Medicare for All” and “Obamacare” – can annoy liberals who believe that the so-called “divide” has been manufactured by a few disgruntled purists… To resolve our intra-party conflict, we must first understand it. I believe the two sides’ concerns can be grouped into three divides: the first over party loyalty, the second over how to win elections, and the third over the gap between Democrats and Republicans… The liberals’ best insight is that today’s Republican party is an exceptionally dangerous political organisation. It denies catastrophic climate change, is an almost-pure vessel for the corporate takeover of public power, has based its electoral coalition on aligning with white ethnic nationalism and authoritarian theocracy, and has instigated disastrous decision after disastrous decision over the past decades…. The leftwingers’ best insight is that the end-goal of electoral politics is not winning; it is the advancement of certain programmes and policies. As anyone who has watched the conservative ascendancy within the Republican party knows, internal criticism of party leaders is what makes leaders listen. As Frederick Douglass said: “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”…

it is a long article filled with a lot of interesting points to evaluate. I’m not sure that I agree that the solution he proposes is the best or only resolution possible. He proposes a fusion of the above Liberal and Leftwinger insights in a practice he calls “Vigorous Critical Loyalty.” The author’s description of this as a series of concessions that both sides must make in dividing up times for criticism and times for unity and party loyalty. The argument however, is very one-sided and largely ignores that the main reason the neoliberal DNC is, and has felt, empowered to treat the leftwing as irrelevant to how they intend to run the DNC, is because Senator Sanders and the overwhelming majority of the Sanders’ supporters, did shut-up, fall in line and ended up supporting and voting for Hillary after the primary ended, which earned them nothing but the DNC’s disrespect and denigration.

Perhaps there is a path toward unification for Progressives and neoliberals and I would consider this author’s piece as a Liberal opening gambit, but I wouldn’t expect any negotiated unity to look anything even remotely close to this, nor would I support this as an acceptable solution.

For the interested, the full article as opposed to the long, but shortened version, I initially quoted from the Guardian, can be found in the current issue of "Current Affairs"
http://ift.tt/2yQkKkN

(there’s a good Bernie article in that issue as well, which rather goes to my consideration that there is no real need for Progressives and liberals to join together so long as the Left candidate accepts that the majority of the people voting for the Left candidate will be progressives looking to move the country boldly Left. if the DNC wants to insure that progressives turnout and play a significant role in the party, and general election, they had better try a lot more open armed support and respect of, and for, Left thinking, public policy and representation, or they can see how far doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results works for them in 2018 and 2020 ------ “Bernie Sanders Isn’t A Democrat… Thank God: He advances true Democratic values without the party’s toxic political brand…” by Briahna Joy Gray http://ift.tt/2yRmV7W )

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2yUa9HH