Defining Extremism Down

It's two days old, but this whole article warning that Democrats are DOOMED because they've become too liberal is a genuine classic of middlebrow political journalism. The paucity of imagination on display in this graf, in particular, is striking:

Some party strategists note that the Democratic candidates are not embracing the extreme left. No major Democratic candidate is endorsing gay marriage, single-payer health care, or an immediate and total withdrawal from Iraq -- positions that have sizeable, if not overwhelming, support among Democratic primary voters.

As far as extremism goes, this is pretty pathetic. Are our political reporters truly incapable of even describing a policy position with a whiff of radicalism about it? Check out the Maoist International Movement if you want to see the extreme left. The inability to conceptualize a point of view on national security more radical than a desire to see the occupation of Iraq end very rapidly is truly benighted. I guess I'm an "extremist" by ABC News standards, but I know all these people with views to my left. Read Sawicky, check out the Project on Defense Alternatives.

All of us left of the center would benefit from somewhat demarginalizing further-left views. Insofar as the most extreme right-wing views of national security imaginable -- Bill Kristol's apparent belief that the USA should be perpetually at war with whichever country he was asked about most recently -- are treated as respectable elements of the discourse, while the most mild deviations from establishment conventional wisdom are branded as "extremism" then bleating about the need to build bipartisanship in foreign policy only leads us in ever-more-militaristic directions.

Comments

. . . them Maoists, what weenies.

Posted by Miracle Max | June 20, 2007 5:28 PM

I was thinking something this morning when, on The Today Show (SportsCenter was on commercial), Katie Couric's replacement segued to Andrea Mitchell with a line something like "...And the Democrats now, all campaigning hard to the left." This was followed by Mitchell (surprise) wondering if the Dems were too radical without any particular examples or even mentioning Kucinich.

Posted by T:Porter | June 20, 2007 5:32 PM

All of us left of the center would benefit from somewhat demarginalizing further-left views

Right, not least on too big topics: Israel/Palestine and taxation.

Posted by otto | June 20, 2007 5:35 PM

I'd say that a position with "sizeable, if not overwhelming, support among Democratic primary voters" is not extreme, almost by definition. I wonder what the author of those words thinks the word "extreme" means?

Posted by Matt Austern | June 20, 2007 5:53 PM

"Extreme" refers to things at the edges or ends, so a position shared by the leftmost 4/5 of the electorate is, by definition, "extreme". All you extreme heliocentrists take note.

Posted by rea | June 20, 2007 6:06 PM

I will not be de-marginalized.

However left you & the party might move, I will find a position to the left of you. Currently in the vicinity of the left-communism of Luxemberg, Pannekoek, & Perrone I do have Bakunin & Blanqui in my library. I'm not sure where Georges Sorel belongs.

This is of course mostly a joke. But I do read these people, because I think parliamentary or evolutionary socialism is a proven failure and because I expect economic catastrophe and social collapse is imminent. Any minute now.

Posted by bob mcmanus | June 20, 2007 6:12 PM

"Insofar as the most extreme right-wing views of national security imaginable - Bill Kristol's"

LOL! I think you're in no position to accuse political reporters of an inability to conceptualize radical views.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | June 20, 2007 6:41 PM

I used to call myself a moderate on my facebook profile. The point being that I basically agree with the majority of Americans on a majority of issues and priorities. It confused everyone because they soon learned that I was way to the left of the people pundits call moderates. I changed it since it was more of a posture as I am, in fact, probably more liberal than most Americans. Plus I don't like people thinking the number of liberals in the world is smaller than it is.

Posted by Jack | June 20, 2007 6:52 PM

When I was growing up, and I was learning about science, I was taught that what was important was how good an idea was, how strong its argument, how solid its logic.

I was never told to focus mainly on whether an argument was considered "extreme" or not.

I still don't care that much.

I really don't give a damn if 99.99999% of Americans think that an idea or policy is "extreme" if it really is the right idea.

There was once a time when giving civil rights to African Americans and forcing this at federal authority on the South was said to be "extreme".

On the other hand, there are times when the entire mainstream is happy letting the US foreign policy establishment arm thugs and dictators and genocidalists to massacre and slaughter and push into starvation hundreds of thousands of people throughout Central America and Southern Africa, just to use some more distant examples.

If an idea is good, if a policy is truly the best recommendations, the timidity of others' response to that is not my concern.

And if an idea is bad, if a policy is truly a bad option, the numbers embracing it don't interest me either.

Posted by El Cid | June 20, 2007 6:55 PM

I used to call myself a moderate on my facebook profile.

Facebook is, of course, a great example of the problem. The furthest left you can be is "very liberal." Presumably just about anyone who considers themselves too far left to call themselves "liberal" is going to take offense at the notion of calling themselves "very liberal."

Posted by John | June 20, 2007 7:30 PM

Presumably just about anyone who considers themselves too far left to call themselves "liberal" is going to take offense at the notion of calling themselves "very liberal."

I don't think I'm too far left to be called a liberal, I think it's a poor description. Liberalism concerns itself with different things than the left and the two can find themselves in contention. If you are looking at say post-colonialism in Africa, the South African model of post-apartheid where individual sufferage was granted in exchange for the white settler population to keep all the property it had stolen over the years is a liberal triumph, but not a left one. I'm just spitballing, and I'm not real clear where the break-away point is on liberalism and the left (and the New Left muddled that years and years ago), but they are certainly different ideologies.

Posted by Ed Marshall | June 20, 2007 8:32 PM

How dare you insult your Maoist fanbase. I shall now read Kevin Drum for all my Maoist needs.

Posted by Little Red Book | June 20, 2007 8:48 PM

"All of us left of the center would benefit from somewhat demarginalizing further-left views."

This is why Coulters, Limbaughs and Savages are so useful to the GOP. They make Trent Lott look moderate and reasonable.

Posted by DonB | June 20, 2007 10:30 PM

Actually, the Facebook problem could be solved if someone would write an application. I just took a look- there isn't one now. I don't know enough to make applications but if anyone does- or knows someone...

Posted by Jack | June 20, 2007 11:14 PM

The problem is that the parameters of our political discourse have been artificially positioned so far to the right by establishment media, particularly in the past 15 years or so, that any meaningful sense of liberal and left (I agree there's a difference between the two but see it as more of a sliding spectrum) has been seriously warped--at least in the media echo chamber if not in the public imagination. The mainstream media treats the Clintons and the drivel leaking from the New Republic as the template for what "liberal" is. If this isn't a clear indicator of the contorted nature of American political discourse, I don't know what is.

Posted by Warren | June 21, 2007 6:55 PM