The Far Left

Joe Lieberman says Barack Obama's "got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America." Andrew asks what Lieberman can mean by this. I assume Lieberman is referring to Obama's overwhelmingly majoritarian position on Iraq. After all, it's been the key conceit of "centrists" like McCain and Lieberman ever since 2002 that to be for war in Iraq but somewhat aloof from the Bush administration is the centrist position. After all, it's the view adhered to be John McCain and Joe Lieberman and McCain and Lieberman are well known moderates so their views must be moderate ones and mainstream and anyone to their left is "far left."

That's the central conceit of McCainism and Liebermanism alike, and it's important to both of them to just keep repeating over and over again. After all, if they stop saying it someone might notice that whether or not either or both of them hold centrist views on some issues, they're the two most extreme hawks in the Senate at a time when 60+ percent of the population agrees with the orthodox liberal view that we need to lay down a marker for leaving Iraq.

Comments

Low information voters (i.e. 90% of them) will never notice because the MSM will never tell them.

Posted by Steve LaBonne | April 15, 2008 10:57 AM

HoJo is just stabbing a former buddy in the back. Is it obvious that HoJo still loves the Clintons. The funny thing is, I don't know what Obama did to cause HoJo to throw him under the bus like that since HoJo begged Obama to campaign for him back in '06.

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | April 15, 2008 11:00 AM

I don't know what Obama did to cause HoJo to throw him under the bus like that since HoJo begged Obama to campaign for him back in '06

But Lieberman famously said that the reason he was supporting McCain was because no one else asked him to campaign for them. Sounds to me like it's an ego thing as opposed to anything actually ideological.

Nothing more petty than a politician scorned...

Posted by Ethel-To-Tilly | April 15, 2008 11:07 AM

So say we all.

Posted by Matthew Struhar | April 15, 2008 11:07 AM

I think Obama may have lost the huge Lieberman-American vote when he promised to send all the college-educated adults & professional class employees to the rice paddies to produce under forced labor while they listen to re-educating healing proletarian worker songs.

Posted by El Cid | April 15, 2008 11:11 AM

From where this card-carrying Socialist -- DSA-USA flavor -- sits, Obama wasn't left enough to be my first, second, or third choice of nominee.

Of the Democrats I've voted for for prez -- probably Carter, definitely Mondale, Dukakis, , Gore, Kerry -- he's the least left, saving only Clinton, and only maybe.

The only thing 'far left' about Obama is his pigmentation.

They want to say 'nigger' really bad. Really, really bad. They're getting closer every day.

Till then, they have to spit out other labels the median voter's been trained reflexively to reject, and whether the labels make no sense or not is irrelevant. "Socialist" will do for now.

But the n-bomb is coming....

Posted by Davis X. Machina | April 15, 2008 11:23 AM

thanks again, CT

Posted by cleek | April 15, 2008 11:23 AM

Davis X. Machina - Right David, it is ALL about racial identity politics, and not Obama's leftist voting record. Clearly you haven't been paying attention to evaluations that Obama had the most liberal voting record in the US Senate, one of the most liberal ones in the Illinois State Senate, and who has a long-time coterie of people on the radical Hard-Left.

Posted by Chris Ford | April 15, 2008 11:28 AM

Extremely loose with the language, Matt.

In the first place, while Obama has no known plans for a Year Zero, much as that no doubt disappoints El Cid, he has made a perfect statement of typical leftist elitism recently which, while playing well in San Francisco, is easily spotted by an actual moderate like Lieberman as poison.

In the second place, Matt's repeated suggestion that there's something "rightist" about the war in Iraq is bizarre. A trillion-dollar attempt by the Federal government to enforce UN Resolutions and bring democracy to a distant culture that's never known it while boosting the power of the Executive and limiting Constitutional liberties at home, is about as "leftist" as policies get.

About the only thing that's consistent with a "leftist" position in Iraq is the fact that a number of people who self-identify as such are actively supporting our opponents in every way they can short of actually volunteering for the Mahdi Army. Making up lies about the origins and goals of the war, publishing classified intelligence sources and methods, inventing "war crimes" by high officials, and other things that provide aid and comfort to the enemy--now THAT'S leftist.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 15, 2008 11:31 AM

Keep repeating that, Chris Ford, and maybe it'll become true. Or maybe the universe has decided to take empirical reality in another direction.

Posted by phil | April 15, 2008 11:32 AM

Davis X. Machina is onto something. The GOP and the Versailles press corps all really, really, really want to lob the n-bomb Obama's way but since they can't do that, they have to settle for "Marxist" and "bitter" and "elitist" and "Osama." Just check out Dana Milbank's piece -- doughnuts, for Chrissake? Surreal. And the best we have in the MSM is milquetoast E. J. Dionne whose columns read like a castrato's aria.

Are we going to have to wait for every pundit and strategist over the age of 45 to die off or can Matt, Digby, Ezra, Josh, David Brock et. al. organize to, you know, do fucking something to combat McCain's press coverage? Matt's efforts to hammer home what McCain actually says and does and thinks are admirable; but we need something bigger, more focused.

Posted by BryklynLibrul | April 15, 2008 11:35 AM

Lieberman is desperately trying to matter. He reminds me of Jimmy Breslin's description of Giuliani. He called him "a small man in search of a balcony."

Posted by LFC | April 15, 2008 11:35 AM

A McCain-Clinton Unity ticket is obviously what this country needs after all this bitter division. It's the best of both worlds, like tranny porn.

Posted by Herb | April 15, 2008 11:36 AM

El Cid is right: that was a serious political gaffe.

Posted by jhupp | April 15, 2008 11:36 AM

The 'most liberal' senator at any time in the US senate is not a 'leftist', not in any meaningful way.

Bernie Sanders is the only conceivable candidate for the honor, more's the pity

The rest couldn't get past their local Labour constituency vetting committee. They'd be solidly located in the right wing of the the SPD.

The 'radical Hard-Left' looks like Michael Foot, not Barack Obama.

Posted by Davis X. Machina | April 15, 2008 11:36 AM

LFC

I first read it as a small man in search of baloney. My bad.

Posted by gregor | April 15, 2008 11:40 AM

Herb said... It's the best of both worlds, like tranny porn.

You're killin' me! Somehow putting together McCain, Clinton, and tranny porn just seems so appropriate. Too funny!

Posted by LFC | April 15, 2008 11:40 AM

It's an interesting dynamic. I'm not sure Joe is itching to call Obama a n*er, but I also don't think this is really about Iraq. Obama is taking the discussion on race to some uncomfortable places for some people. I just don't think people like Joe are ready for black politicians that aren't in the Jesse Jackson mold. Joe is happy keeping the black caucus as a sort of side freakshow. He's not comfortable with a man who is able to say, yeah, those pastors say some crazy stuff, but they have some legitimate grievances and the most important thing for us to do is actually keep moving forward. Joe would like to keep things frozen in the 90s where Clinton talks about opening new racial dialogues, but doesn't do any healing, just cancels wellfare for those wellfare 'queens'.

Posted by mpowell | April 15, 2008 11:43 AM

Robert Powell: Blah blah blah awesome enforcement of UN resolutions blah blah blah leftists working for defeat in Iraq blah blah blah fifth columnists blah blah blah.

Posted by El Cid | April 15, 2008 11:43 AM

It's simple: Americans may want out of Iraq, but nobody wants to change the fact that Americans perceive the third-world as an inconsequential backdrop to their story. Obama, meanwhile, is an anti-American Marxist in that he seems possibly prone (due to not suffering from cornball delusions about America) to counting the brown people who died due to American policy or weapons.

Posted by modulo myself | April 15, 2008 11:53 AM

Andrew asks what Lieberman can mean by this. I assume Lieberman is referring to Obama's overwhelmingly majoritarian position on Iraq.

I don't think this is about Iraq. I think the whole point of saying something like this is that Lieberman can't identify any particular position Obama takes that amounts to Marxism or socialism or whatever. Certainly opposition to the war isn't Marxist--just ask Pat Buchanan or Ron Paul.

Bushite Republicans, of which Lieberman is one, don't do issues.

Instead this is about branding, or tribalism. To give Lieberman credit, it's at least about non-racial tribalism, this time. But the history of American politics over the last 30 years or so consists of mainstream centrist Democrats like Carter and Clinton being tarred with the brush of far leftism.

McCain is sunk if the voters think about the issues, so he has to make the election a matter of us vs. them, instead.

Posted by rea | April 15, 2008 11:57 AM

Here's a "left-wing" position for you. Obama was recently quoted as saying that as President, his Attorney General would look into whether investigations of the current administration were appropriate. Money quote:

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity.

Another money quote:

Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

Talk about a lefty. A man who believes in "the law" and "the Constitution". What a commie!

I bet THAT's gotta' tighten up more than a few a**holes at Bushco.

Posted by LFC | April 15, 2008 11:57 AM

Posted by modulo myself | April 15, 2008 11:53 AM

Obama: too reality-based for America.

Posted by goethean | April 15, 2008 12:22 PM

Joe Lieberman says Barack Obama's "got some positions that are far to the left of me and I think mainstream America."

not surprising that someone who is so fond of Limbaugh would think Obama's "far to the left".

Posted by cleek | April 15, 2008 12:27 PM

Some of BHO's positions are to the "right" in the Bush sense: he supports a secretive Bush trade scheme and he supports massive IllegalImmigration. Others are a bit more to the left:

www.chicagoreader.com/obama/951208/

My post about Obama's smear of PAans has a list of links at the end with more information; looking it over I could see McCain doing some of those same things because, like Obama, he supports massive illegal activity for one reason or other.

Posted by TLB | April 15, 2008 12:29 PM

The illegal immigration freaks who post around here are kind of funny. In general, they like to try to use it as a criticism of Democrats. Problem is, whether they realize it or not, there's no way that a big-business controlled Republican party will ever kill their cash cow of cheap, illegal labor. If the Republicans are out of power, they might start campaigning on the issue, but you can be damn sure they'll never do anything about it.

Posted by mpowell | April 15, 2008 12:54 PM

Robert Powell writes "Matt's repeated suggestion that there's something "rightist" about the war in Iraq is bizarre."

i don't see this as bizarre in the least. after all, none of the neocons who pushed so hard to invade iraq would self-identify as a "leftist" in a million years. nor would dick chaney, etc etc.

the support for continuing the war is all coming from republicans.

Posted by dj spellchecka | April 15, 2008 1:00 PM

The always inane Robert Powell flings more poo:

"A trillion-dollar attempt by the Federal government to enforce UN Resolutions and bring democracy to a distant culture that's never known it while boosting the power of the Executive and limiting Constitutional liberties at home, is about as "leftist" as policies get."

Anyone stupid enough to swallow the "bring them democracy" BUSH-el of shit should just swear off voting for the rest of his life.

Posted by MoeLarryAndJesus | April 15, 2008 1:04 PM

There's no way Robert Powell can sincerely believe that supporting the war in Iraq is a "leftist" position. He's just indulging in pro-Lieberman hackery. Lieberman is first and foremost an Imperialist - and Imperialists include both center right and center left types. There has always been a pro-Imperialist tendency in American politics - running back to Hamilton and on through Monroe to Teddy Roosevelt, and then almost every post WWII administration. Generally in the US Imperialism has been an establishment center right position, it's never been really popular with the masses, either on the far right or the left.

Posted by vanya | April 15, 2008 1:21 PM

mpowell opines: In general, they like to try to use it as a criticism of Democrats.

Now, see my comment, printing it out and highlighting bits in order to help understand it better. Then, see my site or the sites of others who discuss this issue. I guess someone hasn't been paying attention!

there's no way that a big-business controlled Republican party will ever kill their cash cow of cheap, illegal labor.

And, the Dems and their puppets in blogdom are more than willing to help them, despite it being a winning issue if handled correctly. In fact, JohnKerry could have won on this issue, but instead he largely ignored it. Why, it's almost like there's something else going on or something.

Posted by TLB | April 15, 2008 1:27 PM

My reading is that Lieberman's lobbying hard for McCain's veep slot. It's the "bipartisan" and "mainstream" war ticket.

I get it that the Iraq war is deeply unpopular in a way that the Beltway herd still just doesn't grasp. But there is also something going on with people of my father's generation (including, unfortunately, with my father): They can stipulate that Iraq was a big strategic mistake, and maybe even support getting out...but if you dig down into their worldview, they actually believe that a Clash-of-Civilizations confrontation with Islamism is inevitable, and they tend to believe that it will take a broad strategic war-theater form, across the Middle East and into South Asia. And they will be attracted to the idea of old Blood-and-Guts McCain saddling up with his Sancho Panza, Li'l Joe Leiberman, to do what gotta be done.

I think it's that their formative political years of young adulthood engaging with the larger world were coincident with the hairiest chunk of the cold war--from the Chinese coming across the Yalu to the Berlin Airlift to the Cuban Missile Crisis to the crushing of the Prague Spring. They just think that this kind of big, hairy confrontation is in the cards, and that the whippersnappers just don't get it. So what we view as an effort to replace fiery World-War echoes with police procedure, cultural engagement, and wary containment looks like on thing to them: Appeasement. This could be the deepest divide to be fought over in the next presidency--and, hey, you could do a lot worse than wave young Matt Yglesias' book around when you're getting in your two cents'. ;-)

Posted by elle loco | April 15, 2008 1:41 PM

...people of my father's generation ... can stipulate that Iraq was a big strategic mistake, and maybe even support getting out...They just think that this kind of big, hairy confrontation is in the cards, and that the whippersnappers just don't get it....So what we view as an effort to replace fiery World-War echoes with police procedure, cultural engagement, and wary containment looks like one thing to them: Appeasement.

"A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it". Max Planck, A Scientific Autobiography and Other Papers, 1949

Posted by Davis X. Machina | April 15, 2008 2:50 PM

elle locoMy reading is that Lieberman's lobbying hard for McCain's veep slot. It's the "bipartisan" and "mainstream" war ticket.

Aside from Israel and foreign policy that serves Israel and cultural matters impacting his Jewish Orthodox faith - Lieberman is another Northeast, strong pro-choice Open Borders liberal.
There are three major VP choices for McCain that would be complete disasters:

1. Lindsay the Human Weasel Graham.
2. Condi "4 More Years of Bush!" Rice, reward me for the great job I did the last 8 years!
3. Good ol' "I voted for partial birth abortion" Joe.

Lieberman, however, would be a lock to get a cabinet post under McCain. Most likely as AG. Possibly at Defense.

***************
mpowell - Problem is, whether they realize it or not, there's no way that a big-business controlled Republican party will ever kill their cash cow of cheap, illegal labor. If the Republicans are out of power, they might start campaigning on the issue, but you can be damn sure they'll never do anything about it.

Bush is a complete whore to his Bush Corporatists. But that pack of assholes is not 95% of the Republican Party. Parties can change and voters have the means to show them the gig is up. Immigration is a growing crisis that is coming in conjuction with other major matters like America's fiscal wreck. The Right to Life Terri Schiavo fanatics are another piece of baggage. To survive, the Parties must change and move to champion the middle class. First one there is the winner.

Posted by Chris Ford | April 15, 2008 3:42 PM

vanya/dj--damned right I believe it. This is all labeling chicanery. Remember the Trotskyite-Fascists and their mortal enemies in the Comintern? This has nothing to do with "neocons" self-labeling, much less Republicans. There's no one more imperialistic than leftists, even when they think they're conservatives.

elle loco's dad is right. Police procedure, cultural engagement, and wary containment is certainly the right formula overall. But when we're dragged into a war by an aggressive, genocidal police state sitting on the key real estate in what has become a larger war, playing for a tie rather than trying to win is exactly appeasement. States matter, and states like Iraq matter particularly. Lieberman, and lots of other grownups, know this.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 15, 2008 4:48 PM

vanya/dj--damned right I believe it. This is all labeling chicanery. Remember the Trotskyite-Fascists and their mortal enemies in the Comintern? There's no one more imperialistic than leftists.

elle loco's dad is right. Police procedure, cultural engagement, and wary containment is certainly the right formula overall. But when we're dragged into a war by an aggressive, genocidal police state sitting on the key real estate in that war, playing for a tie rather than trying to win is exactly appeasement. States matter, and states like Iraq matter particularly. Lieberman, and lots of other grownups, know this.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 15, 2008 4:52 PM

dragged into a war by an aggressive, genocidal police state

Classic phrasing. Yes, we had absolutely no choice but to engage in an (extraordinarily expensive in terms of lives, money, and opportunity costs) war against a country that posed no security threat to the United States and had no substantial connection to anti-American terrorism! Really, the Bush administration had no agency at all, they were just pulled by the Relentless Tide of History!

Posted by Scott Lemieux | April 15, 2008 5:12 PM

Thanks Mr. Powell. QED.

"Playing for a tie"? Are you fucking barking mad? Or are you afraid of a bogeyman in a cave in Waziristan?

Wow--that's the thing about these Wile E. Coyotes: The confusion of ye olde "Existential Conflict" with trying to head off a highly-leveraged triple-bank-shot terrorist extravaganza.

Two. Different. Things.

Posted by elle loco | April 15, 2008 5:13 PM

Joe Lieberman believes that Americans should gladly sacrifice their sons and daughters in far-off Wars to safeguard Apartheid Israel. He also believes The Patriot Act should be tightened so that critics of that policy can be imprisoned. And, that our public schools should abandon American History and replace it with *Holocaust Studies. Anything to the "left" of that just isn't *good for the Jews.

Posted by Trevor | April 15, 2008 6:50 PM

"There's no way Robert Powell can sincerely believe that supporting the war in Iraq is a "leftist" position. He's just indulging in pro-Lieberman hackery."

Powell is a paid propagandist - and if he isn't being paid, he's a fucking idiot.

Really, the man (if he is male, and not some tranny snit, which is the way he writes) is a pure troll. His sole function in life is to get in here every day and post the same stupid, sterile, content-free bullshit that's been refuted here - and everywhere else over the last five years - a hundred times - until we learned that he's nothing but a right wing troll.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | April 15, 2008 7:34 PM

Scott Lemieux/elle loco--
We were dragged into a war with a genocidal police state in 1991, and played for a tie. Anyone who thinks this war somehow disappeared between that year and 2003 has a lot of reading to catch up on.

I agree entirely with elle loco on the extent to which we're threatened by ghosts from caves in Wiziristan, but we still need a reasonable resolution in the Greater Persian Gulf as a vital security matter.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 16, 2008 4:56 AM

Mr. Powell,

From our exchange the other day I drew the conclusion that you were, if wrong, at least basically reality-based and capable of reasoned argument. I now see I was mistaken in that conclusion.

So policies which YOU FAVOR are leftist? And yet leftists are also the enemy? And the people who promoted this war from the start are leftists even though THEY DENOUNCE LEFTISTS and self-identify as conservative?

Utterly incoherent. Care to take a mulligan?

Posted by Anonymous | April 16, 2008 9:02 AM

It's not my fault these people are inconsistent. Just look at Bush--he SAYS he's a conservative, but in addition to a liberal internationalist foreign policy he's supported protectionism for the steel industry, farm subsidies, has increased the size and intrusiveness of the Federal government to an extent that would make FDR blush. Some policies I favor are "leftist". Some are "conservative". Mostly, I'm a Radical Moderate.

I don't think it makes much sense to try to color-code major policies unless you're just trying to write simplistic campaign propaganda. I can't name a single major policy of the US since the New Deal, if not the Civil War, that hasn't been supported by a strong bi-partisan majority. That goes for everything from social security and Cold War containment to civil rights and the Iraq war. Can you?

Posted by Robert Powell | April 16, 2008 12:51 PM

They're only inconsistent if you think that 'left' and 'right' have fixed meanings across history. Clearly, they don't.

When you say things like "There's no one more imperialistic than leftists" you're engaging in ahistorical chicanery, trying to tar today's leftists with the positions of past leftists. There are no Trotskyites today calling for a Trotskyite foreign policy, not even in the fever swamps of the left blogosphere. It's a unfair characterization.

In today's political world there's no one more imperialist than rightists. And how do we know they're rightists? Because that's what they call themselves. There is no independent yardstick. The meanings of right and left have changed such that it would be inconceivable for them to think of themselves otherwise.

You don't hear opponents of the Iraq War hearkening back to Robert Taft or William Fullbright and calling themselves rightists. Or creationists calling themselves leftists because William Jennings Bryan was a Democrat.

When comparing past and present, what you call 'color coding' indeed makes no sense. Comparing present and present, however, it makes a great deal more sense. Certainly on foreign policy questions today it does. (Admittedly, it's true, it gets messy when it comes to economic policy -- there, left/right differences are much less clear since both parties suck up to interest groups they think will help them get elected.) Anyway, I like the sound of radical moderation although I suspect you and I would end up baking different kinds of cakes.

Posted by Anonymous | April 16, 2008 2:07 PM

As far as Trotsky goes, it's been pretty well established that most of the people being accurately labeled "neocons" started off their political life as convinced Trotskyites. Of course that leaves off the fact that "neocon" has fairly quickly become simply an inexact term of approbation like "welfare queen". One definition I've seen that sounds good to me is "a Jew with whom one disagrees".

If you look at things like voting records and party affiliation, you'll find that people all across the political spectrum supported both invasions of Iraq, although not for all the same reasons. Those who supported it for superficial reasons, like Matt, just changed their minds. Similarly, people across the political spectrum supported containment of communism, Israel, for many years the Vietnam war, and etc. I usually get pretty flippant on this subject because I consider most of this "identification", self- and otherwise, to be primarily a politically motivated charade. American politics is quite non-ideological unless one considers pragmatism an ideology. Our terminology is very confusing to people who live here in Europe as "liberal" has always meant believing in free trade, low taxes, minimal regulation, and individual freedom, while "conservative" always represented advocacy of a strong centralized State.

Posted by Robert Powell | April 17, 2008 1:59 AM