"Liberalism Regained: Building the Next Progressive Majority" . . .

[OneBlueSky]

the August issue of Harper's has a Forum section entitled "Liberalism Regained: Building the Next Progressive Majority . . . participants in the forum, which took place at the New School University in NYC, include:

- Ron D. Daniels, Executive Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights;
- Eric Foner, author and teacher at Columbia University;
- Ralph Nader, independent candidate for President;
- Kevin Phillips, noted political author;
- Frances Fox Piven, author and teacher at CUNY; and
- Lewis H. Lapham, editor of Harper's.

just came today, so I haven't had a chance to read it yet . . . it should be posted online at some point but, until then, here's the opening salvo:

I. The Opportunity

KEVIN PHILLIPS: I don't know if the Democrats fully understand what a defining moment in American political history a Bush presidency is. The job approval of the first President Bush climbed as high as 89 percent right after the Gulf War but fell to 29 percent in the summer of 1992; he wound up losing in 1992 with 37% of the vote, the worst showing for an incumbent president since William Howard Taft in 1912. Our current President is the second generation of this esteemed line. His own approval rating got up to 90 percent right after the September 11 attacks and is now, according to the most recent poll, at 46 percent. Like his father, he's proved that it's possible to drop more than 40 percentage points within one administration.

ERIC FONER: Support for the war in Iraq has unraveled incredibly fast. And that would not have happened if there hadn't been so much opposition to the war to begin with, no matter how much Bush thumbed his nose at it. Also, we've finally seen the media turn on him. The media march along in lockstep in whatever direction they think things are heading: when they had the idea that Bush was riding high, you couldn't find an anti-Bush view. But now you turn on the evening news and all you get is how everything is going wrong. This is not because the media are controlled by liberals, any more than they were controlled by conservatives a year ago when they were sprouting the administration line over and over again.

RALPH NADER: It's because they were lied to, and they don't like that.

FONER: We're also starting to see a backlash against the religious right. On libertarian grounds, on privacy grounds. Americans don't want to see the government in league with religious people telling them how to conduct their lives.



p.s. same issue includes a poignant photo essay of American and Iraqi families burying sons killed in the war . . .

[bluestateguy]

1. Why is Ralph Nader on that panel?

Progressivism is in such bad shape in large part due to him.

[LearnedHand]

2. God bless Kevin Phillips!

He's my new hero! I've adored him since he was a curmudgeonly commentator on NPR in the 90s, and especially since he unleashed his wrath on the Supremes when they halted the Florida recount in 2000. Phillips' comment? "Theirs were the ONLY five votes that counted."

[Fovea]

3. I think that Kevin Phillips

is a man who has lived long enough to regret what
another, less human operative might consider
their greatest triumph, to whit, the GOP southern strategy.

I think that his existential moment came with Bush the elder.
he saw a connection between the Reagan economic model, and a bitter racist strain in the economic retrenchment of the upper class.

It seems that for a tried and true capitalist, Kevin urges
the progressives to get off the floor and fight, as though he thinks we need the dialectic tussle to keep the economy regular, as it were.

He certainly dislikes the effect of wealth on the process of democratic government.

[K-W]

4. Stuff like this makes me want to go into politics.

But sane political discussion is so rare these days.