Aftermath of the Conor Lamb election

I wrote prior to Tuesday's special election in Pennsylvania about how establishment Democrats could be expected to draw the "lesson" from either a win or a loss there along the lines of, well, what corporate Democrats always want: candidates beholden to wealthy donors and who hold "Blue Dog" (i.e., Republcican) positions on guns proliferation, abortion rights, the military budget, and corporate deregulation.

One way to look at this is to use a metaphor along these lines: the progressive Dems are the left/center left party, corporate Dems are the conservative party, and the Republicans are the raging reactionary Trump party.

That's only a metaphor, though, because the American electoral system with winner-takes-all districts creates a very strong incentive for a two-party system, and that's what we have. Despite the dissonance within the Republican Party over Trump's erratic foreign policy style and his protectionist rhetoric, there is remarkable uniformity over major issues like the military budget, massive tax cuts for the wealthiest, and reckless disregard for international agreements and treaty commitments.

It's worth stressing here that people generally assume that Barack Obama was a "left" Democrat. Republicans, of course, generally profess to see no difference between Democrats, Bolsheviks, and tribes of cannibals in a Tarzan movie. But Obama also repeatedly called for cuts to Social Security and Medicare as part of a bipartisan "Grand Bargain" that he apparently wanted intensely. So Conor Lamb in his Pennsylvania race was to the left of Obama on Social Security and Medicare.

The two wings of the Democratic Party have more substantive differences. I'd have to bracket military policy here, though. The Democrats have spent so long trying to reassure everyone they are "tough on defense" that few of them are willing to criticize even a world-historical boondoggle like the "missile defense" corporate-welfare program. They mostly aren't willing to assert Congressional war powers under the Constitution in a meaningful way. There are exceptions. Sanders, Lee and Murphy Introduce Yemen War Powers Resolution 02/28/2018:

And even there, only one of those three Senators is elected as a Democrat! Although, of course, Bernie Sanders caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee - who represents my Congressional district - has obviously been a leader in this regard, challenging bad war policies and criticizing intelligence agency abuses:

Gina Haspel’s role overseeing the Bush Administration’s illegal torture program should disqualify her from leading the CIA. At a minimum, our CIA Director should respect human rights & international law. https://t.co/JyfqAbMCAe

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 13, 2018

Tillerson was ineffective at State but Pompeo could be even worse. I served with him in the House – he denies the reality of climate change, opposes the Iran Deal & supports regime change in #NorthKorea. We need an experienced diplomat at State, not a rubber stamp for Pres Trump. https://t.co/ixIDag5XCd

— Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) March 13, 2018

But Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Joe Manchin, even Diane Feinstein are generally firmly in the Bipartisan consensus in favor of constantly supporting the military-industrial complex and pretty much anything the Intelligence Community wants to do.

Here is the corporate Democratic Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Tom Perez on the Conor Lamb election, DNC Chair: 'Republicans Are Understandably Quaking In Their Boots' Velshi & Ruhle/MSNBC. He gives the safe, poll-tested answers in this interview withStephanie Ruhle, the kind that are guaranteed to make the listeners eyes glaze over in 60 seconds time:

Perez says that Lamb was "talking about" various issues including "pension security." Is it really too much to expect the DNC chair to uses a moment like that to say that Lamb campaigned against the cuts that Republicans will make to Social Security and Medicare unless we stop them? Apparently, it would be. But he rolled along with Ruhle in chatting about the horse race. Also, Tom, it probably not the best choice to say that African-American voters in Doug Jones' Alabama Senate race were the "linchpin" of the Democrats' success. I'm just sayin'.

Ruhle also picks up the Republican/corporate Dem theme that ludicrously says that Conor Lamb ran as a Republican. Ed Kilgore takes down the Republican spin in No Clear Winner Yet in Pennsylvania Special Election, But the GOP Is the Clear Loser New York 03/14/2018:

Yes, this is a special election; some might imagine that in a regular election, such as the one in November, more Republican voters will show up. The problem with that hypothesis is that turnout today was at full midterm levels. There’s no reason to think turnout patterns in November will be more favorable for the GOP, particularly given the massive Trump administration attention that this district got during this contest.

Another Republican rationalization we have already heard from the Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito is that Conor Lamb is not a real Democrat (because he was nominated by a convention and didn’t have to win the votes of left-bent primary voters), and thus his performance does not show how real Democrats will do in November. But, by any standard, Saccone is a real Republican who ran more than ten points behind the normal GOP vote in PA-18. And Lamb was lifted to parity with Saccone by the very same labor movement — battered and diminished as it is — that will be fighting for Democrats in swing districts all over the country. Dismiss labor, dismiss energized rank-and-file Democrats, and dismiss the ability of the Donkey Party to find suitable candidates like Lamb, and you’re well on the way to underestimating the likelihood of a Democratic wave in November. [my emphasis]

Others suggested better lessons for the Democrats to draw from the experience:

"Organized labor built western Pennsylvania."
This is a nice touch from young Mr. Lamb.

— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) March 14, 2018

Here’s the lesson Dems in blue collar America should take from @ConorLambPA: run with labor and against national party/Pelosi. @PHP2018 #bluewave

— Krystal Ball (@krystalball) March 14, 2018

Pierce expounded on the implications in his distinctive style (Conor Lamb's Victory Matters, and Paul Ryan Should Be Scared Esquire Politics Blog 03/14/2018):

There will be some attempt now to minimize what the voters in that district did on Tuesday night. Rick Saccone was a dullard of a candidate. (True.) Conor Lamb is personally going to run Nancy Pelosi out of national politics, so he’s not really a Democratic candidate. (Please to be giving me a break.) It’s a long way until November and Things Can Still Happen. (This theory depends vitally on the president* suddenly becoming Up To The Job. Yeah, right.) This is whistling very loudly past a very large graveyard. This was a Republican district. It was built to be a Republican district in perpetuity, which is why its days are numbered right now.

In the latter days of the campaign, the Republicans abandoned their economic pitch that was based on the president*’s ability to convince congressional Republicans to pass a massive plutocrat’s wet dream of a tax cut. This was supposed to be the magic bullet in this election. Instead, Saccone decided to let the traditional culture-war boogeypersons out of the closet.

On Monday, for example, Conor Lamb was a wild-eyed "libtard" who was going to let undocumented immigrant doctors perform abortions on your 10-year-old daughter in the middle of a mass gay wedding in Greene County. On Wednesday, according to those same Republicans, Conor Lamb was basically Mark Meadows in Democratic drag. Are the Republicans pretty well and truly fcked up as a party right now? Signs point to “Yes.”

Establishment "identity politics"

I'm still cautious about using the term "identity politics" because it doesn't yet seem to have achieved a reasonably stable meaning in the American political vocabulary. And the "Identitarian" movements in Europe are a small but militant and influential group among the far right.

The term was tossed about a lot in connection with the 2016 elections. It was often used by pundits to distinguish Hillary Clinton's pitch that emphasized civil rights for women and minorities from Bernie Sanders' emphasis on economic issues. while this wasn't entirely off-base, "identity politics" still carries a pejorative connotation. Especially among Republicans. Which is why some Democrats take care to emphasize that Trumpism is very much white identity politics. Dibgy Parton recently wrote, "This is the fundamental contour of American politics. When the two parties take opposite positions on slavery, now racial equality, we are divided. It's hard to believe that we are back to this place, but we are. And we can try to ascribe that to other motives all we want, it won't change anything." (It's white supremacy, people. It's always been white supremacy. Hullabaloo 02/04/2018)

But whatever term we use for it, it has become common in the internal arguments within the Democratic Party for the corporate Democrats to try to accuse progressives of being deficient in their concern for women's and minority rights. On the face of it, this doesn't make much sense, since the Sanders wing of the party is very much in favor of women's rights, including abortion rights, and of protecting minority civil rights, including affirmative action. The key difference is that the Democratic progressives also support New Deal economic policies, while the corporate Democrats are on board with the neoliberal economic agenda which is mostly in agreement with Republican positions.

After the 2008 and 2016 primary campaigns, it is now pretty much standard practice, at least at that level, for female candidates to try to portray male opponents and minority candidates to portray theirs as anti-black, anti-Latino, etc. In some cases, it's more objectively accurate than in others. But politics is politics. It's part of the mix. Whether it's effective or not depends on a lot of variables, including who is making the criticisms and, obviously, how the target audiences process the attacks.

I've expressed concern before about the Gillibrand Standard applied in the defenestration of Al Franken by his fellow Democratic Senators in 2017. I'm worried that the lessons Republicans have taken from it is to prepare to deluge Democratic candidates in October 2018 with frivolous allegations of sexual harassment. (Which doesn't exclude their being able to find some real ones.) See my posts: Kirsten Gillibrand as Presidential candidate 12/12/2017; The Gillibrand Standard Takes Out a Female Candidate? 12/17/17; Two weeks too late 12/19/17

Branko Marcetic writes about the use of "identity" issues against progressives in Only When It Suits Them Jacobin 02/02/2018.

During the primaries, Gloria Steinem and Madeleine Albright appeared to admonish young women for favoring Bernie Sanders over Clinton. Numerous liberal feminist writers insisted on the importance of getting Clinton into the White House, regardless of how centrist she may be. “Not electing a woman, again,” warned Rebecca Traister, would be “much more than symbolic.” In a now-deleted post on David Brock’s Blue Nation Review, Clinton loyalist Peter Daou explained that, “[Sanders’] views notwithstanding,” he was “a white male who has been in Congress for over a quarter century,” making him the “definition of establishment,” while Clinton, solely by being “a woman attempting to break the ultimate gender barrier” was “the definition of anti-establishment.”

This line of attack continued into 2017, when similar claims were used to deflect substantive criticisms of potential presidential candidates. Skeptics of Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Deval Patrick — three establishment Democrats floated as 2020 contenders who also happen to be black — were told they were simply motivated by bigotry, to the point where some critics were blithely misidentified as white men. In the words of Briahna Joy Gray, liberal discourse became “a world in which personal identity [is] shorthand for ‘progress’ … and ‘white man’ [is] an epithet.”

Howie Klein of Blue America comments on that article at his Down With Tyranny! blog in an apparently ironically-titled post, My Budding Romance With The DCCC, The Blue Dogs, The New Dems And EMILY's List 02/06/2018. "I like his line of thinking," he writes of Marcedtic's article, "but he wastes it on [Chelsea] Manning and [Paula] Swearengin, one step up from vanity candidates." But Klein also stresses, "The tragedy of all those walking garbage candidates the DCCC--along with the Blue Dogs, New Dems and EMILY's List-- try to pass off as real Democrats is that most of them have-- or had before the DCCC chased them away-- fine progressive candidates. Don't be fooled."

Zaid Jilani calls attention to establishment Dem primary mischief in Democrats Anonymously Target Muslim Candidate, Questioning His Eligibility to Run for Michigan Governor The Intercept 02/01/2018.

Charles Blow also uses the establishment-Dem trope here, somewhat carelessly equating Trump's vote with white working-class voters assumed to be primarily motivated in their voting by white identity issues, "He [Trump] was working-class white America’s rebuff to an erudite black man and a supremely experienced woman. Trump’s defects had been validated. He was loved among those who hate." (my emphasis; Constitutional Crisis in Slow Motion New York Times 02/05/2018)

Corporate Dems: they just can't help themselves

George Lakoff has spent years advising the Democrats to stop adopting Republican framing of political issues. He talked about it in this interview with Paul Rosenberg, This Is Why Conservatives Win Salon 11/22/2014. He talks there about some of the scientific and philosophical ideas behind his theory.

But what I consider most important in his advice to Democrats is that they need to stop framing issues in Republican terms. Here's how Lakoff puts it in the interview:

The reason for that is that in the brain, there’s a hierarchy of frames, which is there in neural circuitry. When you strengthen something lower in the hierarchy that implies strengthening things up higher in the hierarchy, which is the way that neural system works. So that is why conservatism has come as far as it has in the last 30 years. The conservatives have been using their language, getting it out there on all the issues, and progresses have done the opposite.

The reason for this is really interesting, because progressives think that they have to speak to the other guy in the other guy’s language. You’ve got to speak their language for them to understand it. It’s exactly the wrong way. Because as soon as you use conservative language, it activates conservative frames, which activates the conservative moral system, which strengthens it, and weakens your own. [my emphasis ]

A classic example is the long-time habit of Democrats framing the right to abortion by saying they are personally opposed to it, but what protect women's right to choose. For Hillary Clinton, that meant for years that she said that "abortion should be safe, legal and rare." Those formulations play to the conservative frames, because they are an obvious Mugwump way of saying, "I agree that abortion is wrong but I want people who want to do that wrong thing to have the right to do that."

All the while the conservatives have been arguing that abortion is murder, people who do abortions or have them are "baby-killers," and America since Roe v Wade in 1973 is worse than Hitler Germany and the Holocaust because of all the "unborn babies" that have been aborted since then. This bit from Pat Robertson in 1992 was unfortunately all too typical of what respectably Republican Christian Rightists still say (Robertson Letter Attacks Feminists New York Times 08/25/1992):

A fund-raising letter written by the television evangelist Pat Robertson in opposition to a proposed equal rights amendment to the Iowa Constitution suggests that feminists want women to kill their children and practice witchcraft.

The equal rights amendment, on which Iowans will vote Nov. 3, is a broadly worded measure that would bar sex discrimination.

But Mr. Robertson's letter, distributed late last month to supporters of the evangelical organization Christian Coalition, described the proposal as part of a "feminist agenda" that "is not about equal rights for women." Claims of 'Anti-Family'

Instead, the letter said, "it is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians." [my emphasis]

There was definitely a lack of symmetry between the two parties on that issue. Hillary stepped up her game on the abortion issue during the 2016 Presidential campaign, straightforwardly defending the right to abortion.

But the old Democratic Leadership Committee (DLC) with which the Clintons were closely identified was all about framing moderately liberal positions to sound like conservative ones. And Hillary had a bit of a present-day relapse here (Emma Gray, Hillary Clinton: ‘There Is Nothing Elitist About Fighting For Women’s Rights’ Huffpost 05/04/2017):

“For a lot of women, it stung to realize that perhaps our country hadn’t come as far as we hoped; that not only are sexism, racism, misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia still with us, but they run deep,” Clinton said. “And a lot of troubling ideas have been elevated in the weeks and months that followed, including the ridiculous, insulting notion that we only care about women’s rights in certain parts of our country ― not in what some in the press call ‘real America.’” ...

“Women’s issues aren’t minor issues,” she continued, firmly. “They’re not luxury issues to address after everything else is resolved. They are central to human rights to economies to our national security, and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. There is nothing elitist about fighting for women’s rights, equality and opportunity.” [my emphasis]

The first part sounds like the current rhetoric in the ongoing corporate Democrats' attack on Sanders- and Warren-style economic progressives. The accusation that Hillaryites "only care about women’s rights in certain parts of our country ― not in what some in the press call ‘real America’" is one that I literally haven't encountered anywhere.

Her comment, “Women’s issues aren’t minor issues,” is also part of the current corporate Democratic attacks on progressives. But, more than that, it falls into exactly the trap that Lakoff emphasized in the title of one of his books, Don't Think of An Elephant. That's one of his favorite examples, because if you say "don't think of an elephant," it immediately makes the listeners think of an elephant.

So in that formulation just quoted, Hillary could have made the same points by saying things like "women's issues are central concerns for working class and middle class women and men, as well." But instead she invoked unnamed parties who think such issues are "minor" or "elitist." Instead of, for instance, criticizing "the elite" for not paying attention enough to critical women's issues or outright opposing them.

She knows how to do that, because she went on to talk about the health-care debate in a more straightforward mode:

Clinton was particularly critical of the Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and roll back funding for women’s health care both domestically and internationally. ... “Over the last 100 days, this Congress and administration have been working really hard to turn back health care ― to turn back health care for 24 million people, but it would affect 180 million people,” she said. “Even today, they’re trying to force through that health care plan.”

Despite their loyalty to corporate elites, the corporate media have never been especially friendly to the Clintons, and their reporting is inaccurate or openly hostile. So we always need to be cautious about jumping to conclusions about reports like this because they may report them in a way that doesn't necessarily convey the actual context and tone of a speech like that. (As of this writing, I haven't located an online transcript or video of the speech.)

But it certainly seems like the establishment Dems are continuing their approach during the primaries in 2016 of trying to paint Democratic progressives as "Bernie Bros" not sufficiently committed to women's issues. Politics is politics.