tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604786551569475561.post895964482218000354..comments2023-09-19T18:16:04.878-04:00Comments on Jeff Epton's In & Out: What Do Progressives Want?Jeff Eptonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15032123875722494329noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604786551569475561.post-48700732248177476352010-04-12T09:54:19.341-04:002010-04-12T09:54:19.341-04:00"Antiquated socialist relic?" To whom ar..."Antiquated socialist relic?" To whom are we referring?<br /><br />I have somewhat less difficulty with the notion of the "hard left," because I assume you are looking for a term that will distinguish a certain political perspective from the merely liberal, but hard left isn't going to achieve that--there are no such types in Congress. Bernie Sanders, that antiquated socialist relic (?), is probably the most left member of Congress, but you can find harder left types even in the pages of The Nation, which is probably one of the places to look for the most left perspective that retains a chance of being articulated in Congress.<br /><br />Weiner is attractive, yes, but he's pretty awful on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a political position that frequently leads one to other foreign policy errors, like voting for the war in Iraq when the principled position was to stand on the House floor and unload a j'accuse at the perpetrators of WMD fraud and other expedient fabrications.<br /><br />Historically, various members of the Black and Progressive caucuses have functioned as spokespeople for left perspectives on individual issues; Ron Dellums from Oakland, Lane Evans from downstate Illinois and John Conyers from Detroit come to mind, but Dellums and Evans are gone and Conyers has aged beyond the challenge you outline. No one, including Kucinich seems well-suited for the task. <br /><br />But Kucinich is not standing in the way, and at least widens the dialogue. Why anyone would decide he is the problem remains beyond me. Besides, people in his district like him, get what he's about, and it would cost at least $1 million to unseat him. <br /><br />More important, I think, is the question of what a left agenda would look like and how to put it before the people. The truth is, it is much harder to function on the left in the U.S. than on the right. Anti-militarism and peace perspectives simply aren't manly enough, and most of the rest is pretty complicated and sometimes, even, counter-intuitive. That means left ideas need more time to articulate and bomb more often when packaged as sound bites.<br /><br />This, in any case, is the way one antiquated socialist relic sees the issue.Jeff Eptonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15032123875722494329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5604786551569475561.post-73716332485255317832010-04-09T10:29:30.686-04:002010-04-09T10:29:30.686-04:00I agree that primarying Kucinich is probably not t...I agree that primarying Kucinich is probably not the most important task for progressives at the moment, but I don't agree that it would be counterproductive. Kucinich is a terrible chief representative of the hard left, and as long as he's in congress, its hard to imagine anyone else taking up that mantle.<br /><br />Why is Kucinich so awful? Because nobody who doesn't already agree with him will ever be convinced to join him, which is kinda the point of politics. The hard left has suffered greatly from not having any compelling national standard bearer, and as a result it hasn't been able to do a good job at its primary responsibility, shifting the debate leftward.<br /><br />I'd love to see someone like Anthony Weiner take this on - charismatic, articulate and (from what little I've seen) sufficiently on the left to be a breath of fresh air, but not easily portrayed as some antiquated socialist relic, or as a pure ideologue. But as long as Kucinich is around, that's probably not going to happen.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11310916260404292728noreply@blogger.com