( – promoted by odum)

For the past 20 years or so, there’s been a tactical argument in Democratic/liberal circles: Stand on principle and risk alienating independent voters? Or tack to the center in order to marginalize the Republican Party.

The latter idea has been dominant since the 1994 midterms, when the Republicans took control of Congress and knocked Bill Clinton on his backside for the remainder of his presidency. Monica didn’t help, of course; but Clinton’s aggressive triangulation was well under way before anyone had heard of that blue dress.

Ever since, aside from populist campaign rhetoric, national Democrats have mainly pursued a centrist course. Barack Obama has been basically a centrist for much of his presidency. He has diluted core Democratic principles in order to paint himself as the reasonable person facing a snakepit of naysaying extremists.

(As part of this strategy, Obama has occasionally indulged in the popular centro-Dem pastime of “kicking the hippies” – taking gratuitous shots at the left in order to burnish his centrist credentials.)

I never completely bought the triangulation argument, but I thought it warranted consideration. Not any more.  

I now believe that triangulation has been a dismal failure. It has played a large part in the continual rightward movement of America’s political center of gravity. And far from marginalizing the right, it has actually served to isolate and enfeeble the left.  

Remember the 1970s? When there was a broad national consensus on policies that are completely out of mainstream discussion today?

When top tax rates were incredibly high by modern standards? When the right to unionize was broadly accepted? When a strong social safety net was seen as crucial to a just society? When one Richard M. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency and opened the door to China? When Ronald Reagan was seen as a cartoonish excrescense of goofy California politics who was absolutely unelectable on the national level?

Yeah, those were the days.

The steady rightward shift of our politics is mostly due to the well-oiled, well-funded, well-connected conservative machine – from the Christian Coalition to the Heritage Foundation to Regent University to the Swift Boaters to the Koch brothers. But Democratic triangulation has played an important role; instead of actively resisting the rightward shift, Democrats have focused on softening its harsher edges. They’ve been chasing a “center” that’s a moving target.

In the process, the Democrats have ignored – or actively demonized – their left wing. They have abandoned their own core principles and validated the fundamental precepts of conservatism. Some examples:

— When Obama failed to pursue a public option, let alone single-payer, in his health care plan, the underlying message was that the private sector is better than government at providing health care – in spite of abundant evidence to the contrary. (The relative success of Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, versus the ongoing clusterf*ck of for-profit health insurance.)

— When Obama sought to continue the vast majority of the Bush tax cuts, and when he ultimately acquiesced in their wholesale renewal, he accepted the fundamental conservative idea that taxes obstruct economic growth. And when Governor Shumlin refused to consider a tax hike on the wealthiest Vermonters, he openly cited conservative orthodoxy: that such a tax increase would chase the wealthy away.

— When Obama filled his economic team with Wall Street executives, he endorsed the notion that Wall Street knows best – an idea that should have been thoroughly discredited by the 2008 crash.

— When Shumlin hired Neale Lunderville as his flood recovery czar, the unstated message is that when you need a tough job done in a hurry, get yourself a business-oriented conservative. Phil Scott has already made this argument. Expect to a lot more of it in the 2012 campaign.

— New Hampshire Governor John Lynch pulled a Lunderville himself, when he renominated Republican appointee Kelly Ayotte for a second term as Attorney General. By doing so, he legitimized Ayotte as a bipartisan political figure. (Which she most assuredly is not.) Lynch deserves a lot of blame for Ayotte’s rise to the U.S. Senate.

— When Shumlin repeatedly slams the VSEA for seeking to enforce a legally-binding contract, he reinforces the conservative view of unions as greedy obstructionists.

— When Peter Welch added his voice to the conservative attack on ACORN, he scored a dubious triple play:

1. He helped destroy an organization that had done a lot of good work on behalf of America’s most disenfranchised people.

2. He gave credence to the conservative lie that voter fraud actually exists on a significant scale.

3. He lent some of his gravitas to journalistic scam artist James O’Keefe.

Okay, let’s turn from principle to realpolitik. Triangulation is supposed to make your party more electable than the other guys. Has it worked?

Did Clinton’s centrism sideline the Republicans or prevent George W. Bush’s election? Did Governor Howard Dean’s propensity for hippie-kicking ensure a Democratic successor in the corner office? Did John Lynch’s centrism in New Hampshire prevent the Bill Loeb wing of the NHGOP from returning to power? Did Obama’s efforts at compromise in his first two years have any effect on the outcome of the 2010 midterms? No, no, no, and no.

Sure, there were other factors at work in all these cases. But there’s precious little evidence that triangulation has helped the Democratic Party.

Indeed, it has backfired. Positions that, 20 or 30 years ago, would have been seen as far-right are now accepted as one side of our political debate. The hard rightists, tea partiers and Christian conservatives now hold the balance of power in Congress and on the campaign trail – in spite of poll after poll indicating clearly that they represent a small minority of the electorate.

So ask me if I’d like to see Obama (or Shumlin) stand firm for liberal policies, even if it might mean short-term defeat, and I’ll say a hearty “Hell, yes!”

Barry Goldwater was a laughingstock in 1964, and his nomination doomed his party to defeat. But how long were the Republicans shut out of the White House? A whopping four years. And within 16 years, the Goldwater/Reagan wing had taken over the Republican Party. Today, an ideology to the right of Goldwater and Reagan is ascendant in the GOP. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society are under threat – from diehard conservatives, and from triangulating Democrats.  

Look at Ronald Reagan. Look at George W. Bush. Look at Bernie Sanders. People can respect a politician who firmly believes in something, who has the courage to stand on principle. Even if that principle is dead wrong.

Voters liked the Barack Obama of 2008, the figure who stood for something new and different. They liked him a lot better than the triangulator who occupies the White House.

If Obama had more frequently stood his ground, he may have lost more battles. But he’d be seen as more of a leader and less of a groveller, ever chasing the retreating shadows of McConnell, Boehner and Cantor. He’d be seen as that force for hope and change we all voted for, and he wouldn’t have to belatedly try to recapture the magic of 2008.

And the left would be far better poised for long-term victory.