Back in 7th Grade I learned from teacher Warren Stoker than elections are won by coalitions. That implies compromise. I think most folks (but maybe not the loudest folks these days) want some form of mixed government that protects individual rights but gets the big stuff done with a minimum of corruption.
Libertarians are still cleaning off their name after voting GOP in 2000. The idea that government is by nature evil and needs to be pared to nothing but security functions rankles me, because it implies both denying that the will of the people can make a difference and endorsing a kind of authoritarianist.
However, there's a counter-movement.
After the last election I took this test, Political Compass, and scored a surprising "Libertarian Left".
A LibLib?
Direct opposite of Authoritarian Right, flanked by Authoritarian Left and Libertarian Right. Lower left on the grid.
Democrats typical of this are against banning abortion or nationalizing gun control laws. Montana is a hotbed of this new kind of thinking. I still love this great Salon article from 14 months ago on Governor Brian Schweitzer. He ran with a Republican for Lieutenant Governor as his ticket, and his accomplishments for last year are very impressive; progressive, but with the balanced budget.
He won his elections with ads -- and political instincts -- like this:
But you know, when they see you pick up a gun, they know you've used one before. When you pick up a gun and you put in a round and you fire one off, they know that you know what it's all about.
In my Senate campaign [Schweitzer ran unsuccessfully in 2000], I had a great campaign ad. I stood in front of one of my barns, and I said: "Montana is not New York City. We don't need a bunch of new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we already have." And then we moved to a shot where I was with one of my sons and my daughter, and I was holding a .270, which is a fairly good-size rifle. As I'm talking, I lifted the bolt, shoved in a bullet, put the safety on and handed it to my son as my daughter watched, and he touched one off. And as I was doing that, I was saying, "In Montana, we understand that passing responsibility from one generation to another with gun safety is part of who we are."
So it wasn't about guns, necessarily; it wasn't about family, necessarily; it wasn't about responsibility, necessarily. But it was the nexus of those.
The winner of the recent Democratic Primary for the right to take on corrupt GOP Senator Conrad Burns is John Tester. He's a farmer who's even missing a finger, for contraceptives being covered by health insurance, made it on lots of small rather donations by regular families, is in the Schweitzer mold.
Markos Moulitsas is a big supporter of these guys, and it goes to Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy (which scares the DC insiders and diverts campaign money away from their apparatus). He wrote a particularly compelling piece on The Libertarian Dem. He writes about how up to now Libertarianism have been mainly aligned with the GOP, then goes on to say:
The problem with this form of libertarianism is that it assumes that only two forces can infringe on liberty -- the government and other individuals.
The Libertarian Democrat understands that there is a third danger to personal liberty -- the corporation. The Libertarian Dem understands that corporations, left unchecked, can be huge dangers to our personal liberties.
Libertarian Dems are not hostile to government like traditional libertarians. But unlike the liberal Democrats of old times (now all but extinct), the Libertarian Dem doesn't believe government is the solution for everything. But it sure as heck is effective in checking the power of corporations.
In other words, government can protect our liberties from those who would infringe upon them -- corporations and other individuals.
Another contender in this mold is Virginia Democratic Senate Candidate Jim Webb, winning last week to go up against adoptive Cali-born Confederate flag fetishist George Allen. Webb is even getting fair press from the Cato Institute:
Webb is not your typical Democrat, which is why he had trouble winning the nomination over a lesser-known party activist. But he should be strong in the general election. He'’s a Vietnam War hero who was appointed Navy Secretary by Ronald Reagan and was an early and vocal opponent of the war in Iraq, warning in 2002 that "“there is no exit strategy."” He can appeal to both leftwing Democrats and moderates who are increasingly disillusioned with the war and the Republicans.
Virginia...winning Democrats...Governor Mark Warner.
The old Liberal tendency to think that just because the federal government under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt pulled us out of the Depression and won the biggest war in world history, it's the solution to every problem. But we know it's not true (and certainly not when guys who hate government are running it).
Without gutting government like the current swine, for this coalition to work Liberal Democrats need to have a little less faith in large bureaucratic structures.
I'm hopeful. I think there is a third way, one that is progressive while being thrifty.
After all, it wasn't just Conservatives who voted down Rob Reiner's tax-the-rich mandatory pre-school program.
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