The Decline of the Polarizing Left?

There's been some recent commentary suggesting one of the biggest losers in primary season '08 is the angry left.

With top hard-left candidates John Edwards and Dennis Kucinich already out of the race, have the radical netroots Democratic Party activists sunk to irrelevancy?

Dan Gerstein made an interesting observation on this over the weekend, at the Wall Street Journal. He argues that while the Clinton-Obama South Carolina results appeared to resolve tensions over race and politics, the underlying significance of Obama's victory was to relegate the Daily Kos angry hordes to the sidelines of the party:

This conflict is not about ideology but about style. The truth is, over the past several years Democrats have bridged or buried most of the major issue splits that hobbled the party in the past, as evidenced by the absence of big policy debates in this campaign. That's left us to stew, particularly in the wake of John Kerry's embittering loss in 2004, over how we fight the other side. There is a clear generational split.

The Kossacks and their activist allies -- who skew toward the Boomers -- believe that Republicans are venal bordering on evil, and that the way Democrats will win elections and hold power is to one-up Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics. Their opponents within the party -- who skew younger and freer of culture war wounds -- believe that the way to win is offer voters a break from this poisonous tribal warfare and a compelling, inclusive vision for where we want to take the country.

The country got an initial taste of this tactical tussle in 2006 when the Lieberman-Lamont Senate campaign in Connecticut went national -- and an initial test of the relative merits in the general-election portion of that race (in which I was Joe Lieberman's communications director).

With a discredited Republican candidate in the race, the choice came down to two Democrats who actually agreed on most issues outside of Iraq, but differed on the kind of change we need in Washington. Mr. Lieberman called for a new politics of unity and purpose; Mr. Lamont mostly called for Messrs. Bush's and Lieberman's heads.

The hope candidate soundly beat the Kos candidate -- Kos actually taped a commercial for Lamont -- by 10 points. More importantly, Mr. Lieberman won independents (the biggest voting bloc in the state) by 19 points, which is all the more remarkable because they opposed the war by a margin of 65%-29%.

This year's Democratic nominating battle is a far better barometer of the respective generational approaches within the party. That's because it is happening within the context of a true intra-party competition, there is no real disagreement on Iraq or any other core issue, and there is no incumbent. Not least of all, the two young attractive change candidates (Edwards and Obama) running against the establishment candidate (Hillary Clinton) have been offering opposite conceptions of change.

Mr. Edwards, after running as the sunny son of a mill worker in 2004, returned last year as the angry spear carrier of the hard-line left, running on a dark, conspiratorial form of populism and swapping in corporations for Republicans as the villain in his us-versus-them construct. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, has not just been selling possibilities and opportunities, but reconciliation and unity -- and, god forbid, promising to work with Republicans to meet the country's challenges. (Not surprisingly, throughout 2007, Mr. Edwards was the runaway favorite in the regular Kos reader straw poll -- besting Mr. Obama by 21 points as late as Jan. 2, 2008.)

Now that Mr. Edwards has formally dropped out of the race, we can say it's official -- hope and unity crushed resentment and division.

That's an especially perceptive analysis of Democratic Party dynamics this year.

Note, though, that The Caucus also weighed in on the declining significance of the polarizing left in '08:

During the last five years, no movement has had as great an impact on progressive politics as the liberal blogosphere. Built from grassroots anger over Democratic leadership support for the Iraq war in 2002, liberal bloggers have chastised party leaders who backed President Bush, causing many prominent Democrats to reverse — and even recant — their positions on the war. Just as impressively, the blog voices on the left have played a critical role in pushing less visible issues — like electronic voting machines, bankruptcy legislation and telephone companies’ liability in wiretapping programs — into the mainstream....

But notwithstanding this stunning success, this week’s withdrawal by John Edwards, coming a week after the departure of Dennis Kucinich, means that both of the preferred presidential candidates of the liberal blogosphere are now out of the race. Instead, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the two candidates who have drawn some of the sharpest criticism on progressive blogs, are the only ones who will make it to Super Tuesday....

The blogosphere has had impressive electoral success in Senate and House races, especially in 2006. But at the presidential level, while the blogosphere has been effective in changing the political debate and the party’s direction, it has been less successful in helping its preferred candidates to victory. Why?

The article offer three explanations, of which this one's most compelling:

The blogosphere advances confrontational politics, and winning presidential campaigns are exercises in uniting the country. One way in which the blogosphere has had the greatest impact on Democratic leaders has been to encourage — demand — that they take stronger stands against President Bush and Republican leaders in Congress. Blog-backed winners in Senate races — like Jim Webb and Jon Tester — are classic examples of the feisty, stand-up/stand-tough candidates that the blogosphere applauds. But for many reasons, that sort of approach isn’t as effective in presidential campaigns, where leading candidates in both parties seek victory by emphasizing their ability to “bring the country together,” “to be a uniter,” to be “a president for all Americans.” As a result, the blogopsheric voice that has been so successful in calling the party to action, has not yet found the right pitch for advocating a particular candidate in a Presidential campaign.

Read the whole thing.

I've long noted how intensely the hard-left netroots suffers from hubris and megalomania (especially Markos Moulitsas)

I think it's premature to count them out of left-wing politics, however.

Antiwar and GOP-bashing online hordes will continue to bully Democratic Party centrists in Congress and around the country in electoral contests.

The netroots movement - with its victory in backing Ned Lamont over Joseph Lieberman in 2006 - is a case study in the politics of fear striking at the heart of every Democratic incumbent worried about a challenge from the left in their state's primary.

In Congress, although antiwar hardliners have conceded defeat in the current battles with the Bush administration over Iraq, look for the polarizing left to be back with a vengeance come November, especially in the case of a victory for the Democratic ticket.

The online masses have a proven ability to raise massive amounts of money, and this influence is likely to grow in the years ahead.

What needs to happen?

Regular folks need to come right out and say they're disgusted with the demonization politics practiced by the most vengeful practitioners of radical left wing politics. Joseph Lieberman ultimately handed the netroots a defeat, and in 2007 state races the GOP did fairly well (Bobby Jindal in Louisiana is an especially striking example, given the outrage over Hurricane Katrina and alleged Bush adminisration neglect national infrastructure), so goodness can prevail over the nihilist politics of dread.

So, as good as these essays are, conservatives need to be prepared for some of most intense left-wing attack politics the political system's ever seen.