tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post4759532844381725220..comments2024-01-04T08:02:29.500-05:00Comments on Attempts: The Liberal Argument Against Hillary Clinton: Vote for the Liberal!Stephenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16524368948187746248noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-34661707206422193842007-09-28T13:25:00.000-04:002007-09-28T13:25:00.000-04:00Rasselas, I don't see Stephen blurring those disti...Rasselas, I don't see Stephen blurring those distinctions. He is saying (and I feel no compunctions about paraphrasing him here, since he's made this case pretty clearly) that conservatism has failed the public in multiple ways, through wars of choice and human rights abuses and infrastructure collapse and health care neglect and a half-dozen other ways, and arguing that any candidate who claims they can offer an effective alternative has to seize the opportunity to challenge conservatism and articulate a liberal vision in all of these areas. They shouldn't pitch universal health care because of Iraq; they should pitch it because a lot of people need health care, and conservatism is wrong when it says we should leave that to the health insurance industry. The wreckage of conservative government may be most visible in Iraq (or New Orleans, or Minneapolis...), but it's a system-wide failure.<BR/><BR/>I really don't see Stephen making the arguments that repel you.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-82222627005802343902007-09-27T19:40:00.000-04:002007-09-27T19:40:00.000-04:00Politics, and policies, are matters of life and de...<I>Politics, and policies, are matters of life and death to real people. If we don't have universal health care coverage, people without insurance will die who would otherwise have lived. If we wage an aggressive war against Iran, people will die who would otherwise have lived.</I><BR/><BR/>Indeed, but not the same people. I think there is a traditional hypothetical involving a train and its tracks that might highlight some differences between adopting or not adopting a particular social welfare program and waging aggressive war in violation of the traditional and codified laws of war.<BR/><BR/>For the avoidance of doubt, I don't believe that war policy ought to be immune to criticism or attack in the political discussion on the grounds that that sort of attack harms social cohesion or some other chimera, and I am as enthusiastic about universal health care as the next apathetic slacker. I don't think I become a resident of the David Broder-Joe Lieberman Memorial Tar Pit just because I happen to be repelled by arguments that blur distinctions between deaths caused by our aggression and deaths resulting from the way the United States rations medical care.<BR/><BR/>Put another way, there may be a teleological suspension of the ethical, but the Democrats are no more entitled to it than the Republicans.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-12677582377346463482007-09-27T17:52:00.000-04:002007-09-27T17:52:00.000-04:00We probably won't agree on this.I think that the t...We probably won't agree on this.<BR/><BR/>I think that <I>the truth of the matter</I> is not irrelevant here. Yes, Clinton said a lot of nonsense about saving children, and Bush says a lot of nonsense about saving lives. But the <I>reason</I> they say it is because they are misusing something <I>genuinely</I> important to support bad policies. This doesn't mean its wrong or irrelevant or whatever when it is said to support <I>good</I> policies.<BR/><BR/>Also, I detect in your thinking -- such as the phrase "make ideological hay" -- an attitude I deeply disagree with, usually found on the right: when some horror happens -- some horror that has happened, directly or indirectly, <I>because</I> of political decisions (arising out of ideologies), they then say that we "shouldn't politicize" or "shouldn't play politics" -- often, "especially now". But politics isn't a game, and it isn't trivial, and it isn't about two equally good or venal sides trying to gain leverage over each other. Politics, and policies, are matters of life and death to real people. If we don't have universal health care coverage, people without insurance will die who would otherwise have lived. If we wage an aggressive war against Iran, people will die who would otherwise have lived. "Making hay" and "playing politics" buy into the idea that politics is about nothing: it's about matters of life and death, and the horrible results of bad (even malevolent) policies must be discussed or they won't be changed.Stephenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16524368948187746248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-49289057400024558192007-09-27T16:17:00.000-04:002007-09-27T16:17:00.000-04:00I have heard a great deal about the need to save l...I have heard a great deal about the need to save lives, what must be done in order to save lives, and the deference due to governmental actions stated to be intended to save lives, over the past six years. Perhaps as much as I heard about "the children" during what I expect we ought to start calling the first Clinton era, yet the children at home and in Africa and the Balkans didn't do all that well under the Slickster.<BR/><BR/>Less unkindly, I think the first paragraph of your answer suggests the distance between us: I am uncomfortable with attempts to make ideological hay of the war and the many, many wrongful deaths and other ugly things for which the Bush Administration is responsible. Pressed, I would probably admit that I believe that the horrors of war <I>do</I> render the ideological issues irrelevant, and the attempt to build a platform -- whether a social welfare platform or an imperialist one -- on the bones of the dead ghoulish at best. (A little purple. Sorry. I don't get to indulge myself in written work at the office very often.) The response might be that a winning campaign cannot afford the niceties of taste and scruple that people like me would prefer, to which I would say that you never know until you try.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-51403614407440477932007-09-26T18:31:00.000-04:002007-09-26T18:31:00.000-04:00Going backwards: I actually disagree with you abou...Going backwards: I actually disagree with you about the morality, because I think that "vindicate some longtime ambitions" radically understates what's at stake here: we are talking about <A HREF="http://stephenfrug.blogspot.com/2007/02/deamonte-driver-is-dead-and-you-can.html" REL="nofollow">saving people's lives</A>; also, just because the war is "important", doesn't mean that it's <I>irrelevant</I> to broader ideological issues. It was messed up, in large part, <I>because</I> of aspects of conservative ideology. And so its reasonable to show how those apply more broadly.<BR/><BR/>But at any rate I don't think this is just about the war, either. I think a lot of other things -- misuse of executive power, corruption, Katrina, that bridge in Minneapolis, the over-reach in the Terry Schaivo case, and so on and so forth, have also exposed many different problems with conservative governance. And I think that this confluence of things, from many angles, has given us an opportunity to show how conservatism fails in many different ways, for many different reasons. (In part this will require drawing connections between all these things. A few people are working on it -- <A HREF="http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/thebigcon" REL="nofollow">Rick Perlstein is on the case</A> -- but more need to step up.)<BR/><BR/>And you're right that 1992 didn't work. There are lots of reasons for that -- I think maybe (maybe) it could have worked, if we'd played it differently: which is why I'd like to see this one handled right.<BR/><BR/>But, in fact, I think this is actually a <I>bigger</I> opportunity than 1992, for lots of reasons. (The fact that something didn't work fifteen years ago is as much a confirmation of a moment being a once-in-a-generation opportunity as it is a refutation of it!) In 1992 the demographics were against us -- we were about to loose the white South, and the congress with it; now they're not. In 1992 we'd controlled Congress for decades; now they have, for fourteen years. And so forth. (On health care in particular, I think there is a lot broader sense that the system is broken and needs to be fixed than there was in the early 90's: things have changed a lot in those fifteen years.)<BR/><BR/>Not to mention the fact that we might have a full-blown recession by '08 too, if we're not lucky.<BR/><BR/>So I think I disagree with you across the board on this one. (Though as always, of course, I'm delighted you're commenting!)Stephenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16524368948187746248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13734864.post-23775861509651700932007-09-26T17:31:00.000-04:002007-09-26T17:31:00.000-04:00I am less than perfectly comfortable with your des...I am less than perfectly comfortable with your description of the "rare opportunity" arising from the wreckage of the George W. Bush era. Practically, because I think that the "people hate the war, so they'll vote for universal healthcare and the other things that I want" theory is flawed, at best. People expected great things in 1992, too, but there was only so much advantage to be gained from the unhappiness attending an economic recession. Morally, because planning to, and how to, leverage public sentiment about one event (e.g., a war that is bad in every sense) in favor of other, unrelated purposes seems wrong. If the war is as important as everyone claims to believe, then it ought to be more important than trying to vindicate some longtime ambitions.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com