I agree with Paul Seaton in this thread. The move from “liberal” to “progressive” was mostly a branding response to changing public understanding of the term “liberal.” I can’t find it right now, but in David Frum’s book on the 1970s he wrote about how the meaning of “liberal” changed for lots of formerly Democratic, white working-class voters in the 1960s and 1970s. To exaggerate a little, these voters thought of liberalism as having become pro-mugger, pro-crushing taxation, pro-welfare dependency, and pro-blaming America first. I’m old enough to remember George H. W. Bush mocking Mike Dukakis for refusing to self-identify as a liberal. He said Dukakis wouldn’t go on Wheel of Fortune because he was afraid that Vanna White would turn over the L-word.
The progressive label didn’t have that same stink to the swing-voters of the last dozen or so years. They hadn’t read the Claremont Review or A New Birth of Freedom. For the older voters, Woodrow Wilson was either a name they vaguely remembered from high school history, or maybe Dennis the Menace’s grumpy old neighbor. The younger voters probably lacked even that context. And progressive sounds pretty good. Progress is good right? For left-Democrats who were looking for a change of label and who wanted to differentiate themselves from the more moderate New Democrats, progressive was as good a label as any for the audience they were aiming at.
So how much did this change of label matter? My guess is somewhere between very little and not at all. Changing demographics (I partly agree with commenter Sam Haysom here), the changing media environment and the deep unpopularity of the last administration during a generation’s formative years, were each more important to the increasing political success of the center-left than the change of label from liberal to progressive. How many New Democrats/Blue dog Democrats/Red State Democratic Senators who won elections the last four cycles would have lost if Obama, Pelosi and MSNBC had gone by liberal instead of progressive? Maybe a few older white swing-voters who stayed home would have shown up to vote for Romney if Obama strongly identified as a liberal rather than a progressive, but then again maybe not. I see no reason to think the effect would have been large.
And let’s remember that even the label “socialism” is losing some of its stink. I can’t exaggerate how broken the right-of-center message machine is when it comes to talking to the majority of the country
January 22nd, 2013 | 7:44 pm
Pete, it’s interesting that you say that “the label ‘socialsim’ is losing some of its stink.” I remember, two or three years ago, when the Democrats were off on one of their hypocritical hissy fits over the “civility” issue, one of the examples of supposed incivility was conservatives’ describing Obama as a “socialist.” I specifically remember Maura Liason (then the leftwing spokesperson on Fox) comparing conservatives’ calling Obama a “socialist” to leftwingers calling Republicans Nazis or racists. So it appears that “socialist” still has some stink for Democrats when their adversaries use it to describe them.
January 22nd, 2013 | 8:59 pm
[...] From Liberal To Progressive » Postmodern Conservative | A First … Go to this article [...]
January 22nd, 2013 | 10:46 pm
It’s not so much just the change of label. I’m sticking with once anti-progressive became anti-welfare state/safety net simply (Tea Party), then progressive became defensive on the entitlement front and so was able to become liberated to be genuinely progressive on the social and cultural front without ticking off the working guy too much. That’s Obama’s speech. On the word socialism, I don’t see it coming back that much, but it too is getting untethered from History and has the capacity to become personal. Both History and Darwin in the forms sometimes embraced by the progressives of old are dead. Today is the day of personal liberation and personal security from the contingency caused by personal liberation. The bottom line is the persons alive right now, and not at all sacrificing them for some better tomorrow. And so Obama’s appeals to citizenship and being parts of some collective “we” are shallow and inauthentic. His cultural libertarianism is much more his bottom line, but it’s a relatively tame kind of liberation for the affluent (and not at all the bohemian fecklessness of the 60s). His interest in the causes of and the cures for the sinking middle class are minimal; they, after all, aren’t progressive enough to be interesting. I know I’m talking to myself when I say we live in the era unrelational personalism, but we are nonetheless. Evolutionary psychology–by affirming that we’re in some unrealistically one-dimensional sense relational animals–is becoming more and more conservative. Environmentalism, I admit, does push in some other direction a bit, but how serious could the oxymoron American pantheism ever be? Needless to say, I have been stimulated or deranged by all the smart and interesting comments in recent threads.
January 23rd, 2013 | 1:16 am
But Obama didn’t run as defensive on entitlements because he couldn’t. After all he gutted 500 dollars from Medicare to fund a new entitlement system. You are missing this essential feature of Obamaism. It is robbing aging and let’s be honest white Paul to pay young and minorty Paul.
Indeed, it seems to be gunning for a means tested system which will undermine the original everybody pays in everybody draws out, cosemetic egalitarianism that was a hallmark of social security and Medicare.
January 23rd, 2013 | 2:33 am
[...] I agree with Paul Seaton in this thread. The move from “liberal” to “progressive” was mostly a branding response to changing public understanding of the term “liberal.” I can’t find Source: Postmodern Conservative [...]
January 23rd, 2013 | 9:05 am
BUT Obama got people to forget he gutted Medicare–although gutted might be a bit strong. I remember at our local anti-Obamacare town meeting with our Congressman, the hall was packed with old folks paranoid about Medicare. In 2012 the old people got more afraid of Ryan voucherization, thanks to Obama’s skillful campaigning. The need for means-testing links some “progressives” with conservatives like Voegeli. In Vogeli’s opinion, the goal should be to undermine the cosmetic egalitarianism. And, he adds, liberals want to preserve entitlements as universal to keep people behind them.
January 23rd, 2013 | 9:54 am
Thanks Pete…that poll Edsall refers to genuinely shocks me. Anyone read his new scarcity book?
Civility to socialists in my book means always using the qualifier “democratic.” Obama was a member of the DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America. It’s wrong for conservatives to immediately peg that stance as Stalin/Mao-bound. Once upon a time democratic socialists helped us fight Hitler, and helped us keep, indeed pressured us to keep, W. Europe out of Stalin’s hands.
And Peter, that’s a great comment. Right now there’s no democratic socialist policy promising enough to really spark Obama’s radical embers…so he’s defensive and de facto all about personal liberation and personal security. He adds the rhetorical fire to keep the young, many of whom are “minorities,” from noticing how they’re getting robbed by older (often white) Americans, and to keep the just dogged-and-dumb liberals out there motivated.
But if we get in a crisis/opportunity situation where a major democratic socialist economic policy initiative does seem promising for a time…Obama will fire up again.
January 23rd, 2013 | 11:54 am
“It is robbing aging and let’s be honest white Paul to pay young and minorty Paul.”
This makes no sense at all in the context of other conservative arguments. Medicare and Social Security are constantly criticized as “bankrupt” and imposing great debts on future young people in order to support an aging population.
So when Obama cuts Medicare to fund a broader health care program, it’s robbing old people to support the young, but when Paul Ryan’s budget cuts Social Security, it’s to keep young people from having to support the old.
You realize how completely incoherent that line of argument is, right?
January 23rd, 2013 | 12:22 pm
It would be if I supported the Ryan plan. I don’t. I’m touched that you take me to be the fount of conservative orthodoxy though.
January 23rd, 2013 | 12:25 pm
There is also the argument that its slot easier to buy an annuity on your own with savings than it is to plan for medical emergencies. The legitimacy of Medicare is for me at least far greater than it is for a ponzi savings scheme.
January 23rd, 2013 | 1:36 pm
DJF, for older voters “socialism” still get a bad reaction. From younger voters not so much. It still wouldn’t be a good idea for Obama to go around calling himself a socialist but it gives some idea of how less negative “liberal” is and how the switch to “progresive” wasn’t that big a deal in terms of winning voters over. Where it is important is that it indicates they were at least interested in trying to win over people who were turned off by the Democratic party.
Peter, I do think that statist individualism is Obama’s bottom line, but no entitlement reform = much higher taxes + more centralized direction of health care resources. There was also an impled argument for greater discretionary spending and greater subsidies for green energy companies in there. It sounds defensive because he wants it to sound defensive but it is an implied argument for much higher taxes and much more direct government direction of the economy than we have now. Whether he or his successors get that… It was tough enough raising the rates on high earners
On the other hand, I would just note that, in a crisis, it is easier to increase taxes and make centralized cuts to Medicare than to phase-in the kind of reforms that Ryan might want.
January 23rd, 2013 | 5:32 pm
I would add that Ryan isn’t proposing a new welfare state program either like Obama is. It’s a lot different to argue that the money has run out we need to cut back than it is to say we want to spend that money we promised you on something else.
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