From TPM Reader DN …
Josh,
No need to respond to this email, but I have a suggestion for a worthwhile blog post.
I’m a white, southern male, jwho graduated from [XXXXXXXX] in 1999. I was a varsity athlete, a history major and considered myself a moderate in both temperament and ideology. I even identified with certain aspects of “conservatism” and was eager to criticize the worst elements of both parties, etc. etc.
When I found your site, you had a similar sort of “New Democrat” approach. You talked a lot about ideas and while you were certainly a Democrat, but not in a partisan or overly ideological way. I think we would agree that ideas matter, both parties overreach, had problems with trial lawyers and unions, etc.
What I first loved about your site is gone, however, but I don’t blame you. I blame Bush et al. And that’s a shame. I feel like I lost a real part of me is gone, taken by Bush and the greater Republican movement. That all of our efforts must focus on opposing each and every assertion made by this group; detailing, chronicling and exposing every lie, fallacy, and evil act. Clearly, you too realize this is the only reasonable tactic for us to pursue.
The era of ideas, debate, and moderation is gone (for now), not by our choice, but by theirs. That is Lieberman’s problem and an ever shrinking number of holdouts. I really am angry about the loss of a worldview and approach that I valued. Your site’s transition is one small bit of evidence of that loss.
I’d love to hear your view of the evolution of your approach to your politics, your writing, and your profession.
All the best,
DN
PS. I don’t view your site’s metamorphosis as “bad,” but as a necessary move in a broad effort.
I have mixed feelings about what DN has to say. But I do recognize a lot in it I identify with. TPM has always been pretty aggressive and pugilistic in its politics. The site, after all, started during the 2000 recount, the founding political bad act from which, you might say, everything else followed. And some of the difference in the site isn’t because of changes in my politics or changing political times. Some comes from a difference in what I do. I now publish three or four sites, depending on how you count them. So I don’t have as much time as I used to for writing at length. That’s something I regret and it’s something I plan to change over the next few months. But that’s another matter I’ll get to later.
With all those caveats though, there is a difference. And I think at some level or another, it’s one almost everyone in the center-left can relate to, at least at some level. For my part, I don’t feel my politics have changed much over the past half dozen years, if by that we mean my basic political orientation, policies I believe in and don’t, basic understanding of how the world works and so forth. Many people who read my site are much more to the left politically than I am. And occasionally, some issue will come up where that fact suddenly becomes evident, often to people’s surprise and sometimes anger.
I was going to start by saying that what’s changed for me is that the country I know and value is under attack. But that’s not quite it.
I live in Manhattan and have a certain perspective on the country. Folks in Oklahoma or evangelicals in South Carolina have a different one. And that’s fine. It’s their country too. What I think is that a certain political movement has taken over the country — call it movement conservatism in its late, degraded form — and wants to govern it by all or nothing rules.
The Bush presidency is in so many respects an example or embodiment of this. The president twice took the presidency with a divided electorate — first a minority president, then a 51% president. And he proceeded to govern as though he had a mandate to completely remake it, often in what appeared to be profoundly destructive ways geared to short-term political benefit and intended to consolidate power. The folks who’ve made efforts toward bipartisan compromise have again and again, in this era, been played for chumps. And that’s one of the reasons President Bush has had a much harder time in his second term (one among many): he made it too clear too many times that he’ll take anyone who’ll give him an inch or lend him a hand and use them up and toss them when he’s done.
Our policies abroad are a whole other matter. They’re related to what I’ve described above, part of the same story. But there’s more there. President Bush and his acolytes and enablers deserve all the blame in the world. But it’s not sufficient. As Americans I think we need to grapple with what’s happened. And it goes beyond President Bush. He did after all win reelection. He marginally expanded his congressional majorities. In the rough and tumble of the political moment, the fight needs to be taken to the president and his party. But we also need a more probing consideration of the forces that have made all this possible.
In any case, this is all a way of saying that in this all-or-nothing crisis the country has been passing through, I think it’s made sense to line up with those who say, No. I guess I’m one of those partisanized moderates Kevin Drum has spoken of (not sure that’s precisely the phrase he used.) That leads to a certain loss of nuance sometimes in commentary and a loss in the variegation of our politics generally. As a writer, often it’s less satisfying.
But I cannot see looking back on all this, the threat the country is under, and saying, I stood aloof.
