Burnt Orange Report

Exile on Main Street

By Jim Dallas

A few days ago, Slate's Timothy Noah wrote an essay denouncing what he perceived to be the new happy-to-be-exiled Democratic Party:

What's shocking about this new Democratic enthusiasm for retreat is that it is being expressed not on narrow special-interest issues, but on broad issues affecting the entire Democratic constituency: regaining a Senate majority, redistributing Social Security benefits, democratizing Senate procedures. It might be argued that the Democrats are merely imitating the winning strategy the Republicans used to regain the House in 1994: Spurn the glad-handing incremental victories favored by Newt Gingrich's predecessor as House Republican leader, Bob Michel, and instead propagandize your way to political victory. But congressional Democrats differ from congressional Republicans in three crucial ways. First, the Republicans, in becoming obstructionists, didn't change their positions on the issues, as Democrats are doing. Second, the Democrats haven't been shut out for many decades, as the House Republicans had been when they announced they were fed up with accommodation. The Democrats' obstructionism comes off seeming petulant and unearned. Third, Democrats, unlike Republicans, actually want to achieve something. Governmental paralysis, practically by definition, is agreeable to conservatives, but it's anathema to liberals, at least in the long run. Or rather, it should be.

Frankly, I'm all for enjoying minority status, and I'm not convinced by Noah's attempts to distinguish the 1980s House GOP from the 2005 House Democrats. They seem to be distinctions without a difference, and he doesn't really explain why any of them are really relevant, besides recycling conventional wisdom and, dare I say, GOP talking points.

If Democrats appear clunky playing the role of the blowhard, it's probably because we're not particularly experienced at it. What's missing is the fact that, while the GOP establishment for years remained, well, establishmentarian, the grassroots never quite were, and there was always a cranky-conservative-movement wing of the Congressional caucuses. Even before Goldwater. The difference that matters, I think, is that Democrats aren't very smooth when it comes to watering the grassroots.

Moreover, I think Noah overlooks the many positive aspects of being a blowhard.

Paradoxically, is that presents opportunities to form new proactive coalitions. It's a proven fact that it's easier to unite people by declaring what you're against than by stating what you're for; by bringing strange bedfellows together, oppositionalism should serve as a catalyst for laying out a post-New Deal grand strategy.

Moreover, this presents us with a natural opportunity to ditch principles that aren't working and adopt ones that will. This might seem opportunist or at best philosophically pragmatic, but the thing about pragmatism is that, by definition, it works. When the overlying principle is "no," it makes it a lot easier to re-shuffle the ideological deck while nobody is looking.

If nothing else, minority status ought to force us to get back in touch with real people in real communities. Inevitably, the majority "goes native"; indeed, there's a strong case to be made the GOP majority became captives of institutional interests years ago.

Finally, the blowhard isolates himself from tomorrow's outrage at today's excesses. It's possible, of course, that the GOP really knows what they are doing, and, in fact, we will all look back and praise mightily their righteous words and deeds. That said, such an outcome is highly improbable.

I should note, I think, that all of these rationales are long-term rationales. Being a blowhard is not a means of attaining power in the short-term, because nobody likes a downer. Exile is defensible on one ground and one ground only - that at some point in the future, we're going to stop being in exile. That at some point in the future, we're going to break out of the cocoon of the present and become a beautiful butterfly.

I suppose I would share Noah's concern, then, if I thought that the Blue State blues were terminal; however, insofar as this is a phase we're working through, it can be a very beneficial experience.