Friday, July 27, 2007
Editorial: Shunning the 'L' word
Who among the Democrats will stand up for liberals? Not Sen. Hillary Clinton, apparently.
From the RoundTable blog
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"Liberal" died on Monday at the hands of Sen. Hillary Clinton and in full view of the gazillion other Democratic presidential candidates, none of whom came to its rescue.
Oh, the senator gave it a fine eulogy -- before she offed the word.
Self-proclaimed enemies of liberalism tried their darnedest these past few decades to inflict grievous wounds upon the word's meaning. They stomped, sneered, jeered at its kind and dragged the syllables out in a terribly unattractive fashion, working themselves and their followers into a lather of outrage at the mere mention of a liberal.
Yet even these far right-wing members of the conservative party couldn't kill their foe. Instead, liberal's friends were its undoing.
There had been some hope of late that liberal would be taken off life support, especially after the publication of Geoffrey Nunberg's "Talking Right: How Conservatives Turned Liberalism into a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show."
Democrats need to stop trying to invent catchphrases -- they're lousy at it -- and do a better job at explaining to Americans who they are, their long tradition of defending and loving freedom and why it's in the country's best interest to welcome liberalism.
Clinton was asked during the gimmicky CNN/YouTube debate to define liberalism and then declare whether she is indeed a liberal.
Liberals couldn't help but be heartened by her opening response, when she reminded Americans that the word "meant you were for freedom ... for the freedom to achieve ... willing to stand against big power and on behalf of individuals. ... it's been turned up on its head, ... it's been made to seem as if it is a word that describes big government."
She then needed to say: I'm here to tell you, that's wrong. Liberals still believe in freedom, in helping those who don't have all the advantages gain the tools needed to improve their and their families' lives.
She didn't. She went all neo-lib, called herself a progressive, a modern progressive, a modern-moderate progressive. Whatever.
Clinton's response sums up fairly well the problem plaguing this long, drawn-out presidential campaign that is long on big money and short on big ideas.
Unless she or the others soon start presenting clear, bold visions instead of practiced-on-focus-group responses, the Democrats' hope for reclaiming the White House will be as dead as the word liberal.
