If you were trying to launch an effort to rebuild a sensible Left, to rescue "progressivism" from the loonies, eschewing residual New Left excesses and identity politics and attempting to revitalize true liberal, pro-democracy internationalism, to create (in Josh Marshall's words) "a political movement that combined a progressive agenda at home with a tough, democratizing internationalism overseas", and if you wanted it to have a ghost of a chance of capturing the attention and endorsement of anyone outside your tiny, idiosyncratic circle-- if that was your goal, would you call your movement "Social Democrats, USA"?
Of course you wouldn't. In fact you'd be hard-pressed to come up with a worse name, even if it might be a more or less accurate description of your program, affinities, tastes, and sensibilities. It comprises and rolls into one at least three distinct buzzwords with relative-to-overwhelmingly negative connotations in the contemporary climate. And by that I mean: "Social(ist)", "Democrat" (sadly), and "Social Democrat." (USA is all right-- that's always a winner.)
Read Josh Marshall's article in Forward: it's pretty interesting. Marshall found the conference invigorating, if bizarre: "by the end of the day," he writes, "to my surprise, I believed this could be a movement with as much of a future as a past." I doubt it, though maybe you had to be there. But the effort to create a sensible non-nihilistic Left is a welcome one, and I hope (and expect) to see much more of this sort of thing, particularly as the Bush administration seems bent on trashing the tenuous, conditional support granted it by "independents," "liberal hawks," and the like.
Posted by Dr. Frank at May 23, 2003 07:23 AM | TrackBack