Liberals Face a Hard Day’s Knight? The long, slow surrender of American liberals

[KoKo]

(Edited for Clarity)

Published on Tuesday, February 25, 2014 by Moyers & Company
by Michael Winship

That’s a pretty pathetic knight up there on the cover of the March issue of Harper’s Magazine. Battered and defeated, his shield in pieces, he’s slumped and saddled backwards on a Democratic donkey that has a distinctly woeful — or bored, maybe — countenance. It’s the magazine’s sardonic way of illustrating a powerful throwing down of the gauntlet by political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. He has challenged the nation’s progressives with an article in the magazine provocatively titled “Nothing Left: The Long, Slow Surrender of

His thesis flies in the face of a current spate of articles and op-ed columns touting a resurgence of progressive politics within the Democratic Party — often pointing to last year’s elections of Senator Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts and Bill de Blasio as mayor of New York City as evidence — although at the same time many of the pieces note that the wave is smashing up against a wall of resistance from the corporate wing of the party.

In a story titled, “Democrats will dive left in 2016 to distance themselves from Obama” — a headline designed to roil Republican fervor as well as impugn the opposition — the conservative Washington Times quoted Adam Green, cofounder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee: “Democrats would be smart in the primary and general election to be more populist and stand up for the little guy more on economic issues.”

In November, Harold Meyerson wrote in the progressive magazine, The American Prospect, “The constituencies now swelling the Democrats’ ranks, Latinos and millennials in particular, have created the space — indeed, the necessity — for the party to move to the left.” And Dan Balz and Philip Rucker reported in The Washington Post earlier this month. “By many measures, the party is certainly seen as more liberal than it once was. For the past 40 years, the American National Election Studies surveys have asked people for their perceptions of the two major parties. The 2012 survey found, for the first time, that a majority of Americans describe the Democratic Party as liberal, with 57 percent using that label. Four years earlier, only 48 percent described the Democrats as liberal…

“Gallup reported last month that 43 percent of surveyed Democrats identified themselves as liberal, the high water mark for the party on that measurement. In Gallup’s 2000 measures, just 29 percent of Democrats labeled themselves as liberals.”“Gallup reported last month that 43 percent of surveyed Democrats identified themselves as liberal, the high water mark for the party on that measurement. In Gallup’s 2000 measures, just 29 percent of Democrats labeled themselves as liberals.”


More at..........

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/02/25-7

-----------------ORIGINAL HARPERS ARTICLE-------------
Nothing Left
The long, slow surrender of American liberals

By Adolph Reed Jr.
— From the March 2014 issue

http://harpers.org/archive/2014/03/nothing-left-2/

[Warpy]

1. Harper's? I'd expect trash like this in the New Republic

because they don't distinguish between liberals, "the left" and the party honchos of mostly Wall Street Democrats.

We in the rank and file are pretty much where we've always been, although yes, we are focused on elections because we want to keep the completely insane party out.

And that's one of the few points the rank and file and party leadership can agree on these days.

[KoKo]

2. Check out the Common Dreams and then the Harper's article...

I took the wrong snip from article in cut & paste...and just edited to get the beginning of the article.

It's a good read and the Harpers. Not as harsh as it seems from my original snip which I screwed up on.