Who says cowardice knows no arrogance?

Paul Starr writes in an Op-Ed piece for the New York Times yesterday:

To be sure, Democrats were right to challenge segregation and racism, support the revolution in women's roles in society, to protect rights to abortion and to back the civil rights of gays. But a party can make only so many enemies before it loses the ability to do anything for the people who depend on it. For decades, many liberals thought they could ignore the elementary demand of politics - winning elections - because they could go to court to achieve these goals on constitutional grounds. The great thing about legal victories like Roe v. Wade is that you don't have to compromise with your opponents, or even win over majority opinion. But that is also the trouble. An unreconciled losing side and unconvinced public may eventually change the judges.

And now we have reached that point. The Republicans, with their party in control of both elected branches - and looking to create a conservative majority on the Supreme Court that will stand for a generation - see the opportunity to overthrow policies and constitutional precedents reaching back to the New Deal.

That prospect ought to concentrate the liberal mind. Social Security, progressive taxation, affordable health care, the constitutional basis for environmental and labor regulation, separation of church and state - these issues and more hang in the balance.

Under these circumstances, liberal Democrats ought to ask themselves a big question: are they better off as the dominant force in an ideologically pure minority party, or as one of several influences in an ideologically varied party that can win at the polls? The latter, it seems clear, is the better choice.

Apparently the Republicans weren't doing anything during all this. Apparently Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were just paper tigers, sitting on their considerable asses, doing nothing. Apparently there have been no politics fought over the past 30 years.

No. Apparently the problem is not that the Dems weren't politicking well, they just had wrong positions that cannot win.

Public support for abortion rights is far greater than for gay marriage, but compromise may be equally imperative - especially if a reshaped Supreme Court reverses Roe v. Wade by finding that there is no constitutional right to abortion and throws the issue back to the states. Some savvy Democrats are already thinking along these lines, as Hillary Clinton showed this week when she urged liberals to find "common ground" with those who have misgivings about abortion.

In other words, women and gays are political liabilities. Of course, comfortable in his male privilege, Starr probably does not see a woman's control over her own body as being a woman's issue.

Starr says on his own website:

Most liberals don’t want to hear the message that these voters and others in the red states are sending. But in a democracy, you can only make so many enemies until you can no longer do any good for the people who depend on you. Liberals need to decide what is central to the great moral achievements of the past half-century -- and what isn’t. Going down to perpetual defeat isn’t a moral choice.

(Why is it when I read Starr, I hear David Brooks in my head?)

Here's a flash, Mister Starr: Maybe the Democrats "can no longer do any good" because most of them aren't even trying. Maybe they're suffering because every time push as come to shove, they've smirked and put up their hands and said, "Shucks, we don't want to be partisan! We don't want to make Karl Rove angry at us!" In case you haven't noticed, the GOP has been hammering their message for decades now. They've gotten people to listen to them.

Meanwhile the Dems have been doing ... not so much. And has it worked? John Kerry was against gay marriage. What did that get him? (He lost.) Why is it that, despite his position on gay marriage, everyone is saying he lost Ohio because his opponents got out the vote over gay marriage? Could it be that pandering doesn't win votes? And yet even now, prominent Democrats and members of the punditocracy say that the Democrats should try the same calculus with choice? Excuse me, but what the fuck is that?!

Maybe Starr should let go of his professorial arrogance for just a moment and reflect upon why he, as a self-proclaimed progressive, has come to believe that the Democrats should dismantle their platform, compromise on moral issues and try to look more like Republicans in order to win elections. Maybe he's been watching too much corporate news media. Maybe he's cowed by Rush and O'Reilly. I don't know.

My own sense is that, as long as people like Starr have sway on the Democratic leadership and representatives, Democrats will continue to lose and lose and lose....People don't follow followers.

And that's not even the most offensive thing. There's a darker side to Starr's polemic, something that is all-too-common in our society. As Scott Lemieux said two months ago:

I think it's also worth noting that it's pretty easy for straight white males to suggest that women should give up their silly reproductive rights, gay people should be happy with their second-class citizenship, etc. I'd be more willing to listen to people willing to sell out their own interests.

[Whence: latkah left on MyDD]

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