A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted — in the air. … A liberal is a man who uses his legs and hands at the behest of his head.
—President Franklin Roosevelt, 1939
Radicals want fundamental, progressive social change, just as most Democrats do. And some of them work incredibly hard to achieve that. That’s the positive side of radicalism.
But they often refuse to compromise even though refusing only stymies progress. And they mistakenly condemn their allies with arbitrary purity tests. Worst of all, they create false and slanderous myths in an attempt to defeat non-radicals working towards the same goals. These three behaviors comprise the dark side of radicalism.
The attacks and blame that come from the dark side are always directed at liberals and the Democratic Party. Over the long run, these do tremendous damage. So we had best take a closer look at where the dark side comes from and what might be done about it.
Stunning overconfidence. That’s what we witnessed in the last two chapters. What else can you call it — believing that, on your first try, you could flip Congress from red to Berniecrat by running Berniecrat Republicans in deep-red states?! Two years later, after “winning” two tiny primaries with less than 30% of the vote, Sanders became sure nothing stood between him and the White House. You know what happened next.
Overconfidence followed by failure often leads to blaming others. But the two recent Berniecrat failures did not produce the collection of refusals to compromise, purity tests and slanderous myths that mark the history of radicalism. So let’s look back at that history.
In 1972 we had the McGovern debacle that I’ve mentioned. In the 1960s, the Weather Underground declared war on America (and lost). The Black Panthers promised to protect the Black community but soon degenerated into a drug gang. The Progressive Party of 1948, secretly organized by Communist Party USA radicals, hoped to make peace with Stalin and end segregation. It collected 2.4% of the vote, and its naive candidate, former Vice President Henry Wallace, who had been wildly popular four years earlier, ended up being the most unpopular man in America except for the gangster Lucky Luciano. The list goes on.
Radicalism in America dates back to the American Revolution, and since then, it has had no significant success. This, and the nature of radical ideology, has led to its antagonistic dark side.
Radical vs. Liberal: Asymmetric Warfare
Before looking into how overconfidence leads to damaging myths, let’s back up and look at the nature of the radical-liberal conflict.
Radicals want fundamental, FDR-style change (Chapter 5) and believe that requires a revolution. Liberals want fundamental FDR-style change and believe that requires continuing incremental change, although occasionally we can manage a big increment like the 1964 Civil Rights Act. So the two sides differ mainly on strategy. That difference is large, but each side should view the other as mistaken, not evil, because their long-term goals are almost identical.
That’s not how it works.
Liberals do view the conflict as a strategic difference, but the radicals do not. They are sure it’s not about strategy. They see liberals as immoral and hence their enemy. Bernie Sanders constantly implied that Hillary Clinton and everyone working for the Democratic Party are corrupt shills for Wall Street.
- Liberals say radicals are mistaken.
- Radicals say liberals are immoral, corrupt or evil.
Why do radicals make such a mean-spirited mistake, which only holds back the very causes they care most about?
Dark-Side Thinking
Stunning overconfidence (along with another key bit of radical ideology discussed in Chapter 18) leads to the three damaging mistakes of dark-side radical thinking:
- Rejecting compromise — to seek a revolution
- Purity testing — to vilify those who disagree
- Slanderous myths — to defeat the Democrats
Radicals reject compromise for two reasons (1) they think getting the whole pie is the only “righteous” thing to do, and (2) they believe that rejecting half the pie, makes getting the whole pie more likely. Unfortunately, it never seems to work out that way. Most people learn this lesson quickly. Why don’t the radicals? In part, the answer is stunning overconfidence. Overconfidence is believing “this time is different” over and over and…
In college, I watched the protest organizers issue “nonnegotiable demands” time after time. And sure enough, I never heard about any negotiations — or accepted demands. I found this naivete stunning, even back then. But if your confidence is not based on reality, if you are hyper-confident, then you believe, This time we will get the whole pie. And you see no need to settle for half.
The demands issued by the Seattle CHAZ/CHOP demonstrators were different. No one had the power to grant them. They were just making demands of the universe, so far with no luck.
Radicals are also noted for rejecting incrementalism and they do this for the same reason. Incrementalism is just a series of compromises, which they reject.
Purity testing also comes from overconfidence but with a kicker. For example, a radical may be absolutely sure that Medicare-for-all is the best policy. But the kicker is that they think this is so obvious that everyone can see they are right.
So if someone disagrees, that person can’t be mistaken — because “everyone knows what’s right.” And if they are not mistaken, there’s only one possibility left — they are evil.
Slanderous myths are purity tests applied to misinformation about the past. But two damaging radical myths are not slanderous: the myth of the bully pulpit and the myth of the Overton window. These are simply tall tales that purport to prove that overconfidence is fully justified. However, we will see that the bully pulpit myth led Robert Reich to slander Obama.
Biden will be attacked by radicals using the crime bill myth as part of their war on liberals. And as we will soon see, although widely believed, that is baseless slander. Purity testing will push him toward using radical rhetoric that makes radicals feel warm and fuzzy but loses votes from anti-Trump Republicans and independents.
Why this Matters
We can do three things to win, (1) increase Democratic turnout, (2) reduce Republican turnout, and (3) shift voters from Trump to Biden. Notice that complaining about Trump and cursing him did not make the list. We’ve done that, and it doesn’t work.
Post-game videos. To achieve our three objectives and win, we must focus on what we do wrong, what we do right, and how to improve. That’s why this book matters. It focusses on our side – Democrats — because that is what we can change. We can’t change Trump. We will take a hard look at key problems on our side that stop us from winning as well as on strategies that work.
To up their game, sports teams rely on post-game videos to do just what we’re doing here. They study themselves — not so much the other team. Watching the videotape of our past performances reveals a lot of self-destructive behavior. Stopping that will make winning much easier. We will also see that there’s a lot we do right. That needs to be protected.
Achieving the three objectives. Get-out-the-vote efforts are most important for objective #1, increased turnout. But suppressing the radical sniping aimed at our candidates and our party will also increase turnout. This is important for young voters and especially for young Black voters.
Republican turnout will be lower (objective #2), and we will win over more Never-Trump voters in the suburbs (#3) if we don’t help Trump fire up his base with useless radical rhetoric. Examples of such rhetoric include “socialism,” “abolishing ICE,” “No Borders,” and saying the Antifa Handbook should “strike fear in the heart of @realDonaldTrump” (Deputy Chair of the DNC, Keith Ellison) or “Fuck you, Melanie (sic). …” (see Chapter 12). That’s all bad strategy.
Is there room for improvement? Disregarding the 12% of Sanders’ supporters who voted for Trump in 2016, there were still about three million of his supporters that did not vote for Clinton. And many more from the Clinton camp were likely discouraged from voting. This time there will probably be fewer who defect, but it could still be in the low millions.
And, as we saw in the 2018 midterms, shifting marginal Trump voters into the Democratic column also has great potential, particularly in the suburbs. So yes, there is plenty of room for improvement.
Can we improve? I think we can. My main reason for optimism is documented in the next chapter. Although Sanders is a socialist, he has kept his truly socialist ideas to himself and has sold his followers on FDR liberalism. FDR would be the patron saint of the Democratic Party if we had one. In fact, I will show that Sanders learned about FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, which he adopted as “my vision today,” from a bona-fide establishment Democrat.
Because the two sides share the same vision of the future, there is no legitimate reason for them to be so polarized. But there is little hope this book can convince many radicals. They need to hear from their friends that, yes, Democrats still are true FDR liberals, but sometimes reality blocks our path. That happened to FDR himself. He wanted to implement a broad healthcare program in 1935 but didn’t even push for it in public until 1944. The opposition was too strong.
For those who are not caught in the delusion of overconfidence, the pages that follow provide the facts and arguments they need to defend the liberal viewpoint that revolutions don’t work, but continuous incremental change does. And when the opportunity for a large increment of change comes along, we’ll take it.
Ripped Apart
