Why pragmatic liberalism is struggling
Short answer: the Internet has made pragmatic liberalism into a non-adaptive trait. The long answer is below.
In politics pragmatism has two regularly recurring characteristics. The first is an insistence that their views are the result of nothing more that common sense and basic decency. The second is a tendency towards incrementalism: in politics the pragmatic liberal doesn't seek to achieve an agenda so much as to always keep the ball moving in a certain direction.
Insisting on your common sense and basic decency ultimately makes you look crazy
Taking them one at a time, the principal challenge that arises from maintaining your own views are based on common sense and basic decency is explaining someone who disagrees with you. One irony of modern liberalism is that liberals insist that their own motives are simple and transparent, they have produced huge volumes explaining why the people who vote against them arrive at their purportedly mistaken opinions.
The most famous (infamous?) recent example is the suggestion that people "cling to their guns and religion" out of fear and in it we can see the central strategy that has been used in the past. The suggestion is that while the political decisions are transparent, some of the surrounding issues are complicated. So, the politics is obvious but the economics are complicated. Or the psychology is. Or the history is. Once the good liberal patiently explains the larger context, all opposition should vanish.
Oftentimes the explanation needed to be no more than to claim there was an explanation. When I was part of the academic world one of the things that really jumped out at me was how many times people would say there was no need to take some view seriously because it had been "demolished by N". When I would ask what the argument that N had used was, people would get impatient because they didn't want to talk about it any more. They just knew there was an argument and that was all they needed to know to get back to what really concerned them.
Now if patient explaining didn't work, that meant the problem wasn't with the opponents common sense but with their basic decency and thus the common liberal tendency to attack the motives of their opponents.
All of this relies absolutely on the people being explained sitting there like a good little anthropological study subjects and not arguing back. The second they do the whole house of cards comes tumbling down for reasonable people can disagree and there are a wide variety of reasonable political views without abandoning common sense or basic decency.
Pragmatic liberalism, however, is not prepared to acknowledge these. It can only dismiss. On the Internet this has had a disastrous effect for liberals very often come across as surprised and angry that anyone can disagree with them and people who act surprised and angry at opposition tend to look crazy.
Incrementalism ultimately makes you look like either hapless and innefectual or an extremist
Here are two different people talking about the term "progressive" and what it has meant in the American political tradition.
Person #1:
Here is person #2
Now the obvious problem for person #1 is how does she (for person #1 is Hillary Clinton) differentiate herself from the radical who (C/O Ann Althouse) is John Nichols writing at The Progressive.
The problem is that Clinton cannot solve the problem in the most direct and obvious way. That is, she cannot simply attack the views of John Nichols and other radicals. Why not? Because she is an incrementalist and she is moving, she in fact wants to move, in the same direction as Nichols. She, obviously enough, doesn't want to be associated with some of his positions but she wants to go in that general direction.
This is an old strategy. Three generations ago, liberals used to distinguish themselves from socialists by insisting that socialists were just liberals in a hurry. They managed to avoid the obvious corollary: that liberals are just go-slow socialists. If progressive really means go-slow radical then you aren't a centrist.
But you don't have to worry about this so long as no one asks the question. Thus the strategy implicit in Clinton's answer above. She wants to reassure people so no one asks where all this is ultimately headed. She does not do this because she has a hidden agenda, as conservatives often charge. No, her problem is that she does not have an agenda and therefore she doesn't really know where it is all headed other than always generally leftwards.
And there is the problem for the liberal argument is always to dismiss ends and argue about means. But again, in an Internet era, the problem is how this makes you look in the midst of a big argument in which anyone can join. Now people can and do ask liberals to differentiate themselves from the more extreme elements on the left not just in terms of means but actual ends. So long as liberals could reasonably keep people focused on the supposed extremism of others, everything is fine. But when it comes to defending their own policy decisions, they look either hapless or extreme.
Where to go?
Okay, I've posed the problem. How do pragmatic liberals get out of this? my suspicion is that they can't. Pragmatic liberalism, or progressivism if you prefer that term, has reached the end of its useful life. All movements come to an end.
Now some one could come in, as a feminist who calls her self Harmony came in on a different post and say,
Short answer: the Internet has made pragmatic liberalism into a non-adaptive trait. The long answer is below.
In politics pragmatism has two regularly recurring characteristics. The first is an insistence that their views are the result of nothing more that common sense and basic decency. The second is a tendency towards incrementalism: in politics the pragmatic liberal doesn't seek to achieve an agenda so much as to always keep the ball moving in a certain direction.
Insisting on your common sense and basic decency ultimately makes you look crazy
Taking them one at a time, the principal challenge that arises from maintaining your own views are based on common sense and basic decency is explaining someone who disagrees with you. One irony of modern liberalism is that liberals insist that their own motives are simple and transparent, they have produced huge volumes explaining why the people who vote against them arrive at their purportedly mistaken opinions.
The most famous (infamous?) recent example is the suggestion that people "cling to their guns and religion" out of fear and in it we can see the central strategy that has been used in the past. The suggestion is that while the political decisions are transparent, some of the surrounding issues are complicated. So, the politics is obvious but the economics are complicated. Or the psychology is. Or the history is. Once the good liberal patiently explains the larger context, all opposition should vanish.
Oftentimes the explanation needed to be no more than to claim there was an explanation. When I was part of the academic world one of the things that really jumped out at me was how many times people would say there was no need to take some view seriously because it had been "demolished by N". When I would ask what the argument that N had used was, people would get impatient because they didn't want to talk about it any more. They just knew there was an argument and that was all they needed to know to get back to what really concerned them.
Now if patient explaining didn't work, that meant the problem wasn't with the opponents common sense but with their basic decency and thus the common liberal tendency to attack the motives of their opponents.
All of this relies absolutely on the people being explained sitting there like a good little anthropological study subjects and not arguing back. The second they do the whole house of cards comes tumbling down for reasonable people can disagree and there are a wide variety of reasonable political views without abandoning common sense or basic decency.
Pragmatic liberalism, however, is not prepared to acknowledge these. It can only dismiss. On the Internet this has had a disastrous effect for liberals very often come across as surprised and angry that anyone can disagree with them and people who act surprised and angry at opposition tend to look crazy.
Incrementalism ultimately makes you look like either hapless and innefectual or an extremist
Here are two different people talking about the term "progressive" and what it has meant in the American political tradition.
Person #1:
"I prefer the word 'progressive', which has a real American meaning, going back to the progressive era at the beginning of the 20th century.This is the voice of the pragmatic liberal. The intent here is very clearly to emphasize common sense and basic decency.
"I consider myself a modern progressive, someone who believes strongly in individual rights and freedoms, who believes that we are better as a society when we're working together and when we find ways to help those who may not have all the advantages in life get the tools they need to lead a more productive life for themselves and their family.
"So I consider myself a proud modern American progressive, and I think that's the kind of philosophy and practice that we need to bring back to American politics."
Here is person #2
That understanding is essential to the spread of uprisings and movements like the one that has developed in Wisconsin....This is the voice of the radical. In fact, this person uses 'radical' and 'progressive' as synonyms. That might just scare a few people.
Make no mistake: What is often referred to simply as “Wisconsin” has spread. And it will continue to spread if activists in other states go to their own histories for inspiration.
Every state has radical roots....
In each state, we need to reclaim our progressive history, honor this heritage, and celebrate its continual life. There should be yearly progressive festivals in every state to invoke this unique collective progressive memory....
The empowerment comes from sensing that we are a part of something constant and strong.
Now the obvious problem for person #1 is how does she (for person #1 is Hillary Clinton) differentiate herself from the radical who (C/O Ann Althouse) is John Nichols writing at The Progressive.
The problem is that Clinton cannot solve the problem in the most direct and obvious way. That is, she cannot simply attack the views of John Nichols and other radicals. Why not? Because she is an incrementalist and she is moving, she in fact wants to move, in the same direction as Nichols. She, obviously enough, doesn't want to be associated with some of his positions but she wants to go in that general direction.
This is an old strategy. Three generations ago, liberals used to distinguish themselves from socialists by insisting that socialists were just liberals in a hurry. They managed to avoid the obvious corollary: that liberals are just go-slow socialists. If progressive really means go-slow radical then you aren't a centrist.
But you don't have to worry about this so long as no one asks the question. Thus the strategy implicit in Clinton's answer above. She wants to reassure people so no one asks where all this is ultimately headed. She does not do this because she has a hidden agenda, as conservatives often charge. No, her problem is that she does not have an agenda and therefore she doesn't really know where it is all headed other than always generally leftwards.
And there is the problem for the liberal argument is always to dismiss ends and argue about means. But again, in an Internet era, the problem is how this makes you look in the midst of a big argument in which anyone can join. Now people can and do ask liberals to differentiate themselves from the more extreme elements on the left not just in terms of means but actual ends. So long as liberals could reasonably keep people focused on the supposed extremism of others, everything is fine. But when it comes to defending their own policy decisions, they look either hapless or extreme.
Where to go?
Okay, I've posed the problem. How do pragmatic liberals get out of this? my suspicion is that they can't. Pragmatic liberalism, or progressivism if you prefer that term, has reached the end of its useful life. All movements come to an end.
Now some one could come in, as a feminist who calls her self Harmony came in on a different post and say,
We don't need to measure our success based on your metrics; that's kind of one of the points of feminism.That is certainly true to a point and anyone who thinks that feminism or liberalism are ongoing success stories can just keep what they've been doing and see what happens.
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