DEL.ICIO.US‘Socialist’ charge has lost its power to sting
Monday, April 13, 2009
Since February 2008, when Barack Obama emerged as the favorite for the Democratic nomination, Republicans have warned Americans at every opportunity and in strident terms that Obama is a closet socialist.
It doesn’t seem to have worked too well. Since the attacks began, the “socialist” has gone on to clinch the nomination and win the presidential election pretty handily, and he now enjoys the support of two-thirds of the American people.
Given that record, you might think a change of GOP strategy would be in order, but so far it’s not apparent. Party strategists seem flummoxed, unable to comprehend why a label that worked so well so long no longer carries much punch.
Part of the problem is a function of circumstances. People are scared, and for good reason. They want an approach to the economy that works, and they’re not all that worried about what that approach might be called. They also know that the alternative offered by the GOP — more tax cuts for the rich, eliminate Medicare for those under 55, etc. — isn’t what they have in mind.
Another part of the explanation came last week, in the release of some surprising poll numbers by pollsters at Rasmussen. It reported that only 53 percent of Americans believe that capitalism is a better economic system than socialism. The real surprise, though, came in the demographic breakdowns.
“Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37 percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent socialism, and 30 percent are undecided,” Rasmussen reported. “Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49 percent for capitalism and 26 percent for socialism.”
Those numbers set off alarms among conservatives, some of whom took solace in the belief that idealistic young people might be drawn to socialism early but become more conservative over time. While there’s some truth to that, I suspect the answer is a bit more complicated.
During the Cold War standoff with the Communists, there was never much doubt about it: Capitalism was America and America was capitalism, and both had to be defended. But it’s been 20 years now since the Cold War ended. People who are 30 and younger were at most 10 years old on the day the Berlin Wall fell. They’ve grown to adulthood in an entirely different world than their parents and grandparents, and they don’t automatically see “socialist” as a threat to America.
Then there’s the fact that in the past few years, capitalism and capitalists have gone rogue on us, so to speak. During the Cold War, the threat of communism served to discipline capitalism and forced it to regulate its excesses.
As long as the commies were depicting capitalism as a conspiracy of the rich and powerful against the workers, there was enormous pressure to prove that capitalism could be fair.
However, when communism collapsed in failure, capitalism suddenly enjoyed a monopoly in the marketplace of ideas. The institutional and cultural checks on its worst excesses began to weaken, and greed was given a free rein. Today, if young people aren’t as convinced as their elders of the superiority of capitalism, it’s in part because they’ve seen its ugly side at an early age.
Finally, there’s the matter of language. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, the Democrats faltered because they lost the language to explain themselves. In the wake of the New Deal and the civil rights movement, liberals just took it for granted that voters understood the importance of such policies and why they were relevant to American lives. They assumed the voters shared their values, and they got complacent.
Today, it’s the Republicans who have lost the language to explain themselves. They assume that simply by saying words such as “socialist” and “government health care” and “gay marriage,” they can make voters recoil in horror just as they always did, with no explanation needed.
But it doesn’t work. In the marketplace of ideas, as in any other kind of marketplace, competition never ceases. You need a reason why government health care would be worse than our current system; you need an explanation why that nice gay couple can’t be married. You not only have to convince them that Obama’s a socialist, you have to explain why that is a bad thing.
And if you can’t, you lose.
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