Making liberalism appealing again

Sam Smith - When I first read about critical race theory, my reaction was, "there they go again." Not because I disagreed with the substance of history but that now was just not the time to try to make the rotten past a political tool. Sure enough, it seems to have been a factor in …

More liberal gawk talk

Sam Smith - As noted here before, liberals have a tendency to use language that separates them from the very people they should be trying to reach. Two current examples are "defunding police" and "critical race theory." You can make an intellectual argument for both, but if you're trying to get someone elected it's not …

Some tips for liberals

Sam Smith - Over the past two decades there has been a significant decline in Democratic support from non-college grads. One factor in this has been an increasingly well educated liberal constituency with a decreasing skill at reaching those less educated. In fact, if you go back to the New Deal or Great Society, liberals …

What real liberals were really like

Sam Smith - Since well over half of the country hasn't ever seen a real liberal president in office, and since the media has generally bought the GOP line on liberalism, it might be useful to consider what life would be like if it hadn't been for liberals in the White House. Here are a …

What life would be like without liberals

Sam Smith - People who complain about liberals are like the man from Virginia who went to college on the GI Bill and bought his first house with a VA loan. When a hurricane struck he got federal disaster aid. When he got sick he was treated at a veteran's hospital. When he was laid …

What liberals have ignored for decades

Sam Smith – Philip Bump last month presented some poll figures that tell a lot about where America is but which have gotten little attention. Examining the average of recent surveys, he found that the only groups that supported Trump by a significant margin were Republicans and whites without a college degree. Whites as a …

The issue liberals should stop pressing

Sam Smith One reason liberals don't do better in elections is because they insist on pressing an issue which easily annoys 55 million Americans - those who own guns. This is roughly the size of America's liberal population and either constituency constitutes about a quarter of America's adults. The sad fact is that liberals in …

Confrontation without cure

Sam Smith The past few months have been laden with events illustrating the dysfunctional time in which we live. From Ferguson to Spokane to Charleston we have been confronted with examples of how real life doesn’t work the way we think it should. The overwhelming reaction has been a storm of condemnation of the offending …

What real liberalism was about

 One of the problems facing progressive politics is that real liberalism has been redefined by the Republicans and by a new breed of false liberals led by people lie the Clintons and Obama. Here are a few facts about real liberalism that we published 30 years ago Progressive Review, 1985 - We've come across some …

Beyond the blame

Sam Smith Following the coverage of the SAE incident and the Ferguson situation I have been increasingly struck by how much time is being spent blaming someone and how little on moving towards a solution. To be sure there have been exceptions, such as Rev. Traci Blackman who told CNN last week: I was out …

How liberals helped create a bipolar America. . . and what to do about it

Sam Smith America is trapped in bipolar prejudice. Conservatives dislike blacks, latinos, women and gays while liberals dislike white Americans who don’t agree with them, especially men. Conservatives are encouraged by cultural paranoia and liberals by cultural narcissism. The conservative prejudices have been more than adequately publicly outlined, but the liberal side remains largely under …

Why being first may not be much

What if Americans treated their cars and homes the way they do their politics, economics and foreign policy? In which case you might hear them say something like, "My home is a result of American exceptionalism and therefore it won't burn down, so I don't need any insurance."
Insurance is based on vulnerability, and we have learned to pay cash money to cover that vulnerability. Our politics, economics, and foreign policy, on the other hand, are covered to an extraordinary degree only by our pride, presumption and fantasies, encouraged by hustlers and con artists in public office and the public media.

As we were saying: The collapse of liberalism

Sam Smith - One of the things that makes your editor's mornings cheerier is to discover an article in a conventional liberal publication supporting a thesis I have been pushing without success for a decade or two. It reaffirms my self-characterization as a moderate of a time that has not yet come. A case in …

Why liberalism collapsed

Sam Smith Liberalism collapsed because: It became an elite demographic rather than a grassroots movement. It lost interest in the economic issues that had made it relevant. It came to prefer fake icons like Obama and the Clintons rather than real programs. It dissed the folks it should have been converting. The working class just …

The death of liberalism and what to do about it

Sam Smith, 2011 As I was listening recently to a Bob Edwards interview with Kirsten Downey, biographer of the New Deal labor secretary, Frances Perkins, it struck me that the first woman ever to hold cabinet office in American history had played a key role in getting more accomplished than the last three decades of …