Passing the Truman Test: Lieberman
Allen August 14th, 2006
Michael Barone has an excellent analysis of Lieberman’s defeat at the hands of the new transnational Democrats:
On a number of issues, Mr. Lieberman has been at odds with large constituencies in the Democratic Party.
As an observant Orthodox Jew, he has consistently portrayed himself as a man of religious faith, while one-quarter of John Kerry voters in 2004 described their religion as "other" or "none." He has been a critic of vulgarity and obscenity in television programs and movies, while the Democrats enjoy massive financial and psychic support from Hollywood. He has supported school-choice measures, while one of his party’s major organized constituencies is the teachers’ unions. And he has been an American exceptionalist–a believer in the idea that this is a special and specially good country–while his party’s base is increasingly made up of people with attitudes that are, in professor Samuel Huntington’s term, transnational. In their view, our country is no better than any other, and in many ways it’s a whole lot worse.
Through most of the 20th century, American exceptionalism has been the creed of both of our major parties. Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, for all their sophisticated knowledge of foreign cultures, were exceptionalists just as much as Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. Among voters, transnational attitudes were espoused by only a very few, in the odd corners of university faculty clubs, investment-banking firm dining rooms and the councils of shop floor socialist intellectuals.
Now it’s different. In 2004, pollster Scott Rasmussen asked two questions relating to American exceptionalism: Is this country generally fair and decent? Would the world be better off if more countries were more like America? About two-thirds of voters answered yes to both questions. About 80% of George W. Bush voters answered yes. John Kerry voters were split down the middle, with yeses outnumbering noes by small margins.
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The Connecticut primary reveals that the center of gravity in the Democratic Party has moved, from the lunch-bucket working class that was the dominant constituency up through the 1960s to the secular transnational professional class that was the dominant constituency in the 2004 presidential cycle. You can see the results on the map. Joe Lieberman carried by and large the same cities and towns that John F. Kennedy carried in the 1960 presidential general election.
Ellipses mine and emphasis mine. As a note, Mr. Lieberman was more than happy to give up school choice in order to secure the vice-presidential nomination in 2000.
All that aside, this article illustrates one of my biggest gripes about the modernistic Democratic party. It is no longer the party of the "working man" but the party of the intellectual socialist and the transnational progressive. It doesn’t really have a driving theme other than "What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is mine."
And, perhaps most importantly, I think Truman and most "old-school" Democrats were American exceptionalists. And it seems every Democratic pronouncement of what is good about America is always suffixed with a ", but we must blah blah blah blah blah." I call them "Yeah, but" Americans.
Let us suppose the leaders of the Democratic party would become promoters of American exceptionalistm. I and others couldn’t help but wonder if this is the result of some sort of poll. That this change of attitude was driven less by a change in heart and more by a change in strategy.
Perhaps I’m romanticising the past of the Democratic party, but the defeat of Lieberman at the hands of the far-left wing of the Democratic party is just another spade of dirt on my yellow dog.
