Liberals Are Ruining America. I Know Because I Am One.

The most tempting offer came from “Hannity & Colmes.” As I viewed it then, Sean Hannity represented the bane of American civic life: a blow-dried blowhard paid to vilify his enemies and incite his imbecilic fans. I leapt at the chance to confront him on live TV.

A producer promised me 10 minutes of airtime, during which I would be free to voice my objections to Rice, the former secretary of state. As it turned out, my interview ran just over three minutes, much of which I spent trying to fend off Hannity’s insistence that I voted for John Kerry. Not what I’d envisioned, but I managed to outlast his bullying and even launch a few zingers before my mike was cut. I was immensely pleased with myself, and I happily accepted kudos from fellow lefties.

Over the past few years, I’ve come to view my appearance as somewhat less heroic. I hadn’t spoken truth to power or caused anyone to reassess Secretary Rice’s record. I merely provided a few minutes of gladiatorial stimulation for Fox News. In seeking to assert my moral superiority, I enabled Hannity.

This, to be blunt, is the tragic flaw of the modern liberal. We choose to see ourselves as innocent victims of an escalating right-wing fanaticism. But too often we serve as willing accomplices to this escalation and to the resulting degradation of our civic discourse. We do this, without even meaning to, by consuming conservative folly as mass entertainment.

If this sounds like a harsh assessment, trust me, I’m among the worst offenders. Yes, I’m one of those enlightened masochists who tune in to conservative talk radio when driving alone. I recognize this as pathological behavior, and I always make sure to switch the station back to NPR before returning the car to my wife. But I can’t help myself. I take a perverse and complicated pleasure in listening to all the mean, manipulative things those people say.

Of course, not all right-wing pundits spew hate. But the ones who do are the ones we liberals dependably aggrandize. Consider the recent debate over whether employers must cover contraception in their health plans. The underlying question — should American women receive help in protecting themselves from unwanted pregnancies? — is part of a serious and necessary national conversation.

Any hope of that conversation happening was dashed the moment Rush Limbaugh began his attacks on Sandra Fluke, the young contraceptive advocate. The left took enormous pleasure in seeing Limbaugh pilloried. To what end, though? Industry experts noted that his ratings actually went up during the flap. In effect, the firestorm helped Limbaugh do his job, at least in the short term.

But the real problem isn’t Limbaugh. He’s just a businessman who is paid to reduce complex cultural issues to ad hominem assaults. The real problem is that liberals, both on an institutional and a personal level, have chosen to treat for-profit propaganda as news. In so doing, we have helped redefine liberalism as an essentially reactionary movement. Rather than initiating discussion, or advocating for more humane policy, we react to the most vile and nihilistic voices on the right.

Media outlets like MSNBC and The Huffington Post often justify their coverage of these voices by claiming to serve as watchdogs. It would be more accurate to think of them as de facto loudspeakers for conservative agitprop. The demagogues of the world, after all, derive power solely from their ability to provoke reaction. Those liberals (like me) who take the bait, are to blame for their outsize influence.

Even programs that seek to inject some levity into our rancorous political theater run on the same noxious fuel. What would “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” be without the fulminations of Fox News and the rest of the right-wing hysterics?

Taken as a whole, the arrangement is entirely cynical. This slavish coverage of conservative scoundrels does nothing to illuminate policy or challenge our assumptions. On the contrary, its central goal mirrors that of the pundits it reviles: to boost ratings by reinforcing easy prejudices. These ratings come courtesy of dolts like me: liberals who choose, every day, to click on their links and to watch their shows.

So why do I do this?

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Liberals Focusing Outside Money on Grass Roots

The departure from the conservatives’ approach, which helped Republicans wrest control of the House in 2010, partly reflects liberal donors’ objections to the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which paved the way for super PACs and unbridled campaign spending.

But in interviews, donors and strategists involved in the effort said they also did not believe they could match advertising spending by leading conservative groups like American Crossroads and Americans for Prosperity, and instead wanted to exploit what they see as the Democrats’ advantage in grass-roots organizing.

“Super PACs are critically important,” said Rob Stein, the founder of the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors who will convene near Miami this week to discuss where to steer their money this year. But the liberal groups, he said, believe that local efforts and outreach through social media “can have an enormous impact in battleground states in 2012.”

In a move likely to draw in other major donors, Mr. Soros will contribute $1 million each to America Votes, a group that coordinates political activity for left-leaning environmental, abortion rights and civil rights groups, and American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC that focuses on election-oriented research. The donations will be Mr. Soros’s first major contributions of the 2012 election cycle.

“George Soros believes the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United opened the floodgates to special interests’ paying for political ads,” said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Mr. Soros. “There is no way those concerned with the public interest can compete with them. Soros has always focused his political giving on grass-roots organizing and holding conservatives accountable for the flawed policies they promote. His support of these groups is consistent with those views.”

On Monday, in an indication that he does not expect significant advertising spending from Democratic-leaning outside groups at this stage, President Obama unveiled a $25 million ad campaign against Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican nominee.

A super PAC founded by two former Obama aides, Priorities USA Action, has struggled to raise money against better-financed conservative groups like American Crossroads, which expects to spend $300 million on the presidential, House and Senate elections.

Those difficulties stem in part from Mr. Obama’s past opposition to spending by outside groups, which has dampened donor enthusiasm despite his about-face this year. But it also reflects how major liberal donors and independent groups have focused since 2004 on creating a permanent infrastructure of liberal research and voter-outreach groups. That year, liberal groups spent more than $200 million on advertising and grass-roots activity in a failed bid to deprive President George W. Bush of a second term.

Conservative independent groups, including super PACs that can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on election ads, dominated the advertising wars in 2010, helping Republicans make major gains in Congress, and their money has had a similar impact so far in this cycle.

“The idea that we’re going to engage in an arms race on advertising with the Republicans is not appealing to many liberal donors,” said David Brock, the founder of American Bridge 21st Century.

The advertising-oriented Democratic super PACs, including Priorities USA and two groups founded to back Democrats in Congress, remain on the list of organizations that the Democracy Alliance recommends to its members. Robert McKay, who is the chairman of the Democracy Alliance and sits on the board of Priorities USA, said the $100 million expected to be spent this year by alliance members would include some money for election ads, but would most likely favor grass-roots organizing and research groups.

“There is a bias towards funding infrastructure as it relates to the elections,” Mr. McKay said. “That means get-out-the-vote efforts” directed toward young voters, single women, black voters and Latinos, he said.

Organizations likely to be a part of the effort include Catalist, which creates voter lists for allied liberal groups; ProgressNow, a network of state-based Web sites for liberal opinion and activism; and the Latino Engagement Fund, a new group that works to register and turn out Latino voters for Democrats. Conservative independent groups are financing similar outreach to Latino voters: the American Action Network, which spent $26 million against Democratic candidates in 2010, last year unveiled the Hispanic Leadership Network, which will seek to mobilize center-right Latino voters.

Liberals outside the Democracy Alliance are also likely to make significant contributions, as are labor unions, which plan to spend up to $400 million on state, local and federal races, and advocacy groups like the Sierra Club.

Some groups will pay for both advertising and organizing. PAC+, a super PAC founded by the San Francisco philanthropist Steve Phillips, a member of the Democracy Alliance, expects to spend about $10 million on Latino voters in six states, with a heavy emphasis on Arizona, which the Obama campaign is seeking to turn into a battleground. Half of PAC+ spending will go to enrollment and half to advertising.

“You can dump 10 or 20 million in TV ads in Ohio and try to reach the persuadable swing voters there, or you can up voter turnout among Latinos in Colorado and Arizona and win that way,” Mr. Phillips said. “It’s much cheaper.”

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If Health Law Is Overturned, What Will Liberals Do?

If the Supreme Court strikes down all or part of President Obama’s health care law, it will have unraveled a legislative compromise that many liberals had viewed with suspicion from the beginning.

In one of the ironies of recent politics, Mr. Obama was a late convert to the merits of the individual mandate that now appears to be in danger of being declared unconstitutional.

But the president’s embrace of the mandate — and his willingness to abandon a so-called public option to get a health care deal — was a hard pill to swallow for many of his Democratic supporters.

The Affordable Care Act promises to provide health insurance to millions who lacked it. But it also stops far short of the idea that health care is a basic right for everyone living in the country. And it embraces the market-based system of private health care delivery that has long existed in America.

For many progressive activists and voters, the decision by the court in June could reopen a debate that they thought they had lost two years ago. Rather than be dismayed if the court overturns the health care law, some liberals may see it as an unexpected opportunity.

Politically, there is almost no chance of a new effort to achieve universal health care coverage before the election in the fall. But if the current law is overturned, eventually there would be a new push from Democrats to achieve the goals they have pursued for decades.

Still, it’s far from clear how progressives might regroup if the court rules against the mandate, as Tuesday’s questions from the justices suggested they might.

Here are three possibilities:

SALVAGE: If the justices invalidate the individual mandate but stop short of declaring the entire law unconstitutional, progressives could try to fix it through other means.

Jonathan Gruber, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has suggested a couple of options. Mr. Gruber was an adviser to both Mitt Romney on his health care plan in Massachusetts and to Mr. Obama.

In a paper written last year for the Center for American Progress, a research and advocacy group, he said the mandate could be replaced by a requirement that people “auto-enroll” in health insurance but with the ability to opt out if they wanted to.

Or, he said, people could be encouraged to buy insurance, and fined a penalty if they signed up after a deadline. That might encourage more participation in the health insurance market by young, healthy people.

But Mr. Gruber concluded that neither would be particularly effective, saying that “both alternatives significantly erode the gains in public health and insurance affordability made possible by the Affordable Care Act.”

EXPAND: If the court declares large parts of the health care law unconstitutional, another option for liberals would be a return to advocating other methods to expand the number of people covered by insurance.

They could push for an expansion of Medicare to include coverage of people at an earlier age. And they could seek to include more people in government-run health care programs that cover children and the poor.

Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress, said she remained hopeful that the court would uphold the health care law. But if it doesn’t, she said she remained skeptical about other proposals.

“There is no proposal that I am aware of that operates without an individual mandate that gets you to that level of coverage,” she said in an interview with The Caucus on Tuesday.

Congress would be unwilling to act on expansions of government health care programs if the current law is invalidated.

“We are a long way away,” from another successful legislative effort on health care, she said. “It would be decades, and may not be in my lifetime.”

SINGLE PAYER: If Democrats make little progress on alternatives, some purists might decide it’s best to just renew the case for a single-payer system in which all Americans receive health care paid for by the government.

Sidney M. Wolfe, the director of the Health Research Group at Public Citizen, an advocacy group, has been pushing for government-run health care for decades.

In an interview Tuesday, Mr. Wolfe said a ruling against the current law could help start a renewed drive for a system that essentially expanded Medicare into a program for everyone, not just the elderly.

“If this is what happens, it may offer more incentive to say let’s decide once and for all that health care is a right,” Mr. Wolfe said. “It will certainly present an opportunity to a number of people.”

But it’s not clear where the support for such a change would come from, especially after the bruising fight over Mr. Obama’s health care plan two years ago. Ms. Tanden said that she did not believe the country would support such a change.

“I am not holding my breath for the Medicare-for-all option. Most people in America feel comfortable with the health insurance they have,” she said. “I would say to my progressive allies: the reason we have all been supporting the individual mandate is because it is the way in which we can get to near-universal coverage in my lifetime.”

“They may look at this as an opportunity to carry that torch again,” she added. “I don’t think the Congressional response is to look at single-payer as the option.”

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Some liberals frustrated by pace of Obama's change (AP)

MINNEAPOLIS – What's a frustrated liberal to do? Democrats on the ideological left are grousing that President Barack Obama is just not that into them, and they're soul searching at a big weekend meeting about the strained political relationship as he seeks re-election.

Might they stay home when he asks them to vote for him again?

"We were promised he would be our fierce advocate. And I don't think he has been fierce and I don't think he likes to advocate very much," said John Aravosis, an editor with AMERICAblog who has written about gay rights issues.

But Obama's advisers hope that between now and November 2012 the president can persuade this critical part of his base to turn out in droves again, and the wooing by aides was well under way Friday.

"I promise he is as frustrated as you are," White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer told about 2,400 bloggers and activists attending the annual Netroots Nation conference. He assured them they were "a very important part of the coalition that got him here."

Not that it feels that way for many liberals who consider Obama's record a mixed bag at best when it comes to championing their causes.

They see him as being too willing to compromise with Republicans on such issues as dropping the proposed public option for the health insurance overhaul and extending George W. Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest. They're pleased he signed a law to repeal the ban on openly gay service members, but many feel that happened only after incessant pressure on the White House.

Others complain that Obama has embraced big business, unimpressed by Wall Street regulation changes and annoyed that Obama appointed General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt to lead a presidential advisory council on competitiveness even as the company avoided paying federal taxes in 2010.

One panel at the conference reflected the rift: "What to Do When Your President Is Just Not That Into You." Moderator Joan McCarter jokingly called it "The `president isn't our boyfriend anymore' panel."

Taken together, it all raises the question of whether liberals, who always play important fundraising and volunteering roles for Democratic presidential candidates, will be energized when Obama runs for re-election next year or whether they will stay home on Election Day and deny Obama a critical contingent of grass-roots foot-soldiers.

It's not as if liberals are likely to back someone else. Obama doesn't have a serious Democratic primary opponent, and liberal views are ideologically opposed to many espoused by the Republican Party's presidential candidates.

"We have to hold this administration accountable, but we will get a choice between President Obama and our worst nightmare," said Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the National Education Association.

To a certain degree, there's a political upside for Obama if liberals are cranky — he may appear to be more a centrist candidate and that may make him more attractive to the independent voters who often decide close elections.

Obama advisers acknowledge the base is frustrated, but they expect liberal voters to rally around the president in next year's election.

"While there is always more work we can do and we take absolutely nothing for granted and will work every single day, we have very good support from his base and are ready to build on that," said Obama campaign manager Jim Messina in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

Despite the complaining, liberals' impressions of Obama have not slipped in recent months. But they didn't improve, either, following the killing of Osama bin Laden, as happened among other ideological groups.

In the May AP-GfK poll, 62 percent of liberals rated Obama's presidency as outstanding or above average, statistically similar to August 2010. Among moderates and conservatives, however, Obama's ratings on this question ticked upward. Likewise, Obama's overall approval ratings among liberals have hovered around 80 percent for the past year in AP-GfK polling, with no discernible bump following the al-Qaida leader's death.

The reception Pfeiffer got when he was interviewed onstage by Kaili Joy Gray of the Daily Kos website underscored the tension between Obama and some liberals.

Questioned about the president's policies on the economy, gay rights and tax cuts, Pfeiffer argued that Obama has worked hard to get his agenda through a divided Congress during a time of hardship.

Pfeiffer said the White House would serve as a check against Republican efforts to undercut Medicare, privatize Social Security and repeal the health care overhaul. Obama, he said, would work to bring wireless technology to rural areas, develop alternative energy sources and offer tax incentives for small business.

But the audience was clearly skeptical. The interview grew tense at times, and Pfeiffer was booed when he responded to a question about a 1996 legislative-race questionnaire in which Obama had said he supported gay marriage. Pfeiffer said someone else had filled out the questionnaire and Obama was "evolving on the issue" along with the rest of the nation.

Gray also pushed Pfeiffer for details on whether the administration would offer a comprehensive job-creation bill. "With a 9.1 percent unemployment rate, why wouldn't we have a jobs bill?" she said icily.

Frustration, if not anger, was clear.

At one panel, Dan Choi, an Iraq War veteran who was discharged for being gay, ripped up an Obama campaign pamphlet and tossed it into the air when an aide to Obama's political organization told him that the aide personally wasn't supportive of gay marriage.

"I believe that I'm an equal citizen," Choi scolded the staffer.

Elsewhere at the conference, liberals questioned the president's commitment to the DREAM Act, which would give a path to legal status for young people who were brought into the United States without documents as children and who either plan to attend college or join the military. It stalled in Congress last year.

Some activists want Obama to use his administrative powers to protect those who would be covered under the legislation from being deported. And they complain about the Obama administration's deportation of nearly 400,000 immigrants in 2010, a record, while noting his efforts to court Hispanics as he seeks a second term.

"Obama has the guts to deport our mothers, deport our fathers, deport our people and then come to us and say `I want your vote'? Please," said Felipe Matos, a Miami immigration activist.

For all the griping, many liberals here appear resigned.

They know Obama is their only option to ensure Democrats continue to control the White House. They point to efforts in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere to strip away collective bargaining rights from most public workers as an example of what could happen if Republicans win.

Said former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, a one-time Democratic Party chairman: "The alternative is in clear sight."

___

Associated Press Deputy Polling Director Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

Ken Thomas can be reached at http://twitter.com/AP_Ken_Thomas

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