Maybe the Left Hasn't Done Anything Wrong

There is a recent trend in the US discussion about politics that argues that the Left needs a big rethink, because it has failed to get its message across and we're seeing a New Era of rightwing dominance.

There are numerous problems with this assertion. First of all, you can find evidence for it, but finding conclusive evidence is very difficult as this is a very hard thing to demonstrate.

The "Left"
Unfortunately this is narrowly defined as the Democrats. Thus what people are really concerned about the fact is that Democrat canidates, who are moving closer and closer to Republican/rightwing values, keep losing elections. Instead we should be focussing on the fact that society is making very little progress on issues of racism and class inequality.

Right-Wing Institutional Power
A main part of this trend is to analyze how the right has developed a series of foundations, think tanks, media network, ties to the Christian right, and training for young people. However the right has always had more institutional power - that's the nature of power elites that they tend to be on top and in control. I guess what's new is that they are diversifying from using corporate power and the police state (cops used to kill strikers), to using more subtle forms of agenda-setting and issue-defining means through foundations and their media.

The "New" Ascendance of the Right
Is it new? I bet that activists have argued that Reagan was the worst ever conservative president and the same for Nixon. People get swept away by the times, and start to demonize their opponents out of a need to mobilize themselves and their constituents. Instead we need to be honest about the good and bad things about a president's policies. Nixon ended Vietnam and passed environmental regulation. Reagan talked to Gorbatchev.

If we were honest in criticizing US foreign policy, we'd be saying that both the Democrats and Republicans, both the liberals and conseratives have supported and continue to support the interests of US corporations at the price of human rights and democracy around the world. We overthrow democratic popular governments - does it matter if we get international support or go it alone?

Rethinking
We always need rethinking and we always need criticism. However, we also need to realize that it's a lot easier to mobilize a small group of people to protect their billions, then to get together a couple million people who can each contribute a couple hundred. This is a basic finding of game theory type studies. As long as the right mobilizes many times more resources then the left, you cannot argue that we're being "less strategic" - it's just that we aren't working with the same level of resources.