Today's True Blue Liberal Poll on Trumpcare

The House Republicans have finally announced their specifics for replacing The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) with The American Health Care Act (Trumpcare). Supporters of Obamacare are appalled at the number of people who will lose coverage and at the way it targets women and older Americans for special mistreatment. The Tea Party wing of the GOP is appalled that Trumpcare is leaving even a few tattered remnants of Obamacare's patient protections; they are calling for a straight repeal of the ACA and a return to the status quo ante a black man in the White House.

Which leads to today's Twitter poll:

Here's a simple poll to determine whether you are a liberal or a conservative.

I believe that replacing the #ACA with #TrumpCare will...

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) March 8, 2017

This is the purpose for which I started TrueBlueLiberal.org in 2004...

...so I take complete credit for this significant rehabilitation of the word 'liberal'!

Proportion of Dem caucus-goers and voters identifying as "liberal":

IA
2008: 54%
2016: 68%

NH
2008: 56%
2016: 68%

NV
2008: 45%
2016: 70%

— Rachel Maddow MSNBC (@maddow) February 22, 2016

"Liberal" Cool? Of Course It Is (and always has been)!

In concert with this morning's post about an article in Salon about "The L Word," I also stumbled upon this story from Public Radio International's The Takeaway: "Is the Word 'Liberal' Becoming Cool Again in America?"



As with the article in the last post, both reassessments of the word were prompted by the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN on Tuesday night -- a debate which was not (except for Jim Webb) running away from liberal ideals and chasing the Republicans toward the Right.

Restoring Lustre to “Liberal”

I found "The Resurrection of the “Liberal”: How the Right Tried to Destroy American Liberalism — and How It Came Back from the Dead" by Heather Digby Parton in Salon fascinating, but that may only be because this blog was started in 2004 in disgust at the way Kerry and Clintons and other Democrats were all running away from a proud label that they were letting conservative Republicans define.

Even if restoring lustre to "Liberal" is not your raison d'être, it's worth reading.

Liberals on the Rise.

Following up on last January's post about the upward trend in self-identifying liberals, the trend continues this year, with the Gallup poll finding 24% of Americans applying that proud label to themselves in 2014 -- another all-time high since this poll started in 1992.

In the twelve years between 1992 and 2004, the percentage of liberal Americans rose two points from 17% to 19%. In the ten years since TrueBlueLiberal.Org first opened for business, this percentage has increased FIVE points from 19% to 24%. We don't take all the credit, but it can't be just a coincidence.

You're Welcome!

Nice to Know I'm Getting LESS Conservative with Age

I took this "Are You A Republican?" quiz back in 2011 and I was 2% Republican, "...a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure..."

 I just took it again and my score improved to Negative 3% Republican:

I am: -3% Republican.

"You're a damn Commie!  Where's Tailgunner Joe when we need him?"

Are You A Republican?

R.I.P. Lauren Bacall 1924-2014, True Blue Liberal

Lauren Bacall passed away at the age of 89 in her apartment at the Dakota on August 12. This quote comes from the end of an article by Clancy Sigal I read on Salon this morning:

"All her life Lauren Bacall stayed a true-blue, New York, left-of-center, liberal Democrat lobbying for Adlai Stevenson and Bobby Kennedy. Or as she proudly boasted in a late interview, 'I’m anti-Republican. A liberal. The L-word!' "

I knew there was a reason other than her looks and "The Look" that I loved her in To Have and Have Not, Key Largo, Slick Hare, and The Big Sleep (and anything else she appeared in). I didn't have to dig too much deeper to find the transcript from "the L-word" interview with Larry King on CNN from May 6, 2005, when many liberals were renouncing that label.

KING: Have you always been politically motivated? 
BACALL: I have. I have. I come from a...
KING: You go back -- In fact, I saw you.
BACALL: I saw you? 
KING: I saw you speak for Adlai Stevenson. 
BACALL: You did? 
KING: In New York. I believe Bogey was with you. 
BACALL: Yes. 
KING: In '52. 
BACALL: '52. That's when my -- two of my greatest friendships began with Arthur Schlesinger and Alistair Cooke, 1952. 
KING: And what a man Stevenson was. 
BACALL: Oh, what a great man. (INAUDIBLE) you see this country. Please. Don't get me started, as they say. 
KING: So we missed a good opportunity. I think, even his critic was say that Adlai Stevenson was a great...
BACALL: He was a brilliant, brilliant man. But no one had heard anyone except Roosevelt speak with wit. You know, they couldn't figure out what that was all about. Couldn't be serious. 
KING: He had a great wit. 
BACALL: He was brilliant. 
KING: Are you big a "D" Democrat? Do you...
BACALL: I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though...
KING: Wait a minute. Are you a liberal? 
BACALL: I'm a liberal. The L word! 
KING: Egads! 
BACALL: I love it. Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you're a liberal. You do not have a small mind. Little picayune things. You want to welcome everyone. Liberal, little picayune thing. 
KING: You're open to...
BACALL: You want to welcome everyone. Liberal, I'm a Roosevelt. I'm a -- and I hear anyone say anything about FDR... 
KING: You're a new dealer, fair dealer. 
BACALL: I'm a total -- and I was a kid and I'm total, total, total liberal and proud of it. And I think it's outrageous to say "the L word". I mean, excuse me. They should be damn lucky that they were liberals here. Liberals gave more to the population of the United States than any other group. 
KING: Well, Social Security. 
BACALL: Everything.

*** 

KING: Very well said. Spoken as a true liberal.    BACALL: Don't knock the liberals.   KING: I'm not.    BACALL: Yes, you are. You secretly you do.   

Isn't Pride One of the Seven Deadly Sins?

Here's a headline in the Washington Post that hits home for someone who's been calling himself and his blog "True Blue Liberal" for the past ten years: "Proud to be an American? You’re probably not a true liberal."  
According to the Political Typology report of the Pew Research Center, only 40% of  "Solid Liberals" consider themselves "Often Proud to Be An American."

(Days like today show why we liberals often find it hard wrap ourselves in red white 'n' blue, crank up the Lee Greenwood, and exercise the cardinal sin of  pride.)

The Quote of the Day About "Liberal"

Part of the reason Americans consider liberal an epithet [...] is because they mostly hear it used as an epithet.
When Obama disavows the term, he perpetuates that dynamic and allows conservatives like O’Reilly to continue tarring Democrats with a label most Americans consider negative, even if they’re no longer entirely sure why. It might be wiser, at least in the long-term, to explain why the specific policies many Americans support are liberal. And thus begin to reclaim the term.

--Peter Beinart, The Atlantic, 2/5/2014

Please read the rest of the article "'Liberal' Is Good" on theatlantic.com. I couldn't have said it better myself.

Our raison d'être justified: Self Identification as "Liberal" Hits New High.

When TrueBlueLiberal.org was started right after John Kerry's defeat in November 2004, a large part of my initial impetus for doing so was to show some pride and restore some luster to a word the conservative government and press had hurled as an insult and which liberals themselves (like the cowardly Kerry) and all establishment Democrats had run away from. Who? Me? Liberal?


Fuck yeah I'm a liberal. It may not have been much of a rallying cry or a blog's raison d'être, but it was mine.

According to this Gallup Poll today, in 2013 "liberal identification edged up to its highest level since Gallup began regularly measuring ideology in the current format in 1992." 23% of all Americans describe themselves as liberal (up from 19% in 2004), but among Democrats the rise was more dramatic, from 33% to 43% in the decade we've been beating the True Blue Liberal drum. Don't be fooled by the fact that less than a hundred people visit this blog on a normal day. Our influence is obviously enormous.

You're welcome.

Is it too early to start our Annual Liberal War on Christmas?

If not, Eric Idle's "Fuck Christmas" is a great carol to sing:

I'm generally a pacifist, but the 2013 Annual Liberal War On Christmas is officially started!

If Kmart can start running Christmas ads in early September, we're going to have to get our Annual Liberal War On Christmas (ALWOC) revved up earlier this year.

Is "Liberal" Finally Being Removed From the List of Words That Must Be Bleeped?

The Garden of Mr. Rogers' Mind

This is why all of us who watched public television are liberals.

What Type of Liberal Are You?

I just discovered what type of liberal I am (other than "True Blue" of course) by taking this super scientific online test:

My Liberal Identity

You are an Eco-Avenger, also known as an environmentalist or tree hugger. You believe in saving the planet from the clutches of air-fouling, oil-drilling, earth-raping conservative fossil fools.

Take the quiz at
About.com Political Humor

I prefer "tree hugger" to "Eco-Avenger", which sounds sort of comic-bookish.

Enough's Enough. There Are No Liberal Republicans. Period.

Today the nonsense reached a crescendo in the Republican Primary campaigns (again), so as a self-appointed guardian of liberalism, I have to speak up and proclaim that liberals do not "heart" either Romney or Santorum.

A production of "Newt 2012" - 14 February 2012

Newt 2012 launched a splash page under the URL liberalsloveromney.com on which you can mouse over cartoonish representations of representative "liberals" to see what their out-of-context dialog bubbles say: Glenn Beck's bête noire Saul Alinsky ("He Likes My Book!"), SLC Mayor Rocky Anderson ("Thanks for the Endorsement!"), Barack Obama ("Obamneycare!"), George Soros ("Same as Obama!"), Planned Parenthood's Cecile Richards ("Thanks for Romneycare Funds!"), and Al Gore ("He Believes Me!"). Five of them should sue and the ghost of Saul Alinsky should haunt Newt Gingrich and the rest of the GOPpers who have been distorting and defaming his community-organizing legacy.

It's bad enough that the Newt is calling Mitt Romney a liberal today, but it's no surprise because he's been beating the Massachusetts Moderate/Liberal label as his main line of attack since it brought him short-lived success in South Carolina.  But now the Party of No has  gone too far.  Romney's mouthpieces and his SuperPac are trying to pin the "liberal" label on Rick Fucking Santorum, their new major competition, and one of the least liberal GOPpers who has ever drawn breath. "Mitt Romney has a much more comprehensively conservative record than Rick does," says Romney surrogate Jim Talent (former Missouri Senator) who argued that Santorum's Senate voting record "shows he's been in the liberal wing" of the GOP.

Neither Romney nor Santorum has a liberal bone in his body, they have not earned the label, and I'm using the power invested in myself to revoke their right to use and abuse it.

The Quotation of the Day About Liberals

Lawrence O'Donnell will be talking about this viral quotation on the Rewrite segment of his MSNBC show, "The Last Word" later tonight:

"What did liberals do that was so offensive to the Republican Party? I’ll tell you what they did. Liberals got women the right to vote. Liberals got African-Americans the right to vote. Liberals created Social Security and lifted millions of elderly people out of poverty. Liberals ended segregation. Liberals passed the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act. Liberals created Medicare. Liberals passed the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act. 

"What did Conservatives do? They opposed them on every one of those things, every one. So when you try to hurl that label at my feet, ‘Liberal,’ as if it were something to be ashamed of, something dirty, something to run away from, it won’t work, because I will pick up that label and I will wear it as a badge of honor." 

-Lawrence O’Donnell Jr.

This could have been posted as my mission statement when I started this blog and John Kerry was pissing me off by running away from the liberal label, and handing the White House (and the meaning of the word) back to George Bush and the conservatives.

So I'll do my small part to spread this virus, as it is appearing around Facebook and blogs:

And as O'Donnell's words were delivered from the mouth of Jimmy Smits on The West Wing:

Language Matters: Liberal Environmental Hysteria!!!

It really struck me during the most recent debate of the GOP presidential candidates that there is no surer way to throw red meat to a Republican crowd than to attack those who would defend the environment against drillers and miners or any other business interests.  Here, from that Fox News Sioux City debate, was temporary-frontrunner Newt Gingrich in the middle of a rant about opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline:

"... and the president of the United States cannot figure out that it is – I’m using mild words here – utterly irrational to say I’m now going to veto a middle-class tax cut to protect left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco, so that we’re going to kill American jobs, weaken American energy, make us more vulnerable to the Iranians and do so in a way that makes no sense to any normal, rational American."

TBL.org sidebar  12/19/2011

Newt's "left-wing environmental extremists in San Francisco" came to mind just now when I was looking at my blog and ran across the attached selection of articles with the keyword "liberal" selected by Google for the trueblueliberal.org sidebar. "Liberal Insanity on Light Bulbs" from the Washington Examiner and "Keystone XL: Liberal Histrionics Answered" from Forbes are not at all uncommon uses of  "liberal" as an adjective in the center-right press. Look back at Newt's quote and see how he ends his rant with an appeal to the common sense of  "any normal, rational American."  You don't have to search far in the right-wing and mainstream media to find the same opposition between "insane," "hysterical," "histrionic," "left-wing," "liberal," "extremist" defenders of the environment and those level-headed, normal, rational, mainstream defenders of the bottom line and real (i.e., monetary) concerns over anything that might seem squishy or fuzzy-headed.


We can all see how the GOP is purposely using and abusing the language in a Luntzian manner (and being parroted by a lazy press), but I still can't -- on any emotional level -- understand why anyone, even Tea Partiers, would have the same visceral reaction against environmentalists that the Occupiers have against the billionaires hanging onto their low tax rates as a birthright. I don't have a lot of understanding for other red-meat conservative issues (executions, torture, anti-gay prejudice) either; maybe it's just because I don't eat red (or any other color of) meat.   And that's an environmental issue too.

Wedge Issue Update: "Liberal Hollywood Using Class Warfare to Brainwash Our Kids!"

In an election year in which the right does not have the high ground on any issue that really affect Americans, winning a majority of voters will require the GOP to peel off enough voters from President Obama and his party with a combination of wedge issues. Here's one that I didn't include in my original list, but it's an old chestnut in the right-wing arsenal, since the pre-cable conservatives railed against the unfair Liberal Hollywood portrayals Mr. Henry Potter and the 1% of Bedford Falls in "It's a Wonderful Life." Liberal Hollywood is at it again with the Muppets' nemesis, oilman Tex Richman. And Fox Business News (courtesy of Media Matters for America) is all over Liberal Hollywood's crime.



Speaking about (or should I say "screeching" in honor of the tone of this video?) brainwashing, someone needs to talk about the constant brainwashing in which we've been bathed since birth in America. We have every mainstream voice telling us about nothing but the wonders of capitalist consumerism supported by patriotic militarism. And this time of year we expect the non-stop cries of "buy..buy..buy" to reach a crescendo (with a subtext that if you don't buy..buy..buy, you obviously don't love..love..love your family). But if I start complaining about that, I'm into another wedge issue, The Liberal War On Christmas.

I still think that the current front-running issue in the GOP Wedge-Issue Race is "Dirty Filthy Hippies", but there's no reason to think that the race between Republican wedge issues will be any less volatile than the one between their stellar cast of candidates (which is being led at this moment by Newt Gingrich?).

The Biggest Difference Between Liberals and Conservatives in 140 Characters

On this Thanksgiving weekend I was thinking about an uncle who's been gone for a while. He was the first person who gave me my archetype of how a conservative person's mind works. Over a Thanksgiving dinner table, his biggest complaint (before he had kids) was: "Why am I paying school taxes? I don't have any kids!"

Remembering that statement reminded me of a tweet I made a month or two ago. I think I remembered it word for word and just tweeted it again: "The biggest fear of liberals is that someone might starve.The biggest fear of conservatives is that someone might get something for nothing." It was a spur of the moment statement, and it still feels very true to me. When the first draft of a tweet turns out to be exactly 140 characters long, it also seems to me to have a special quality of 'truthiness.'

But we see the conservative's dislike of paying for other people's needs in more than Uncle X's hatred of paying for the education of other people's children. We see it in the predictable GOP opposition to paying for any health or welfare program, or extension of unemployment benefits, or infrastructure, or investments in mass transit, or green energy, or even giving disaster aid without taking that money out of some other social program.

But there is more than just greed at work. There is resentment of anyone who gets a government "handout" or "free lunch". The resentment is summed up in Ronald Reagan's fictional 1976 caricature of the "welfare queen" that made him a hero among the conservative uncles of this nation:

"She has eighty names, thirty addresses, twelve Social Security cards and is collecting veteran's benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands. And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She's got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names. Her tax-free cash income is over $150,000."

Of course their resentment of "getting something for nothing" does not extend to resentment of those who get a free ride by being born a Trump or a Rockefeller or a Kennedy or a Bush. That's the only way that money for nothing is acceptable in their world view, and they are doing everything they can to make the passing of wealth between generations easier and tax-free.

But why don't they feel the same resentment about the money that gets poured down the rathole of military waste? Why the cheering of wars and the death penalty and military tribunals and police brutality and almost any other form of state violence? I think they see this violence protecting their property rights, but it's still the part of American conservatism I have the hardest time understanding.