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Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
Feeling they've lost any say in how the nation is run, liberals are turning to an unfamiliar philosophy: States' rights.
Nov 16, 2004 | In the days after the election, fantasies of blue-state secession ricocheted around the Internet. Liberals indulged themselves in maps showing Canada gathering the blue states into its social democratic embrace, leaving the red states to form their own "Jesusland." They passed around the scathing rant from the Web site Fuck the South, which lacerated the chauvinism of the "heartland" and pointed out that the coasts, far from destroying marriage, actually have lower divorce rates than the interior.
These sentiments were so pronounced that they migrated into the mainstream. Speaking on "The McLaughlin Group" the weekend after George W. Bush's victory, panelist Lawrence O'Donnell, a former Democratic Senate staffer, noted that blue states subsidize the red ones with their tax dollars, and said, "The big problem the country now has, which is going to produce a serious discussion of secession over the next 20 years, is that the segment of the country that pays for the federal government is now being governed by the people who don't pay for the federal government."
A shocked Tony Blankley asked him, "Are you calling for civil war?" To which O'Donnell replied, "You can secede without firing a shot."
For now, of course, secession remains an escapist fantasy. But its resonance with liberals points to some modest potential for constructive political action. After all, as the South knows well, there are interim measures between splitting the nation and submitting to a culture pushed by a hostile federal government. Having lost any say in how the nation is run, liberals may be about to discover states' rights -- for better or worse.
While Democrats have rarely had less power on a national level, they will still be major players in cities and states. One of the resounding victories in the 2004 election was the California proposition allotting $3 billion in state dollars for embryonic stem-cell research. The proposition runs counter to Bush himself, who has limited federal funding to a small group of preexisting embryonic stem cells. The minimum wage has remained stagnant at $5.15 an hour since 1997 and the Bush administration is opposed to an increase. But in November, Florida and Nevada, both red states, passed initiatives to raise it to $6.15 an hour. Colorado, another state that voted for Bush, also passed a measure requiring state utilities to get 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2015.
Meanwhile, even as gay rights are preempted or rolled back on the national level -- and in some states -- Connecticut looks set to join Vermont in legalizing civil unions for same-sex couples. As the Danbury News Times reported on Monday, "Rep. Robert Godfrey, D-Danbury, and other lawmakers say it is almost inevitable that a gay union measure will become law in the 2005 session of General Assembly." If that happens, Connecticut will become the first state where the Legislature passed such a law without a court order.
Potential abounds for other statewide progressive measures. Howard Dean famously expanded health insurance in Vermont to guarantee coverage for all the state's children. His followers hoped he could do the same thing nationwide. That's not going to happen, but there's nothing to stop people from agitating for Dean-style policies in their own states. Similarly, Margie Waller of the Brookings Institution points out, Wisconsin has a child-care entitlement for low-income working families. "If you meet the eligibility criteria, you're guaranteed to get child care," she says. Feminists aren't going to get much help with child care out of the Bush administration, but they could try to replicate Wisconsin's policy elsewhere.
Liberals have long opposed the growth of state power, and for good reason. The century's most significant clashes over federalism have been over civil rights, with the national government forcing the South to submit to desegregation. Since then, fights over everything from abortion to school prayer have pitted Northern liberals, who want to use the federal government to enforce individual rights, often in the face of hostile majorities, against Southern conservatives, who believe that communities should be free to set their own norms.
Now, though, it's liberal enclaves that feel threatened by the federal government, and who will likely need to muster states' rights arguments to protect themselves from Bush's domestic policies.
