commondreams | Last month, adding to the archive of left-punching, conservative
writer and ardent Clinton supporter James Kirchick enthusiastically
denounced those he called "the Hillary Clinton-loathing, Donald Trump-loving useful idiots of the left."
"In this weirdest year," Kirchick wrote, "there may be no weirder
phenomenon than the rise of the progressive Donald Trump supporter."
Among those apparently deserving of the label "progressive Trump fan"
are Glenn Greenwald, Rania Khalek, Zaid Jilani, Julian Assange, Jill
Stein, and Katrina vanden Heuvel, all of whom, according to Kirchick,
are "captive to a crude and one-dimensional anti-Americanism."
The one sin that unites these progressive commentators, journalists,
and political figures with Trump is, in other words, that they all dare
to question the morality of America's use of force abroad.
By linking left-wing criticism of American foreign policy with Trumpism, Kirchick is attempting, as Eric Levitz has noted,
to delegitimize ideas without having to put forward anything resembling
a coherent argument. Instead, Kirchick dubiously portrays Trump as an
anti-imperialist (which he's not) to smear actual anti-imperialists.
"For champions of the bipartisan consensus on issues of national
security and globalization," Levitz writes, "Trump is an awfully
convenient figurehead for challenges to the status quo."
Far from innovative, Kirchick's tactic of using Trump to dismiss legitimate critiques of
Hillary Clinton has become commonplace within American political
discourse. And shamefully, the so-called progressive wing of the
Democratic Party has silently capitulated to this framework.
Such a state of affairs is immensely revealing, in several ways.
First, it demonstrates clearly the striking ideological bankruptcy of
the Democratic establishment. As Neera Tanden, a long-time Clinton
confidante, made clear in a recent interview with Politico's Glenn
Thrush, loyal partisans are not at all concerned with addressing—or
even acknowledging—the critiques of Hillary Clinton offered by
independent progressives. Instead, they are concerned primarily with
optics and deflection.
Tanden, while acknowledging that Sanders "brought a lot of really
important issues to the floor," lamented that "Sanders was prosecuting a
much tougher character attack" than the one Clinton faced in 2008. She
also observed—contradicting the facts—that
Sanders's attacks did "significant damage to Hillary's negatives,"
implying that Sanders is responsible for the perception that Clinton is
dishonest and untrustworthy.
Of course, as Ben Spielberg has observed, "If legitimate critiques damage a candidate's approval rating, the problem isn't the person making the critiques."
But Tanden's narrative is consistent with the message put forward by
the Clinton campaign throughout the primary: The very act of pointing to
Clinton's record, the story goes, is tantamount to, as Clinton herself
put it, "an artful smear."
