Are liberals their own worst enemy?

For liberals, I'll stipulate that the ground can look distorted when one is perched high aloft on an intellectually- and morally-correct pedestal. But the facts don't lie. A new Pew poll shows 41% of Americans identifying as "conservative" or "very conservative." Only 21% identify as "liberal" or "very liberal".

With that in mind, the Economist observes that "the problem for progressives is that not very many Americans are progressive." The magazine cites Jared Bernstein, a progressive economist who until recently worked for Vice-President Biden: "Those of us who do care about [progressive programmes] will not defeat those who strive to get rid of it all by becoming better tacticians. We will only find success when a majority of Americans agrees with us that government is something worth fighting for."

Kevin Drum echoes the same sentiment: "... I blame the broad liberal community for our failures, not just President Obama. My biggest beef with Obama is the same one I had three years ago, namely that he's never really even tried to move public opinion in a specifically progressive direction. But that hardly even matters unless all the rest of us have laid the groundwork. And we haven't. Wonks, hacks, activists, all of us. We just haven't persuaded the public to support our vision of government. Until we do, the tea party tendency will always be more powerful than we are."

I think all of these critiques of liberals and Obama are fair. (But I also suspect the president, a progressive at heart, may turn to port and go all FDR on us once reelected. Indeed, he'd earn a fitting legacy by finally exorcising Reaganism, the political/economic dogma still chokeholding America's promise.) But American liberals are a thin-skinned bunch. L'Hote’s Freddie DeBoer immediately took umbrage and wonders why the "cosmopolitan globalist liberaltarian" Economist "mocks the American left for thinking that we should try to advance our moral and ideological interests politically." So what if the public is not with us, DeBoer argues. "Shall we give up? [...] You are compelled by conscience, and so you work. Why that deserves mockery, whatever your ideological persuasion, will forever be a mystery to me."

DeBoer is a thoughtful leftist and always worth reading. He's also a covenient avatar for the left (nothing personal, godfather, it's just "bidness"). As such, it's amazing how he (and by extension, the left) habitually misses the point of criticism. No one is saying not to heed Frederick Douglass’ clarion to “agitate." In fact, leftists should double-down in this necessary effort. But talk is cheap. It's time liberals took a basic Peter Drucker axiom to heart: "Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things." Or as any old-school politician might say with tongue in cheek, never underestimate the effectiveness of a straight cash bribe (so to speak). The Tea Party certainly hasn't. So quit whining, lefties, and act. That's the only change I can believe in.