Has liberalism failed?

Moira reads the left-of-center magazine The Nation.  I used to read it too, but lost interest in recent years.  The other day, however, I read a Nation article that asked the question, "Has liberalism failed?"

That got me to thinking, and I'd suggest that American liberalism failed back in the 2004 election campaign, when it succumbed to risk-averse "pragmatism." Pragmatic liberals are quick to accuse Ralph Nader and his few supporters of enabling Bush Jr.'s "election" and his 2003 invasion of Iraq.  But look at their own behavior in 2004!  When they chose prowar candidate John Kerry over antiwar candidate Howard Dean in the primaries, then Kerry over antiwar candidate Nader in November--all while hoping Kerry didn't mean it, of course--they provided the warmongers with some enabling of their own. (In truth, the left had largely surrendered to pragmatism back in the 2000 election, but not unanimously enough to please the Nader-haters.)

Ever see the 1980s high-school comedy Pretty in Pink?  That's the one where rich kid Andrew McCarthy fell for "back of the tracks" girl Molly Ringwald and was going to invite her to the prom, but his rich friends gave him grief and he chickened out.  He later explained to her, "I believed in you.  I just didn't believe in me." Dean was rejected because American liberalism stopped believing in itself.  And that's the heart of the matter.

I recall Democrats portentously saying back in 2004, "This is the most important presidential election of our time," and I fear they were right.  Liberals hoped that Obama would be another Dean, but he's ended up looking more like Kerry, his latest Secretary of State.  To live again, liberalism needs to make a clean break with the slippery slope of pragmatism and its ever-diminishing returns.