I’m not one for Overton windows but I agree with this from commenter Linnaeus in the last thread:
I have a hard time taking seriously the label âfar leftâ thatâs showing up on some of the liberal blogs these days. One doesnât have to like what some folks on the left are saying, but the successive lowering of the bar as to what constitutes âfar leftâ just helps to further entrench right-wing frames.
I read a lot of the blogs that are often described as “far left” — Atrios, Daily Kos, Firedoglake — and I rarely find policy proposals that I disagree with, let alone consider to be “far left” of my own. Granted, I consider myself to be a social democrat Democrat, not a neo-liberal Democrat. But I think many of you do too.
There’s plenty of room, at least for me, to disagree with many other liberal blogs’ ideas about political tactics. I support half-a-loaf legislation and I don’t think that optics and the bully pulpit are so important.
But I think it’s simply incorrect to refer to much of the liberal blogoshere as “far left”. It just plays into silly stereotypes. The other day some friends (whose politics are about like mine) referred to Paul Krugman as “far left”; when a mainstream, strongly pro-free-trade economist is described a “far left” just because he advocates for traditional Keynesian policies, there’s a problem.