Can We FINALLY Kill the Myth of Centrism?

[Bullet1987]

I'm tired of hearing about centrism as if it's some proven way of winning elections. Centrism, which led to Obama's disastrous idea that bipartisanship would work with crooks, thieves, and habitual liars has been proven wrong...and in a major way. Blue Dogs got slaughtered last night! And while yes we did lose two strong liberal lions, last night also proved that pandering to the Right is not an effective political strategy in a party where you base is becoming more and more annoyed with your direction. Centrism is a media myth with no context and no meaning whatsoever. I honestly believe it's simply a buffer to prevent politicians from buying into liberal ideas...because they surely don't have a problem buying into Republican ones (and that's including fake Democrats like Evan Bayh and Joe "The Joke" LIEberman).

[HughMoran]

1. There's no such thing as centerism

It's a construct made up by people who can't accept that certain parts of this country are indeed very conservative. We probably can't win back the House without winning back some of the lost Blue Dog seats. Speaking in broad-brushes is not useful nor helpful for a party that is based on a wide-ranging coalition of people's.

[Bullet1987]

2. Ummm....no...that's not where the idea of centrism comes from

Sorry.

[sandnsea]

4. Or a HUGE truth movement

We cannot let lies win the day anymore. That's the bottom line. We've got to be on the move at the local level, every day, countering the liars.

[HughMoran]

8. Exactly

This whole blue dog/centerist/progressive/liberal/overreach blah blah, fucking blah is a waste of our time.

Counter Media lies.

Push to overturn Citizens United & destroy the Chamber of Commerce and Crossroads.

Organize Democratic support at the grass roots level in order to get good candidates to run for office.

Arguing about generic concepts like centerism is the last thing we need to be doing at this time.

[sandnsea]

3. Blue Dogs lost to people further right than them

They lost because their conservative constituents believe the lies, that the country is being led down the path of socialism by the Democrats. And you think the answer is to go ahead and really go left?

[Kurovski]

11. Yes, because Democrats will come out and vote for them en masse.

Blue Dogs are just liberal Repubs in many cases. No Dem is going to work hard for a Repubber anymore.

As the party grows younger, The dems grow more liberal.

Racism, as an example, isn't the super-cool and/or acceptable social movement it once was.

This election moves the party to the liberal end. If Dems fought for Health Care on a larger scale (that includes Bluers) the loss woul;d have been less. If obama had not spent a full year on Healthcare without actually fighting and whipping dems into line by using his bully pulpit, things would probably be different.

[sandnsea]

20. Liberal Dems in Liberal Districts CAN'T VOTE in conservative districts

It doesn't matter how many voters turned out in California or Massachusetts or Hawaii - those voters can't do squat for Arkansas or Florida or New Hampshire. The people THINK differently in those different areas. They voted AGAINST the health care bill that they're already calling socialized health care. It wouldn't have helped anything in those districts and states for the health care bill to have been further left. No mandate, now that might have helped. But it was the Hillary self-proclaimed progressive left that supported the mandate in the first place.

You can't run against your own party and think your party will win. Whether you're a Blue Dog or a Feingold Blue Liberal, it just won't work.

[Kurovski]

28. Over 70 percent wanted strong healthcare.

70 percent.

I'm not thinking clearly today. I think that's obvious. :(

[sandnsea]

30. lol, 70% WHO DON'T LIVE IN CONSERVATIVE STATES

I can't say what's obvious.

[Kurovski]

41. Conservative states have Dem voters too.

Getting younger all the time.

Something I've noticed when I talk to people who identify as Repubs, when you break down each party's platform, open-minded conservatives find that they actually have many liberal views. Maybe we need candidates who can speak to that, and sidestep the decades of re-defining "liberal" that the corporate media and Pukesters engaged in.

(In reality, I think if an area of the country voted on unverifiable voting equipment, we really have no idea at all what the true outcome was.) But, what-the-fuck-ever. Yamming on is fun.

[sandnsea]

46. Not enough, clearly

And not the ones who make up the 70% of the country you're talkinga bout.

Yes, many people who say they're Republicans actually don't suppport anything Republican politicians support.

That's because they believe the LIES they've been told about Democrats being socialists. Isn't that what I already said? What the hell good does it do for Democrats to just go ahead and become socialists and prove them right? NO. The answer is to fight the lies, and we can't do that when the left is telling just as many lies as the right.

[Kurovski]

50. The lies, exactly.

Why would the poorest of the poor (OR anyone) not want to increase the likely sucess of their own health outcome? You don't need to be a dem to want that. So the question is: how do you counter lies and paranoia?

40,000 a year continue to die.

[laughingliberal]

53. The lowest support for a Public Option in any state, at any point in the debate, was 48%. nt

[Recursion]

56. But hospitals were dead against the PO, and had the clout to kill the bill

They're already losing money on Medicaid patients and were worried that public options would be yet another Medicaid. To keep them on board, it got dropped. Contrary to popular belief, insurance companies loved the idea of a public option because it would be a place they could dump all the sick people, which would make the hospitals' objections all the more important. And public support would have whithered if they had done even one round of ads about it.

[laughingliberal]

57. I stand by my statement. Getting the damned thing in there was the key.

People have to see it work to like it. Once it passed and people saw the benefits, they'd have never let it go.

Publc support would have soared once it was passed and people were receiving the benefits of it.

[Recursion]

58. Possibly; unfortunately we'll never know

And now is probably not the time to reopen that wound, so I'll leave my policy objections to a public option out, and stick with process.

Health care was at least in my mind where the wheels really came off the track. We absolutely failed to have a message. Obama was so worried about repeating the Clintons' mistakes with their attempt at HCR (presenting Congress with a fait accompli written by large insurance companies and hospitals) that he left it entirely to Congress and failed to weigh in at times when it would have been helpful.

You may be right that a more publicly-financed plan would have been more popular; I may be right that it would have been less popular. But there was just no message discipline at all. I only figured out hospitals' objections to a public option after a lot of research into how health care is paid for. But even if their objections could be answered, we didn't even get to hear them: nobody stood up and said "the problem is hospitals face ever-increasing costs from their own providers, and are worried the states that will run the public options will underfund them like they have with Medicaid, which is costing hospitals a lot of money as it is, while private insurance will dump all of their sick customers into the already-underfunded public pool." (That's the best one-sentence description of it I can do.)

Now, you may have a good response to that objection (I'm at best three-quarters convinced by it), but that explanation simply did not make it out there. Whether we should have gone more to the right or more to the left, whatever we did we should have had a spokesperson who could articulate what we were doing and why. And it's particularly disappointing that a President with such a talent for communication didn't use that talent to explain what we were trying to do. I don't even know that "fighting" is the right image to use; Obama, Reid, and Pelosi actually showed a lot of grit in managing to get this thing passed (arms were in fact twisted, particularly on the House side, from the inside-the-beltway stuff I've read). It wasn't that they didn't fight, it was that they just ran off and did it without building some sort of understanding and consensus among the people.

So, we end up with a very large bill, passed in a shall we say procedurally somewhat novel manner, with talking points that bore very little relevance to the actual questions people had about it. And so we got nailed.

[laughingliberal]

60. I've worked in Heath Care for many, many years. It is the need for profit that has destroyed

our system and put it out of reach for millions of Americans.

The reimbursement rates could have been tweaked. In fact, the deficit hawk, asshat, Kent Conrad, opposed the PO on that very basis. He got a deal from Reid for ND that corrected their reimbursement rates. He still opposed it. It's not about the poor, starving hospitals-it's about the profits.

In 1991, I was working for HCA. They came through and slashed the employee benefits to the bone, poor mouthing, all the way. CEO, Thomas Frist, Jr's compensation package that year? $129,000,000. Spare me the sob story.


And we went off the rails before health care reform. We lost the House the day the administration told the American people that joke of a stimulus they passed would keep unemployment at/under 8%.

[Egnever]

21. These people have their head in the sand

They ignore fiengold losing as if it didnt happen and repeat the same garbage that we should have gone more left.

We got beat because the public/ mostly the older folks who turn out got talked into the idea that this admin was radically left.

Glad theres still some sanity on this board Sandsea.

[BrklynLiberal]

5. It would be nice if Dems stopped trying to be more like repukes..and

started going back to what the Dems are supposed to be about!!!!

Every time the Dems try to be more like repukes, they lose.....votes, people, issues, everything.

Google "George Lakoff, disaster messaging"

Lakoff has been warning against this crap for decades.

[treestar]

6. No why would that election prove that?

How is it intuitively obvious? It's not.

Grayson, Feingold, Sestak, all would have won if DUs perpetual theory were true.

It's the independents - a fickle crowd with no particular ideology.

[ourbluenation]

16. exactly. elections are always decided by the massive wishy-washy group

in the middle. bless their hearts.:puke:

[AndrewP]

52. Exactly n/t

[Uben]

7. No

Neither the far left or far right will ever govern the U.S., IMO. It aint gonna happen. The only reasonable choice is the middle because they are the ones who decide elections, like it or not. Add to that the fact that this country is going nowhere until we get a little more united in our ideologies. Without compromise, there is no progress. I think that is about as clear as it can get.
If we continue this partisan bullshit forever, we will be stuck where we are, forever. I have voted dem all my life, but I'm getting about as sick of their bullshit as I am of the republicans. Even so, I haven't seen any congressman anywhere willing to stand up and say we have to unite, and then follow up on it with meaningful actions.

Our government is full of career politicians who vote more according to their needs and wants rather than ours, and that is bullshit!
We need to get the fuck outta Iraq and Afghanistan, raise taxes, and start paying down this debt or we're doomed. Fuck the banks, fuck the auto industry, fuck the oil companies, we are going to have to bail our own asses out.

[Hawkowl]

17. You're wrong from the get go

The far right ruled this country from 2000-2008 and is really close to pulling it off again in 2012. If you merely decry partisanship while boarding your train to the deathcamps, you most certainly can not expect anything better.

[Recursion]

25. See, I think our perception of 2000-2008 is as wrong as the teabaggers' perception of today

We weren't ruled by the "far right"; the far right was furious about what the government was doing, just like the far left is now.

Hold your nose some time and go read some conservative blogs or forums. W was getting hit harder on FreeRepublic in 2008 than he was on DU. He was being called a sell-out, a panderer, somebody too interested in compromise with the other side and too interested in being "centrist". Does this sound familiar?

[Hawkowl]

26. Okay

Maybe we have a different definition of "far right". I define the far right as those who put the rights of the state and corporations above the rights of the people. Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, all these are examples of far right. Palin isn't far right because she is simply incoherent. Incoherency, as evidenced on Free Republic, can not be far right. Far right is a coherent, though evil, philosophy.

[Recursion]

35. Far right.

I define the far right as those who put the rights of the state and corporations above the rights of the people.

Well, fair enough, but that's not what people who campaign and vote and advocate on the far right call themselves. Remember, it was Bush's signing of TARP that started the whole tea party BS. They saw it as "yet another liberal giveaway to fat cats" and proof that W had sold them out to the Left for good (NCLB and the Medicare drug expansion started them down that road, along with W's push for immigration reform).

Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, all these are examples of far right.

OK, those are 6 people with 6 very different views and agendas (well, 5; Scalia and Alito are a lot alike). Rumsfeld and Cheney almost never agreed on anything (Cheney in particular hated Rumsfeld's attempts at acqusitions and contracts reform and thought his force reorganization initiative was a horrible idea -- Cheney wants an military that can be poised to spook China; Rumsfeld was more interested in preparing to fight regional conflicts). Cheney and Bush ended up having a lot of differences too, which is why Dick was pretty much shut out of policy by 2006. W himself wound up more in the Huckabee wing of the party: socially conservative but willing to compromise on fiscal issues (again, Medicare Part D, NCLB, TARP, the first half of the GM bailout) when he could get something in return. This is why conservatives were so sick of him by the end of his term. In another familiar chorus, they howled at him for "not fighting hard enough" for social security privatization.

[TheKentuckian]

22. How are we supposed to work "together" for those aims?

We all aren't trying to drive to the other side of the tunnel.

We are at extreme odds on fundamentals so we can give in to a surefire recipe for 3rd world disaster or oppose the opposition tooth and nail and at least give the people a real alternative should they wake up.

[laughingliberal]

61. The 'far left' of today was mainstream Democrats in the past & we governed for many years...

during which we saw the largest expansion of a middle class in the history of civilization.

People are idiots not to be able to see that.

[Recursion]

62. Yes, but people seem to have trouble digesting that fact: the country has moved to the right

What is a far-left position today (at least as far as economics) was a medium-left-to-center position a generation ago.

This happens. Times change. The entire world is vastly more economically right-wing than it was a generation ago. So, we start where we actually are, and then do what we can.

[laughingliberal]

64. How people view the 'left' and the 'right' does not change what works and what doesn't.

Right wing, right of center, centrist are all words that amount to the same thing-failed policies.

No matter how much 'times' change reality is bad policies will always fail no matter how they're branded.

[woo me with science]

9. Evan Bayh doesn't think so:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/03/opinion/03bayh.html?_r=1&ref=opinion

NY Times Op-Ed Contributor
Where Do Democrats Go Next?
By EVAN BAYH
Published: November 2, 2010

DEMOCRATS can recover from the disappointments of this election and set the stage for success in 2012. But to do so we must learn from Tuesday’s results.

....It is clear that Democrats over-interpreted our mandate. Talk of a “political realignment” and a “new progressive era” proved wishful thinking. Exit polls in 2008 showed that 22 percent of voters identified themselves as liberals, 32 percent as conservatives and 44 percent as moderates. An electorate that is 76 percent moderate to conservative was not crying out for a move to the left.

We also overreached by focusing on health care rather than job creation during a severe recession. It was a noble aspiration, but $1 trillion in new spending and a major entitlement expansion are best attempted when the Treasury is flush and the economy strong, hardly our situation today.

And we were too deferential to our most zealous supporters. During election season, Congress sought to placate those on the extreme left and motivate the base — but that meant that our final efforts before the election focused on trying to allow gays in the military, change our immigration system and repeal the George W. Bush-era tax cuts. These are legitimate issues but unlikely to resonate with moderate swing voters in a season of economic discontent.

With these lessons in mind, Democrats can begin to rebuild. Where to start?....

....(much more at link)


Evan Bayh, a Democratic senator from Indiana, is retiring from the Senate in January.

[jeff47]

15. Evan Bayh is also a delusional idiot who thought he should be pres in 2008 (nt)

[woo me with science]

29. LOL nt

[bobbolink]

39. !

:rofl:

Sometimes the truth just has to be said, and it can be entertaining at the same time.

:yourock:

[freestyle]

59. Is the same Evan Bayh who quit?

Even though he had a great record of getting elected in Indiana, quitting and then giving advice creates a bit of a credibility problem.

[NJmaverick]

10. Yes we all saw the ideological purist like Grayson and Feingold

ride their purity to victory

[Kurovski]

13. Feingold was ethically pure.

What an ass that man is.

Outspent four to one.

[Egnever]

24. And it didnt get him a win

Sorry but the idea that if we were onlky more leftists we would have won is gargbage. Races like fiengold and greyson put the lie to that idea.


Our problem is messaging and media control. Not any problem not being left enough. The pukes stand united no matter how insane their policies might be they never beat down their own. Dems on the other hand have been in a serious circular firing squadf mode since Obama was elected. It has brought us to where we are today and nothing else.

I personaly like the dems because they are a big tent and are willing to have self introspection however when facing a monolithic party like the pukes who stay on message and also happen to have the support of the major corporate sponors it makes for a tough win.

[Kurovski]

32. He was outspent four to one.

Money trumps all.

How else could a loony uncooperative dimwit like Sharron Angle be within striking distance? Money. Many do not like Harry Reid, but come on...that Angle run was fucking absurd.

Change the system. Public financing, limit races to a few weeks not years, give equal time to all candidates on our airwaves.

Until it's done, this shit will continue.

[Egnever]

43. Absolutely right

So it really isn't being too left or too right is it? The Dem's shoulda is bullshit. The Dem's are doing just fine IMHO the problem is messaging. They cant get theirs out.

Obama hasn't been sitting on his hands as this board likes to proclaim so often. This guy Has likely done more interviews and public speaking than most other presidents. He has been fighting but because the media doesn't air it people are more than willing to buy into the idea that obama isn't left enough or willing to fight hard enough. Its Fantasy.

The corporations own our governing process top to bottom from media access to direct availability of funds. The Angle thing IS a perfect example, the fact that she is even in the running goes to the power of media advertising. Harry voted to give social security to illegal aliens....And the add runs 24/7 every 3 minns on some channel and despite the fact that its an outright lie it is allowed to air....The media stands by and largely ignores it.... No daily question "why is your add a lie and why do you keep running it" Oh thats right because she took no daily questions and then the media largely sat still for that as well.

We are spoon fed information for the most part as a society and that information is manipulated by our media. The story isn't about the great things in health care its about the bad parts or worse the parts that we didn't get. The story isn't about all the openly gay appointments Obama has made its about how DADT isn't over and what a disappointment that is. The story isn't that GM saved thousands of jobs and has largely paid the government back its that government spent soooo much in a TAKEOVER of GM. And like little drones we sit here at DU and march to that tune with the rest of the sheeple.

Now we sit here willing to sit out elections and kvetching about what a disappointment the most productive admin in years is and wonder why we feel that way.

Hah if only the Dem's had fought harder, or been more to the left....riiiight.

[Kurovski]

49. Obama's lack of accomplishments are largely a myth, but

The quality in some cases are debatable.

I saw how he bailed on the strength of the health care bill, then wasted a year on it. I can blame rahm emmanuel for that,but Obama's title is "president" and rahms' position was little different than that of an aggressive pundit.

We can verify that the strongest benefit to some of the larger accomplishments are given to corporations. It's not a particularly happy thing for most of americans.

But we would probably do well to learn that we must be EXTREMELY grateful for any little improvement, since every single ass in this world is fully owned by powers larger than our individual selves.

They have the power to define science, and disease. the power to decide when we go to war, and how long we'll be there. Even To decide on how reality is presented.

And the list goes on in that abysmal fashion.

[Egnever]

51. I agree with the quality statement

but on average I think we come out far ahead. A large part of that wasted year was due to the senate and Baucusses committee and the health care mania over the recess (death panels) that enabled it to be drawn out because the media gave them legitimacy even though it was the crazy people and corporate shills they made the argument for in the media and not the 70% who wanted more.

My point really is that in the end it has little or nothing to do with how the Dem's did and everything to do with the perception of what they did. The perception is molded for us not by us and that is our problem.

[Kurovski]

55. Largely agreed.

I still think we're making teeny-tiny progress. But please don't tell anyone in this joint that i told you that. it will likely please no one. :)

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

12. The voters showed what they thought of "centrism" (aka - politics-as-usual) yesterday.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. They will go on it for as long as they can milk

it.

I expect the country to move right quite frankly, FAR RIGHT... before things get better...

In fact, by the time we retire, my hubby and I, I expect this country (if it remains one) to be a basket case

[Kurovski]

18. Once the middle class is gone, that'll be it. (nt)

[nadinbrzezinski]

23. It is already mostly gone

perhaps some day the people in this country will wake up... they won't like what they see, and it is on BOTH party's doorstep.

[Kurovski]

34. The working class is hobbling

when they have no more money to support the jobs of the middle class, things will cascade. I'm not so sure that it's almost gone.

[nadinbrzezinski]

36. Look around

people are still living the life style, and not fully... due to credit cards, and that is gone mostly.

[Kurovski]

37. They have to live within their means, now. (nt)

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. Which is not a mc lifestyle

It is mostly gone.

It has not hit people yet, And of course when you ask people what are you?

Middle Class... never mind they make working class wages.... that don't help.

You ask me... we are solid working class thank you, I have that thing called class consciousness though.

[invisiblellama]

19. i made a graff

been lurking here since 2004 primaries. today i'm pretty sick of reading people like evan bayh say we need to move to the right so i made this graph

[Recursion]

27. Hmm. Conservatives blame *us* for corporate welfare, and we blame them.

There's plenty of blame to go around, realistically, but it's something that both sides look at as contrary to their principles. But it keeps happening.

But my bigger point is that a teabagger could make a mirror image of your chart -- that's how they see the world. Both sides feel like the political process has sold them out in trying to move to a "center" that doesn't exist. *shrug* for that matter we may both be right.

[invisiblellama]

42. well

I don't think teabaggers would agree with universal healthcare, for one, but that isn't really the point.

The four things I listed as "moderate" causes are things that the American public supports via a majority. Yes, of course, many Americans are going to want those things.

The point is, nobody is listening to them. Until someone does, it'll be electoral shuffleboard.

[Recursion]

44. Sorry, I was assuming a different set of issues

Like, for instance, "lower taxes", "less intrusive regulations", "a strong national defense", and "reducing the deficit and debt". Things that, like your list, people do vaguely agree with as ideas until you start actually trying to implement them.

[Kurovski]

45. Well, a lot of Dem corporatists were tossed out this cycle.

so we are perhaps moving closer to our principles. Repub principles are not openly spoken of, but they include individual freedom, individual being defined as an uber-wealthy corporation to be served closely and tenderly like a new bride in her fifth month of pregnancy.

(Maybe the blue dogs weren't corporatist enough to get the cash all candidates need to survive.)

[kctim]

31. Oh FFS

There is NO "liberal base" to talk about, in area's that elect Blue Dogs!

[jgraz]

33. I'd be happy if we just ended the myth of right-wing policies disguised as centrism.

[felix_numinous]

40. The whole left and right paradigm

was trumped up to create an illusion that people who are against the RW coup are extremists.

[Evasporque]

47. if you lie in the shit....

You get shit on you.

[Waiting For Everyman]

48. If Dems spent half the time that Rethugs do explaining and defending their ideas

most of this country would be BLUE. And RW-lite (Blue Dog) candidates wouldn't even have a reason to be "needed" in the first place.

[upi402]

54. Yes! and...

it's too damn late.


The fools who swallowed the DCCC Clinton Republicanism have sunk us all.

[rucky]

63. Prepare yourself for two years of the most centrist centrism evah.

:puke:

[Laelth]

65. I agree completely.

As I said in January of this year, here: http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Laelth/41

-Laelth