Which center are we aiming at?

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

There are two American political centers for Democrats.

There is the center-center... the 50th percentile of political opinion. (Or is it technically the 51st... either way, you know what I mean.)

That center is an average including the views of die-hard RW nuts, fascists and white supremacists.

Those people will never support Obama. Ever. On anything.

And they will never diminish their criticisms based on facts. So not only can we never win their support, we cannot even hope to mollify them in relative terms.

It makes no sense for us to include those folks in OUR estimation of the center.

Example: Healthcare reform polling. Say 30% of the public opposes the bill as too liberal and 13% oppose the bill as not liberal enough.

To one way of thinking that means the bill is too liberal, politically. But it isn't because none of that 30% will vote for Democrats if Jesus himself comes down and tells them to. On the other hand, almost all of the 13% are persuadable potential Democratic voters.

If only 70% of the people are "in play" then the practical center is the center of that 70%.

Put another way, 13% you can get represents more votes than 30% you cannot get.

The difference is appeasing the 50th percentile of liberalism versus aiming for the 65th percentile of liberalism.

That is an enormous difference in attitudes. The second center, the center of the bloc of voters we can possibly get, is more liberal than the average American.

(For practical reasons this does not apply to HCR in Congress. Congress is its own population that is bound to be to the right of th nation in good times and bad because unlike congress-persons, average voters are not owned by corporate money. This piece is not about the practical limitations of a given bill, but rather about broad national attitudes.)

RW types are more lock-step and likelier to be single-issue voters. The RW can secure its base by having an okay economy, talking like Rambo, gibbering about Geebus and opposing choice. That simplistic approach secures enough single issue RW voters to form a base.

Our base isn't that reactive or monolithic... we are not so easily bought. The pugs have a smaller party but an advantage because their base is a bigger % of their party, and pretty easy to manipulate.

When you have the largest party and you can HOLD your own party it is hard to lose. Please Dems and you only need to please 40% of independents. Alienate some Dems by seeking wing-nut-leaning support and you suddenly need 50% of independents.

(Those last few grafs are a little confusing, but I am trying to say something about why the conventional wisdom of seeking the absolute center works better for them than for us. Because their base is... well, dumber. Their base is easier to hold.)

[Zenlitened]

1. K&R. An interesting point. - n/t

[cleveramerican]

2. The center is where consensus lies

and its never static, always moving.

You cannot hold a political party by force, only by better ideas and explaining them clearer than your opposition.

For far too many dems the "right-wing" is anyone to the right of themselves.

[TheKentuckian]

11. You're skipping the point of where the practical center is

There are a significant amount of unreachable voters and faux fishing for those unattainables causes you to overshoot the achievable center and alienate your core constituents AND your own effective political center ain't exactly going to be happy either.

You cannot achieve consensus or even get much done by negotiating with the unreachable. The simple truth is they aren't interested no matter what you're selling and you lose sure votes by trying to woo them and look weak to many for basically begging someone to play with you that always spits in your eye and in front of God and everybody.

That and the real swing voters are not the mass of independents as pundits lazily pretend but rather a group that is maybe 6%-10% tops of the electorate (nationally anyway) that don't really appear to primarily vote based on policy but general economic conditions and/or the person they "like" better.

So, it only pays electorally to seek the elusive and undefinable political center as far as your base is willing to tolerate and if you do get there the evidence is weak on how many votes are there to get in any event.

The real "centrist" is mostly existent in Washington. It isn't a political movement, there are no vast numbers of people looking to find a voice for their beliefs, in fact there is no coherent ideology or demographic it is rather a marketing cover that allows politicians to be corporatist while taking advantage of rhetoric from both parties to sell their poison.
Their real base is conservatives that don't like the theocratic rabble and/or blatant racism and no the tent doesn't need to be that big because eventually you reach the place where a house divided against it's self cannot stand.
You've got to serve the people and utilize the money or serve the money and use the people and it is past time to throw the moneychangers out of the temple before they not only ruin it but what it stands for. You can't lose track of the fact that you will stand for something, even if you run like a thief in the night away from it. If nothing else you will represent that.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

13. Marvelous post. +1

[Zenlitened]

15. Well said!

...You cannot achieve consensus or even get much done by negotiating with the unreachable...

[cleveramerican]

18. at some point you become "the unreachable"

when your first concern is what you want
and you stop respecting the others point of view
you have basically stopped looking for consensus
and moved on to simply consolidating your power,
and claiming otherwise is easily identified by voters as a lie.
which wears on voters and they end up turning on you eventually
for example look at the republicans of the last 7 years or so.

fighting for what you want is good up to the point where you stop caring about anything other than what you want.
The wise politician always keeps looking for some common interest.
Its smart to do so and always has been, regardless of the political climate of the moment.


of course some small part of us all wants to gets the bastards that screwed us.
this is something only a fool would ever admit in public.

[depakid]

21. There isn't any "consensus"

on most issues in the states.

[ClassWarrior]

22. You are correct. For more on this, see "No Center, No Centrists," #14 below.

NGU.

[depakid]

23. Precisely

[midnight]

3. K&R. This is interesting, but can you explain the second political center.

There are two American political centers for Democrats.

The first

There is the center-center... the 50th percentile of political opinion. (Or is it technically the 51st... either way, you know what I mean.)

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

5. And the second is the center of all possible Dem voters

(I edited the OP a bit in light of your question)

The 50-50 center includes a big chunk of un-persuadable voters. Since they oppose Dem no matter what in political terms it really doesn't matter what they think. Their votes are not based on anything we waste time trying to appease them.

It doesn't much matter whether a RWer who will never vote for a Dem thinks a policy is 80% socialist or 95% socialist... making the policy less-socialist-seeming cannot win that voter's support.

If the political spectrum was perfectly smooth we would gain as many independents by moving right as we lose/discourage.alienate progressives, but the spectrum isn't smooth. It is lumpy, with a big lump of total idealogical opposition to Dems. So rightward moves have diminishing returns.

[midnight]

7. I hope I understand your explanation that this center is filled with those

who will never vote on dem. policy. If that is what you mean, and Obama is described as a centrist, how do you square this issue or are they not related? Thanks....

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

10. The presidency may be a special case

The 50% center does vote Dem sometimes. They are within the roughly 70% of the electorate I'm thinking of as potential Dem voters and we must seek their votes.

But we don't have to hit them dead on.

For instance, the HCR bill is weak, yet is widely viewed as super left-wing. It isn't, but that's the perception.

In a hypothetical (setting aside what Joe Lieberman would vote for in practice)...

Take the 50% guy. He doesn't love the bill (worried it costs too much or whatever) but isn't opposed. Would adding a public option make him switch to opposed? Probably not. He has no real opinion on the public option. He wants something done about health insurance, doesn't know much about the topic and is willing to trust Obama somewhat.

But the left cares very much about the public option.

I don't know that alienating the base gains anything in the middle.

The pugs maintain some positions that poll poorly but are single-issue things that do not alienate Mr. 50-50.

We should do the same. It is assumed that if pugs hate something 100% that independents must hate it 50%, but why? Independents are not very partisan.

Republicans have done well over the years by opposing abortion even though Mr. 50-50 favors abortion. But he's not too worried about it either way. It's not a deal-breaker for him either way.

I admit this is me typing and thinking, not a mature unified-theory-of-everything.

Regarding Obama being a centrist... yes, he is. And so was Clinton. And it is easy to argue that they won because of their centrism because they won.

But then both men dropped 30+% points in less than a year. Obama's centrism has not won any friends on the right and has pissed off elements of his base.

I expect Obama to be re-elected, just as Clinton was. And I expect us to get creamed in Congress like we did under Clinton.

The question is, if Obama was friendlier to his base would that prevent him from winning in 2012? I think we would win either way. But the national Democratic Party is getting roughed up considerably.

Perhaps I should have said that centrism can be okay for one guy, but is bad for the party, because I am mostly thinking about the national mood and 2010. The base on both sides is more important in off-year elections.

Will every progressive who will stay home in 2010 will be replaced by a centrist voter we would otherwise have lost? I doubt it. Mr. 50-50 probably doesn't even vote in off-year elections.

I may be wrong, of course.

[Deep13]

4. The center of an inescapable, all-consuming black hole. nt

[mkultra]

6. unrec without reading

:o

[tblue]

8. Following your logic, it appears the Dems in Congress WANT to lose.

For the life of me, I can't understand their aversion to simple statistics. We could and should be winning on virtually every issue. I like this post. It's very thoughtful and makes good sense to me.

[inthebrain]

9. There is no "Center"

That stuff is just bullshit so politicians and pundits can sell the people.....BULLSHIT!!!

[ShortnFiery]

12. You either support "the working people" or "the corporations" ... it's not that complex. eom

[ClassWarrior]

14. No Center, No Centrists.

No Center, No Centrists
By George Lakoff
t r u t h o u t | Guest Contributor

Wednesday 15 August 2007

"Centrism" is the creation of an inaccurate, self-serving metaphor, and it is time to bury it.

There is no left-to-right linear spectrum in the American political life. There are two systems of values and modes of thought - call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there are lots of folks who are what I've called "biconceptuals": progressive on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don't form a linear scale. They are all over the place: progressive on domestic policy, conservative on foreign policy; conservative on economic policy, progressive on foreign policy and social issues; conservative on religion, but progressive on social issues and foreign policy, and on and on. No linear scale. No single set of values defining a "center." Indeed, many such folks are not moderate in their views; they can be quite passionate about both their progressive and conservative views.

Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas - the ideas on which this country was founded and which carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care...

http://www.truthout.org/article/matt-renner-interview-with-george-lakoff

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

19. Glad to kick to promote the truth, above...

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

20. Kicking again, since the OP likes kicks so much.

NGU.

[ClassWarrior]

24. .

[ClassWarrior]

25. .

[ClassWarrior]

26. .

[HughMoran]

16. "That center is an average including the views of die-hard RW nuts, fascists and white supremacists"

Sorry, that's the "Nazi" argument - I stopped reading this waste of a thread there, unrecced and hid this waste of space.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

17. Whatever, dude. Thanks for the kick.