Reply #35: 'No Center, No Centrists' - Interesting article

[crickets]

Alternate link for folks who don't go to Huffpo: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/08/15/3174

These are simply American values. The progressive movement is a patriotic American movement. People who call themselves "centrists" share progressive views on important issue areas, but have conservative views on other major issue areas. The areas vary from person to person. There is no single moral perspective, no single set of agreed upon issues. -snip-

The reason the DLC has been attacking progressives, Smith argues, is that DLC members have major conservative values and are threatened by the progressive base.

In other words, perhaps they are philosophically separate from the base of the progressive political party to which they supposedly belong.

Right now most Americans--regardless of political party--are in agreement that we need to raise and enforce higher tax rates for corporations and the rich, that we need to get out of Iraq, and that the federal budget should involve cutting defense spending rather than monkeying around with Medicare and Medicaid. Any representative who is claiming otherwise is either embarrassingly clueless or just plain dishonest. There's no need to triangulate to some imaginary 'center' to find agreement on these issues. So why are politicians--often regardless of political party--trying so hard to pass legislation that does the opposite?

The reason the DLC has been attacking progressives, Smith argues, is that DLC members have major conservative values and are threatened by the progressive base. Some of those values are financial: Wall Street, the HMO's and drug companies, agribusiness, developers, the oil companies, and international corporations that benefit from trade agreements, outsourcing, cheap labor abroad, and practices that harm indigenous populations but bring profits. A powerful motivation for the party has been that, if they take such positions, they, like the Republicans, can get big money contributions from Wall Street.

Lakoff's discussion is intriguing and he makes a lot of good points, but I don't think he underlines this one enough: big money contributions from Wall Street, not political inclinations or the needs of the people, are what is driving a lot of the policy in Washington.

From the OP: "Obama, like Carter, is reacting to warning signs by seeking to split the difference between dispirited Democrats and increasingly radicalized Republicans."

I disagree with many of the article's points about Carter, but addressing that would take a whole 'nother post.

'Dispirited democrats' - it would be more accurate to include dispirited Republicans and Independents too, but that ruins the binary setup.

'increasingly radicalized Republicans' - oh, that's just sad. The Tea Party has dwindled to a small rabble easily shouted down in Wisconsin earlier this month.

The rhetorical setup in the article is a classic example of divide and conquer over political parties, when in truth most citizens across the spectrum are in agreement on many major issues, at least for the moment. The binary party system and the way it pits two "sides" against one another like football teams, complete with a sometimes blind team loyalty, and the nattering on about moving to the center are distractions for citizens to argue over while the fat cats walk away with as much swag as they can carry. A great deal of policy being formulated in Washington is not about us or our party affiliations or the common welfare of the country at all: it's about power, it's about greed, and it's about corporations and the lackeys who are bribed to please them.