Battle for the heart and soul of the party. "Centrists" v. "Progressives"

[iconoclastNYC]

Washington Post writer Michael Grunwald, "The political pundits... want to know: What's wrong with the Democrats?"

The problem with Democrats is that they're too liberal. Or not liberal enough. They talk too much (or not enough) about abortion or torture or gun control. They're too condescending, too cosmopolitan, too secular, too wonkish, too weak. They've been captured by their interest groups, their contributors, their pollsters, their consultants. They're on the wrong side of a demographic revolution. Joe Sixpack doesn't want to have a beer with them. They should think strategically instead of tactically, or they should forget about strategy and speak from the heart. They aren't catering to values voters, heartland voters, exurban voters. They aren't motivating their base. They don't have a unified national message, or they're too worried about a unified national message. They need to do more than criticize Bush, or stop rolling over for Bush. They're too disconnected to understand what voters want to hear, or too cowardly to say things voters don't want to hear. They should imitate the Republican intellectual infrastructure that produces the conservative movement's big ideas, or imitate the Republican anti-intellectual attitude that doesn't worry about big ideas. Or they should stop imitating Republicans.

...

Predictably, centrist analysts usually argue that Democrats need to tack right to reach out to swing voters. In their book "Take It Back," James Carville and Paul Begala urge Democrats to moderate or at least play down their support for abortion, gay rights and gun control; they also tell the party's liberal interest groups -- civil rights advocates, labor unions, environmentalists -- to "back off a bit." Jeffrey Goldberg recently suggested similar strategies in a New Yorker article highlighting moderate red-state Democrats complaining about their tone-deaf, anti-gun, pro-abortion party establishment. Karl Rove may win elections with a base strategy, but as Goldberg notes, the Democratic base of liberals, one-fifth of the country, is a lot smaller than the Republican base of conservatives, one-third of the country. A recent DLC study called "Growing the Vote" suggests that as traditionally liberal urban cores lose population, Democrats need to reshape their messages to appeal to fast-growing (and more conservative) exurbs.

Most internal Democratic debates are disguised variations on that center-left theme. On national security, for example, moderate analysts urge Democrats to convince Americans that they're patriotic, that they support the military, that they'll win the fight against terrorism. To the extent that they want to hear about Iraq, they urge Democrats to call for "competence" and "victory," not retreat. "The American electorate will not turn over national leadership to a party it does not trust to defend the country and lead our military," the DLC's think tank warned in "With All Our Might," a series of muscle-flexing essays with a stern-looking Uncle Sam on the cover. The red-state Democrats made similar points to Goldberg, complaining that Democrats sound like they hate America when they attack domestic surveillance or the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "We make a mistake if we think that just because people are fed up with George Bush they want George McGovern," one centrist said.

But progressives believe McGovern was right about the war in Vietnam, and they point out that most Americans now oppose the war in Iraq, including some of the pundit-hawks who warned that opposing the war would doom Democrats in 2004. (They're especially irked at New Republic columnist Peter Beinart, who admits in "The Good Fight" that he was wrong to support the invasion, but still warns that knee-jerk antiwar sentiment in an age of jihad could doom Democrats.) The left says America is yearning for "straight talk" about the quagmire unfolding in Iraq -- attacks on the war's rationale, and plans for swift withdrawal. They argue that the reluctance of leading Democrats to condemn the war is symptomatic of their general reluctance to say what they really believe, a reluctance that ultimately gets punished at the polls.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/09/AR2006060901977.html

[Xipe Totec]

1. We are too individualistic!

Too sincere in our beliefs,

too.... fucking.... American, dammit!

:eyes:

[Burma Jones]

2. It's the Economy.....

If anything should define us and bring us together it is that the nation's wealth is being ever more concentrated into fewer as well as foreign hands.

As far as Abortion goes, I believe most Americans are pro choice.

I do believe that the reason most folks vote against their own self interest is that they believe Democrats will sell America out, when in fact, it is the GOP that is selling us out, BIG TIME.

Finally, if you denegrate the American Myth, you will not be called on to lead the country, period. People, particularly Americans, must have something "bigger than themselves" to believe in. The great Democrats have understood this.

[Warpy]

3. Baloney. It's hidebound party CONSERVATIVES

who call themselves centrist but who have lost us all 3 branches of government and are too damned stubborn to admit they're WRONG.

Where is the real center?

The real center wants more equitable taxes, with the people who get the most paying the most. The real center, 87% of them, want a substantial hike in the minimum wage. The real center, 53% of us, want us out of the miserable blunder known as the Iraq war.

Party conservatives only care about appeasing yuppies and going after fictional swing voters, people who in all likelihood would rather not vote at all than vote for anyone who calls himself a Democrat.

I'm sick of this shit. Call them what they are: CONSERVATIVES.

There is nothing centrist about any of them.

[neoblues]

4. Just more tedious and tiresome content from WAPO...

scarcely worthy of bothering to read (like most republican garbage), but I am curious... What is this "demographic revolution" republicans are assuming?