Why phony "centrism" is bad for the Democratic party

[Democratic Hawk]

Many on this forum have said that the Democratic party needs to move to the right. Here I outline several problems with this argument.

1. Liberals already realize that very liberal candidates generally can't win. That's why they support more moderate candidates like Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, and Paul Hackett. Of course some people confused "outspoken" with "liberal". Someone like Cindy Sheehan would probably not be a good candidate.

To say that Cindy Sheehan would probably not be a good candidate is an understatement . Dean, Feingold and Hackett are, arguably, moderate . However, Dean can be his own worst enemy in that he allows those on the Right to demonise him. I'd gladly support Feingold or Hackett

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Zell was a good governor, who seemed to lose his way in the Senate. He's too conservative for my tastes. Could I ever support him after he blowed sunshine where the sun don't shine (i.e. up  Bush's backside)? Yes, if he was ever running against the likes of Saxby Chambliss

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The task facing the Democrats in 2008 is to select a "ticket", who can consolidate the liberal base as well as reaching out to sufficient enough moderates and moderate conservatives to coast them to victory. As things stand, an ideologically polarising election (i.e. liberal Democrat vs conservative Republican) favours the GOP. As to if as the Democrats move right and the GOP further right, I don't know but I would think there is a point at which the GOP would be too rightwing for most Americans to stomach. If polls are to be believed, the US does not have a conservative majority. Democrats need to use that to their advantage

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Well, if they do that they reap what they sow . Continued GOP dominance in the White House and on Capitol Hill. I don't suffer self-defeatism

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I have, and will, continue to criticise the left of the Democratic Party. I'm a populist, I hold moderate economically left-of-center ideals and I'm mildly center-right, as a whole (but by no means exclusively), on social issues. I don't think any one could ever accuse me of being Republican-lite. I'm every bit a strongly Democratic partisan. I'm also a 'Defense Democrat' in the 'Scoop' Jackson tradition

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Yes, I support the Iraq War and I'd so again. Bush, however, has made a cackhanded job of it - it was to be expected - and it's good to see defense Democrats, like Evan Bayh, criticising him up on it. It's a shame Lieberman isn't. Personally, I'd like the Democratic Party outhawk the GOP and return to its once proud past. By fecklelssly abandoning, a 'Trumanite' defense policy Democrats allowed an inferior-calibre of GOP presidents to realise the great man's vision

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That it does especially when it comes to a wide range of domestic issues (such as the economy, education and healthcare) and it should be using these to its electoral advantage. However, I seriously doubt that 65% support Roe vs Wade. I'd guess a majority support abortion with restrictions. As for the media, those on the Right would claim that the media is by-and-large hostile to Bush! The biggest policy challenge facing the Democrats is to convince the electorate that they are credible on the GOP's trump issues - defense and national security. Furthermore, they somehow need to counter the increasing saliency of hot-botton social issues, which Karl Rove has exploited to great effect

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The Democrats need to come up with their own legislative agenda and sell those ideas to the American electorate. On some issues, bi-partisanship can be a good thing (for a start, any Democratic Senator or Representative is dependent on it to further their own pet, and often admirable, pieces of legislation); I agree, however, that Democrats (as the opposition party)should provide a balance to ensure that the execesses of the Bush agenda is thwarted wherever possible. That said, the Democrats shouldn't be obstructionist just for the sake of it and must come up with better alternatives to what Bush and the GOP are proposing

You've made some good points Jfern , but you and I are never going to agree 100% down the line. A move to the 'center' could, if applied successfully, render the Republicans the minority but the Democrats must address their weaknesses (perceived or real) in order for that to happen. If they don't, then they can look forward to enjoying minority status on the Beltway for the foreseable future - and, if that happens, the Democratic Party will acheive very little, if anything at all, at the federal level

Dave

[nini2287]

1. Liberals already realize that very liberal candidates generally can't win. That's why they support more moderate candidates like Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, and Paul Hackett. Of course some people confused "outspoken" with "liberal". Someone like Cindy Sheehan would probably not be a good candidate.

That's true but we (I'll use to refer to my wing of the Democratic party from here on) also have to make concessions.  In a perfectly balanced electorate, a Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman may elicit a challenge from the left and throw an election to the Republicans.  Instead, we compromise on types such as John Kerry or the ones listed above (although I probably wouldn't include Feingold).

Ben Nelson will easily win his primary. Connecticut can do a lot better than Joe Lieberman.

I was referring to the national electorate, not individual states.  Certianly I wouldn't expect the left to challenge Nelson in NE the same way I wouldn't expect moderate Democrats to mount a challenge to Ted Kennedy.

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That's a point but you realize forming a splinter party would probably give a minimum of 10-20 years of Republican control.  Additionally, I don't think a majority of the country would ever come to support your ideology the way that it eventually did in the 1930s (I don't mean in an insulting way.

I didn't suggest starting a splinter problem, I was just pointing out that short-term winning elections isn't everything, and would hurt you in the long term if you sacrificed bringing up the issues that needed to be brought up.
[/quote]

I understand your point but I think it would take a major national event (something on par with the Great Depression) for a majority of Americans to accept your ideology.

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I disagree.  Let's take a look at Bill Clinton.  I think you and I agree he's from my wing of the Democratic party.  In the 2000 election, Bush campaigned as a moderate and won.  The reason the Republican party has been able to move to the right and win elections is because of 9/11 not due to Clinton's rightward-Democratic leanings.

Clinton's charisma helped quite a bit. Also, he was originally more liberal, but party disunity in Congress stopped his health care plan, and lost us Congress.
[/quote]

But by the time Clinton left office in 2000, I think Republicans and Democrats alike saw him as more of a centrist.

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But would that by counteracted by the 11% of Democrats who voted for Bush and the moderate independents more likely to vote Democratic?

A lot of those "Democrats" are just DINOs. Some fraction of Republicans voted for Kerry too. Sometimes people are just slow at changing their voter ID.
[/quote]

That's true some old-style "Southern Democrats" do exist, but Bush won 93% of Republicans, where as Kerry won 89% of Democrats.  Something needs to be changed there for a Democrat to win.

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I personally opposed the Iraq War from the onset unlike liberals Hillary Clinton, Byron Dorgan, Tom Harkin, John Kerry, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer.

How is Reid a liberal? Or some of those others. Either Dorgan is a liberal who wins in North Dakota, or he's not a liberal.
[/quote]

Reid might not have been a good example since he's really only swung to the left since he became Minority Leader (do you think he would have voted against Roberts if he weren't Minority Leader?).  Dorgan has a lifetime ACU rating of 18 and if you look at his voting record he is fairly liberal.  I know you hate this point, but he did appear in Fahrenheit 9/11 something I wouldn't expect a centrist to do.

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The reason that minimum wage isn't an issue is that the Republicans have been able to adopt a more moderate platform and not call for the repeal of the minimum wage (the opposite of what you're proposing the Democrats do).  On abortion, pro-life activists are much more vocal than pro-choice ones which helps the Republicans overcome that deficit.

88% support raising the minimum wage. They didn't ask how many wanted to get rid of it. Obviously it was less than 12%.  I'd hardly call the most extreme subgroup of 12% of the population the moderate position.

As for your example with abortion, there's a number of factors
1. Media tends to be pro-Republican
2. The Republicans are powerful and are on message
3. The Democrats aren't so good at unity and being on message
[/quote]

I misread your statistic on minimum wage, but if I remember correctly the Republicans did try some half-assed attempt at raising the minimum wage (I think it was Santorum IIRC) so Republicans can at least say the "tried".  As for your abortion points, I'm not sure I necessarily agree with #1, they just seem to be pro-John McCain but in some cases the only Democrats who are going to win are pro-life ones (take a look at Tim Holden, Gene Taylor or Collin Peterson's districts).  The same holds true for Republicans though.

[opebo]

Well, I have less and less hope for the so called 'Democratic' party.
They keep going further and further to the right.
They are becoming more and more like the Whig party, afraid to stand for anything. Can anyone name one thing the party stands for?

I couldn't agree more TC.  We now have an anti-freedom Religious Party and the party that, well, at least isn't extremely right wing or extremely religious.  It stands for nothing except that it isn't the problem. 

On the bright side, though, life is so horrifically bad for the majority of americans now, and rapidly getting worse, that one can only hope even the stupid ones will begin to understand who is doing it to them.

[The Man From G.O.P.]

Who and Who and what does your little lsd trip get done in office with Legislatures held by conservatives?  =)

Socialist in the Senate:  Bernie Sanders
Liberal in the Whitehouse:  Russ Feingold (as my personal favorite example =)

Oh and the Dems will have an actual majority in the house and an effective majority in the senate in 2006 and an actual majority in the senate in 2008.

You should take that show on the road, funny man.

[MasterJedi]

Go form your own party then, split the vote so the Republicans can win. Great idea!

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Bump - it seems that the ""centrists" know they can't win this argument, and so have to resort to stupid opinion polls like this one.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=40784.msg905198#msg905198

[Nym90]

I would like to see the Democrats move slightly to the center, especially on social issues, but overall I think the party really needs to redefine its image rather than change its positions. Point out how and why Democratic positions are better for the country rather than just getting into name-calling and being the party that is against everything. Have a positive agenda for what would be done if/when we win control and then implement it.

I agree that "phony" centrism would be bad, but the ability to reach out to the middle certainly is a postive thing for any politician. You have to articulate your ideology in an effort to move the country in your direction rather than being completely reactive to the electorate, but at the same time, you have to have your finger on the nation's political pulse and have a realistic view of what you can and can't get accomplished, and be willing to compromise where appropriate and necessary.

[Undisguised Sockpuppet]

The dems need to move right on economics and left on social views. Also drop support for enforcement of victimless crime laws/the war on drugs but support a draconian response to non-victimless crimes.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Come on Frodo, surely you can intelligently debate this instead of calling me JFraud.

[Alcon]

Come on Frodo, surely you can intelligently debate this instead of calling me JFraud.

Frodo hasn't posted here, and no one has called you JFraud.

[J. J.]

Come on Frodo, surely you can intelligently debate this instead of calling me JFraud.

Frodo hasn't posted here, and no one has called you jfern.

Ah, I think you mean that everyone is calling him Jfern.

I also do agree that, overall, Dr. Dean was a moderate.

[Alcon]

Come on Frodo, surely you can intelligently debate this instead of calling me JFraud.

Frodo hasn't posted here, and no one has called you jfern.

Ah, I think you mean that everyone is calling him Jfern.

Thanks.

[MODU]

Why is phony "extremism" good for the Democratic party?

[Nym90]

Many on this forum have said that the Democratic party needs to move to the right. Here I outline several problems with this argument.

1. Liberals already realize that very liberal candidates generally can't win. That's why they support more moderate candidates like Howard Dean, Russ Feingold, and Paul Hackett. Of course some people confused "outspoken" with "liberal". Someone like Cindy Sheehan would probably not be a good candidate.

I generally agree with this. Dean, Feingold, etc. really aren't that liberal, although they are portrayed this way. Unfortunately, perception is reality in politics.

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Very true, and I agree that on many key issues Democrats need to stand up for principle, and that even in defeat principles can still be advanced.

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I agree that Miller has gone pretty far right; he used to be a great Governor. ACU ratings aren't everything of course, but he clearly was a DINO by the end of his term, in that he really didn't support the Democrats on anything that I can see. I don't use that term lightly, but I think here it applies.

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I'm not so sure I agree with this. I think that the American people affect where the parties are politically a lot more than the parties affect the political views of the people. Although there is some truth to this, the cause/effect relationship is mostly the opposite in my opinion.

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True, and obviously Dems don't want to lose their current base. The trick is to get more moderates to vote for us without losing the base; that's the difficult balancing act any party faces. Clinton was an excellent example of someone who was able to do this quite well, and I think that's the model we should follow.

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Well, again, I'm not sure I agree. To a certain extent, yes; obviously good arguments can persuade people to change their views. A very charismatic liberal candidate certainly could win, although a liberal starts out at a disadvantage compared to a moderate. It's not like a liberal couldn't win, but they have more obstacles to overcome.

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On this I agree in the sense that centrism often is assosciated with spinelessness and not showing leadership; however, centrism most certainly does not have to be this way by any means and there are lots of very principled centrist politicians like Clinton. Again, follow that Clinton model, I say.

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I agree that the Dems do a poor job of stressing the issues that people agree with us on; we too often let the Republicans set the agenda nationally. I think that Democrats as a rule tend to be more passive people while Republicans are more likely to be more aggressive and thus the GOP has a tendency to be more likely to steer the national debate and control which issues get more or less importance in the campaign.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Paul Krugman nails it here:

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http://select.nytimes.com/2007/04/16/opinion/16krugman.html

[MaC]

Bump - it seems that the ""centrists" know they can't win this argument, and so have to resort to stupid opinion polls like this one.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=40784.msg905198#msg905198

Has it occured to you that it's not because you're liberal, but because you're an arse to everyone that disagrees with you?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Bump - it seems that the ""centrists" know they can't win this argument, and so have to resort to stupid opinion polls like this one.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=40784.msg905198#msg905198

Has it occured to you that it's not because you're liberal, but because you're an arse to everyone that disagrees with you?

Say what?

[Alcon]

Has it occured to you that it's not because you're liberal, but because you're an arse to everyone that disagrees with you?

Say what?

That seems like a fairly straightforward English sentence to me.

[Gabu]

Has it occured to you that it's not because you're liberal, but because you're an arse to everyone that disagrees with you?

Say what?

That seems like a fairly straightforward English sentence to me.

More like a fairly garbled, if grammatically correct, English sentence.  It took me two or three passes before I understood it.

Here's a translation: "Has it occured to you that that poll was created not because you're liberal, but because you're an arse to everyone that disagrees with you?"

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz..... what a bore, liberalism is taking a rather extended nap in our country for a looong time, time to see that and either support pretty faced "moderates" or stay on your kook fringe and achieve nothing for a long time

LOL

[Keystone Phil]

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz..... what a bore, liberalism is taking a rather extended nap in our country for a looong time, time to see that and either support pretty faced "moderates" or stay on your kook fringe and achieve nothing for a long time

LOL

Uh, if anything, he is correct. Moderates helped take the House and the Senate for the Dems last year.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz..... what a bore, liberalism is taking a rather extended nap in our country for a looong time, time to see that and either support pretty faced "moderates" or stay on your kook fringe and achieve nothing for a long time

LOL

Uh, if anything, he is correct. Moderates helped take the House and the Senate for the Dems last year.

Yeah, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are so moderate. Hell, that's why almost every Democrat elected ran as supportive of the war and Bush's policies.

[Keystone Phil]

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz..... what a bore, liberalism is taking a rather extended nap in our country for a looong time, time to see that and either support pretty faced "moderates" or stay on your kook fringe and achieve nothing for a long time

LOL

Uh, if anything, he is correct. Moderates helped take the House and the Senate for the Dems last year.

Yeah, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are so moderate. Hell, that's why almost every Democrat elected ran as supportive of the war and Bush's policies.

Yeah but Senator Webb is rather moderate and him being a moderate mattered. That's why you have the Senate. Take a look at the House, too.

By the way, running against the war doesn't necessarily make one a liberal.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

ZZZZZZZzzzzzzz..... what a bore, liberalism is taking a rather extended nap in our country for a looong time, time to see that and either support pretty faced "moderates" or stay on your kook fringe and achieve nothing for a long time

LOL

Uh, if anything, he is correct. Moderates helped take the House and the Senate for the Dems last year.

Yeah, Sherrod Brown and Jon Tester are so moderate. Hell, that's why almost every Democrat elected ran as supportive of the war and Bush's policies.

Yeah but Senator Webb is rather moderate and him being a moderate mattered. That's why you have the Senate. Take a look at the House, too.

By the way, running against the war doesn't necessarily make one a liberal.

Webb may have been seen as a moderate at the time, but he sure as hell hasn't acted or voted like a moderate since taking office.

What about my Rep Tim Walz who recently said in a speech that Bush is too preoccupied with fighting terrorism? Of course that's not what he literally meant, it's just the media taking his remarks out of context and distorting it, but it's certainly not the type of thing you'd expect a "moderate" to say.

[Keystone Phil]

Webb may have been seen as a moderate at the time, but he sure as hell hasn't acted or voted like a moderate since taking office.

The point was running and winning as a moderate, not how they end up acting. Seeing Webb as a middle of the road kind of guy allowed him to win that seat.

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Again, how you are perceived during an election and how you act afterwards are two different things. The subject was winning elections.