Why phony "centrism" is bad for the Democratic party

[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.

[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.

[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.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

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

[Keystone Phil]

Walz also campaigned as a liberal. So did Patrick Murphy and basically every seat that we picked up in the Northeast.

Pat Murphy didn't campaign as a liberal and even if he did, that's not the point. He won because he was a young Iraq vet and his supporters will tell you the same. Just as I started worrying that we might not get that seat back, I learned that the Dems are very worried about losing it (one prominent activist is already conceding the seat).

Anyway, you picked up a good deal of those seats by campaigning as liberals but not "basically every seat." You certainly didn't get PA 4 or 10 because your candidates ran as liberals. Same with PA 8. That leaves you with a handful of other pickups in the NE and even with those pickups, you needed moderates in the rest of the country to win the majority that you now have.

[Keystone Phil]

OK, here's every House pickup:

AZ-5: Mitchell - moderate
AZ-8: Giffords - liberal
CA-11: McNerney - liberal
CO-7: Perlmutter - liberal
CT-2: Courtney - liberal
CT-5: Chris Murphy - liberal
FL-16: Mahoney - moderate
FL-22: Klein - liberal
IN-2: Donnelly - moderate
IN-8: Ellsworth - moderate
IN-9: Hill - moderate
IA-1: Braley - liberal
IA-2: Loebsack - liberal
KS-2: Boyda - liberal
KY-3: Yarmuth - liberal
MN-1: Walz - liberal
NH-1: Shea-Porter - liberal
NH-2: Hodes - liberal
NY-19: Hall - liberal
NY-20: Gillibrand - liberal
NY-24: Arcuri - moderate
NC-11: Schuler - moderate
OH-18: Space - liberal
PA-4: Altmire - moderate (although I noticed in his ads it said "Melissa Hart votes with George Bush and Rick Santorum 98% of the time)
PA-7: Sestak - liberal
PA-8: Pat Murphy - liberal (you said so yourself Phil you couldn't think of anything he was conservative on)
PA-10: Carney - moderate
TX-22: Lampson - moderate
TX-23: Rodriguez - liberal
WI-8: Kagen - liberal

That's 20 liberals, which by itself was enough to flip the House.

And in the Senate, the only really moderate Democrat elected was McCaskill (Casey sure as hell isn't moderate on economic issues)

You may think those people are liberal and most of them probably are but the point was that they campaigned on issues that didn't stress a left-right divide. They did not win by stressing their liberal stances.

I understand that I said Murphy isn't moderate on a thing (which is only partially true - he did vote against the budget because of tax hikes) but he didn't stress ideology. Why do you think he went to the Blue Dogs?