PA-Sen: Barletta is running

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Uh, Trump's victory is proof that centrism doesn't win elections in contemporary America. Maybe smoltchanov doesn't realize this because he lives in Russia but Clinton ran as a centrist Democrat and did not emphasize her platform all that often. Her messaging was focused on "values", not on the minimum wage or repealing the Hyde amendment.

Bernie Sanders is the most popular politician in the country. Elizabeth Warren is one of the most popular Democrats in the country. Al Franken crushed his opponent in 2014 and Rick Nolan won this year by running as something of a progressive. If you're looking for evidence that "moderation" matters in the eyes of voters, you won't find it in this year's results. Working class voters respond to radicalism in 2016, not "moderation"; if you want to appeal to the Heartland, running on centrism is a recipe for disaster.

Maybe Democrats need to shoot guns more often in ads or whatever and de-emphasize environmentalism but they can run on a platform of expanding Social Security, creating a single-payer healthcare system, increasing the minimum wage and so on, and win in districts that gave Trump over 60% of the vote. Leftist Democrats regularly crushed Republicans in predecessor districts to ones that gave Trump insane vote shares; many of these Democrats were liberal on most cultural issues as well. Similarly, when Republicans were a class-based bourgeois party, many right-wing purists won in districts that voted for Clinton this year. Remember, Sessions district in Texas voted for Clinton. That district would have sent almost any Republican to Congress this year!

If moderates are favored in many states, it's because they use their bipartisanship as a tool to deliver pork-barrel spending to their constituents, a practice than can hardly be described as centrist so much as it is corrupt rent-seeking behavior reminiscent of the Third World in many respects. People like Baucus and Nelson were loved because they poured money into their states, not because they were "moderate ". Sorry smoltchanov, you don't understand American politics, go home! The issue here is that you think that a person's position on gay marriage is a "left-wing" position.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I don't see big difference between Dent and Costello, except on abortion issue (where i, naturally, prefer pro-choice position)

Costello is probably one of the twenty-five most moderate Republicans in the House, whereas Dent is probably in the top three(along with Ileana Ros-Lehtinehen and Richard Hanna).

Dold has to be more liberal than IRL, as does Freilinghuysen.  I know Dold is retiring.  In my opinion, if one is not pro-life, they are not a Republican or a conservative.

Bullsh*t. Governors Baker and Scott, Senator Collins and dozens state legislators come to mind immediately. Plus - hundreds former Republican politicians of very high caliber. Right-wing idiocy.

Two terrible people and mediocre Senator...great examples!

One more bullsh*t. That happens. Especially in empty minds of extremists..

You know what's the worst part about Moderate Heroes?

The fact that they thing being a centrist automatically makes them smarter and better than those to the left or right.

They generally are. At least they know that politics is "an art of compromise". The extreme left and right recognize brute force only. That's why i viscerally despise both. And THE most extreme left or right are so authoritarian that it borders with fascism. They don't recognize anything but "fight until complete extermination of opponents"

roflcopter

America's two most popular and transformative (Lincoln and FDR) Presidents were "extremists" who largely ignored the idea that "politics is an art compromise". While it is true that both Lincoln and FDR compromised within their own party and evolved on issues in a pretty strategic manner, it's pretty inarguable that they were "extremists" in many respects. Lincoln was the standard bearer of a party that welcomed the American Civil War as an opportunity to abolish slavery (historiography has moved in this direction as of late - chief abolitionist idea was that war-time scenarios were the best grounds to get rid of this institution). FDR, time and time again, challenged tradition in ways that critics could describe as "authoritarian", like when he tried to pack the Supreme Court or the fact that he ran for more than two terms.

Radicals get things done. Moderates do nothing. Politics isn't about the art of compromise, it's about the art of using power effectively as a tool to accomplish societal objectives.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

I don't see big difference between Dent and Costello, except on abortion issue (where i, naturally, prefer pro-choice position)

Costello is probably one of the twenty-five most moderate Republicans in the House, whereas Dent is probably in the top three(along with Ileana Ros-Lehtinehen and Richard Hanna).

Dold has to be more liberal than IRL, as does Freilinghuysen.  I know Dold is retiring.  In my opinion, if one is not pro-life, they are not a Republican or a conservative.

Bullsh*t. Governors Baker and Scott, Senator Collins and dozens state legislators come to mind immediately. Plus - hundreds former Republican politicians of very high caliber. Right-wing idiocy.

Two terrible people and mediocre Senator...great examples!

One more bullsh*t. That happens. Especially in empty minds of extremists..

You know what's the worst part about Moderate Heroes?

The fact that they thing being a centrist automatically makes them smarter and better than those to the left or right.

They generally are. At least they know that politics is "an art of compromise". The extreme left and right recognize brute force only. That's why i viscerally despise both. And THE most extreme left or right are so authoritarian that it borders with fascism. They don't recognize anything but "fight until complete extermination of opponents"

roflcopter

America's two most popular and transformative (Lincoln and FDR) Presidents were "extremists" who largely ignored the idea that "politics is an art compromise". While it is true that both Lincoln and FDR compromised within their own party and evolved on issues in a pretty strategic manner, it's pretty inarguable that they were "extremists" in many respects. Lincoln was the standard bearer of a party that welcomed the American Civil War as an opportunity to abolish slavery (historiography has moved in this direction as of late - chief abolitionist idea was that war-time scenarios were the best grounds to get rid of this institution). FDR, time and time again, challenged tradition in ways that critics could describe as "authoritarian", like when he tried to pack the Supreme Court or the fact that he ran for more than two terms.

Radicals get things done. Moderates do nothing. Politics isn't about the art of compromise, it's about the art of using power effectively as a tool to accomplish societal objectives.

Lie. On both points. Republican party leaders (including Lincoln) tried to find a compromise with South on slavery issue, but fire-eaters in the South made this impossible. As a rule - compromise with extremists is impossible, because extremists doesn't know what compromise is. And it was THEM who made a first shot of Civil War. And FDR, essentially, sacrificed civil rights in the South (it took Truman and post-war 1948  for it to come to the fore) for the sake of economic recovery and victory in war. Again - compromise. He need Southern votes and couldn't get them otherwise. His attempt to pack the court collapsed EXACTLY because "compromise" was abandoned here - he simply went too far and was rebuffed..

And NOW - both parties became such monstrosity that many people (including me, but absolutely - not only) simply say "plague on BOTH your houses!"

I see that you ignored the part of my post where I argued that both politicians compromised within their own parties. Sure, Lincoln compromised with radical Republicans and held together a Republican Party that had a fairly wide-distribution of viewpoints on the pace with which slavery was going to end; FDR certainly compromised with Southern Democrats on civil rights. They still forwarded radical agendas, sowed the fields of their opponents with salt (FDR "I welcome their hate" and, uh, Lincoln signing off on burning the South to the ground).

No offense but I think you see American history as a kind of cartoon or mythology; this is a country defined by violence, by deep societal division, by intractable political divides etc. Under these conditions, the political equilibrium, which tends towards a grinding stability, is punctuated by moments of political revolution and counter-revolution where these societal division becomes translated into the political sphere. This is when "things get done". Social movements and mass political action forces politicians to act by threatening their base of power or by usurping politicians entirely.

The "moderate hero" slur on the forum relates to the fact that it takes a, uh, juvenile mindset to believe that grandstanding solons like Baucus are responsible for "getting things done" when, in reality, they obstruct legislation, gut bills for reasons relating to optics, ruin social reform etc. You see, I actually paid attention to the debate over the ACA and it was the "moderates" who made the bill a steaming pile of poo-poo and that created the conditions for premium spikes. They also destroyed the bill's popularity.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

^We will never agree. So it will be better if we both stick to our views and end this (essentially - useless) "discussion". You can be sure that as Russian by origin i hate revolutions of all sorts (there were more then enough of them in Russia, even if we forget about other countres, and i know first hand where they lead to). And those Russians, who don't like "permanent revolution", are, essentially, counterrevolutionaries))). Me - too)))

Political revolution ought not be equated with revolutions of the violent sort but, fine, we disagree; I think you should stick to, uh, politics elsewhere because you clearly don't understand America very well even if you can identify congressional districts on a map or whatever.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

Well, I  am very much open to tweaking legislation to address conservative concerns and get it passed, I do agree that going entirely in the middle often results in poor legislation that creates the worst of both worlds.

And IMHO - vice versa: if done correctly it can be "the best of both worlds". And single-payer would be defeated in 2009: even ObamaCare was passed by 3-4 vote margin with 30+ Democrats(approximately) voting even against it.... You never had votes for single-payer. And unlikely to have anytime soon...

I think this really sums up the nature of our disagreement: I think leftists can win elections because, if they take power, I think their policy ideas are popular, workable and would benefit people's lives. In my view, the durability of the New Deal coalition is a testament to this. I see political moderates as usual leaches on my party (I guess it is?) because they don't offer solutions to any social or economic problems that America faces so much as they offer useless grandstanding.

Here's a list of issues that "moderates" have not addressed and will not address:
-wage stagnation among the working and middle classes
-economic dislocation in regions affected by trade
-the market failure of our healthcare system (including but not limited to: market power of every layer of the healthcare sector, lack of agency of patients, issues relating to "unnecessary" treatment, widespread fraud etc.)
-the fact that the labor force participation rate of women has stagnated whereas it has risen elsewhere
-the fact that retirement security is nonexistent for most of the soon to retire
-the issue of mass incarceration and the manner in which it has destroyed communities
-the failure to address housing policy problems
-the issues related to consumer indebtedness in American society and how it affects individual decision-making and burdens society.

If you believe these problems exist, and they clearly do, no policy proposals have been offered by the politicians that you're prone to describe as "moderates" because, part and parcel of political centrism in America is a lack of willingness to accept the fact that there are tremendous problems facing American society, which is why Trump and Sanders really define the zeitgeist. The center hasn't held because the center didn't address these issues. The political establishment didn't address these issues.

As a note, I'm not only responding to you so much as I'm responding to a forum in which many new users apparently don't understand politics. It's time to ditch the idea that centrism colored by neo-liberal or intense pork-barrel localism will be particularly successful going forward. Maybe the latter will continue to have appeal, maybe more so, but it's more likely that people will gravitate towards sweeping agendas of change rather than esteemed centrists.