Regardless of why, pessimism is working for the Democrats right now. I agree that it will eventually stop working for them, but they still have a couple/few months before that happens, IMO.

I never said centrist governance would happen simply by electing Democrats. It won’t. What I do believe is that Democratic control of the House would be a first step to centrist governance. It certainly hasn’t happened with the Republicans in control.

First, it’s Exxon-Mobil. :)

As for what Blue says, I think you are wrong. Pessimism is working fine because the GOP is incompetent and naturally people look to other party when the governing party is messing up. But the Dems have to come up with a positive agenda instead of running the same “Impeach Bush-Culture of Corruption” line.

I also doubt that the route to centrist governance is simply getting the Dems into office. The far left controls the Democrats in the same way that the far right controls the Republicans. If having the Dems in power of Congress only means the investigations that Pelosi is talking about and not about dealing with some important issues like the deficit, then I don’t see this as any better than having the GOP in office.

I think Angie has a good point. The goals stated above are so generic that anyone would support them. Maybe we should add world peace to the list.

Also, at the moment, pessimism seems to be working fine for the Dems. Dubya and the Repubs are in some big trouble right now and changing the subject by parading out an agenda is not the right thing to do. Further, a published agenda at this point would just give the Repubs more time to bash it before the elections in November.

I am all for a centrist governence but the Repubs have to be voted out of office before there is a chance of that happening.

Secondly, you need to have goals before you put detail out the specifics. These are much more useful and achievable goals than say “impeach Bush” and “penalize Wal-Mart and Exxon-Mobile.”

And, as for the money, the first point in this list is to get the fiscal house in order. I have very little doubt that we could be funding some truly worthwhile projects if we stopped pouring so much into pork projects.

Third Way is not trying to deliniate out the exact course of action, just trying to take the debate and the Democrat thoughts in a new direction. I think what they have done is worth talking about seriously.

However, I do agree with you that the laser-like focus on getting every American into college is not a great proposal. I think there are ways to improve the skills and opportunities of our workforce through technical schools.

Contain health care costs? How? We need specifics. OK maybe single payer will reduce administrative costs from over 30% to the world average of half that. Maybe. But be specific.

Build infrastructure? What infrastructure? Johnny boy the pork is calling. Specific proposals please.

College? Why? Why not craft schools and technical schools? And we need to decide how to allocate resources. Maybe make things more simple and eliminate a lot of those lawyer and accountant jobs? We are creating a mandarin society of protected niches. Colleges are a part of it. Why not redefine education.

Where does the money come from incidently?

This isn’t a proposal . It’s feel good pap. And the fact that it persiades does indicate a need for real education, not the blab, blur run of buzzwords that passes for writing among today’s humanities graduates.