Get Ready For Centrism
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in ElectionsE.J. Dionne gives us a few thoughts on why a Dem House and Senate won’t be the liberal nightmare many on the right are warning us about.
If a Democratic majority depends on moderate voters, it also depends on the victory of moderate candidates. In five of the seven races likely to decide control of the Senate, Democrats have nominated candidates who simply cannot be seen as conventional liberals.That is certainly true of Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee, Jon Tester in Montana, James Webb in Virginia and Claire McCaskill in Missouri. In Pennsylvania, Democrat Robert Casey is moderate or even moderately conservative on many social issues. In House races in more conservative states, Democrats have gone out of their way to find middle-of-the-road candidates.
But Democratic moderation this year carries a sharp edge of economic populism, and a consensus is already developing around health care, energy and corporate accountability. In one his advertisements, Montana’s Tester marries fiscal conservatism with an anti-corporate appeal by promising to “stand up to oil company giveaways, no-bid contracts to Halliburton and billions in pork, including bridges to nowhere, all saddling our kids with more and more debt.”
Fiscally responsible and socially aware. How many of you can live with politicians like that?
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October 24th, 2006 at 10:10 am
So my take on this group of independent voters is that they are generally skeptical of both political parties but they are also not inclined to making radical or precipitous adjustments. Members of both the Democratic and Republican party are apt to believe that these voters take far too long to decide that its time to toss out one group and enable the other…but I would argue that they are demonstrating what I might call the jurors mentality…they see the party in power as innocent until proven guilty. They sit back, evaluate the evidence, and then speak with a resounding and definitive voice. Again, I don’t want to predict an outcome but I do like to study the factors and attempt to offer some informed speculation…and it appears that these voters are prepared to be heard.
The fact that independents voted with the GOP for a number of years wasn’t necessarily an across the board endorsement of Republican values and should the presumed shift to the Democratic Party take place in November, I would still argue that they haven’t made a clear ideological shift. Frankly, I tend to believe that they would actually prefer that values issues be personal decisions and not an integral component of a political agenda…but they aren’t usually offered that choice so they vote on the issues that they find meaningful and accept that they are attached to a larger agenda.
In my opinion, independent and moderate thinking voters appear to have made the conclusion that the GOP should no longer be in power and they plan to vote accordingly. Further, if my theory is correct, it shouldn’t be difficult to predict when this group of voters is going to say enough is enough. We often hear assertions that voters are stupid…but if my speculation is correct…it may well be the politicians and those in positions of power that are guilty of stupidity. The bottom line is that it looks like that message is about to be delivered.
Read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
October 24th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Claire McCaskill isn’t a conventional liberal? Really. If Little Miss “I would never say this in Missouri, but…” isn’t a conventional liberal, then I don’t know what a conventional liberal is and maybe I don’t. To me, McCaskill is a liberal - anti-2nd amendment, pro-choice, tax and spend, exc., exc.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:58 am
To me, the more moderates that go to Washington, and stir the pot, the better off we’ll all be. That’s why I’m rooting so hard for Harold Ford.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:00 am
Get ready for impeachment hearings while the Mahdi prepares for the apocalypse.
October 24th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Dos and Jimmy:
Just out of curiosity, what is the Right’s plan for Iraq? More whack-a-mole in Baghdad? 140,000 outnumbered troops foeerever and ever? More self-delusion about Iraqis “standing up?”
What is current American strategy? Can you even explain it?
October 24th, 2006 at 11:31 am
Jimmy,
Do you figure that a Democrat-majority Congress will try to impeach/remove Cheney first? Or have you found a Democrat, especially a liberal Democrat, who thinks President Cheney would be a step forward? Just curious….
October 24th, 2006 at 11:49 am
[...] Hmmm… Unlike Justin Gardner, I’m rating that as a maybe. Time will certainly tell, though. [...]
October 24th, 2006 at 1:53 pm
m.takhallus: In my estimation, the Right’s plan for Iraq is muddled and dangerous. The Left’s plan for Iraq, meanwhile, is utterly nonexistent; a backburner issue in comparison to impeaching Bush.
I’ve been on the fence so far regarding the ‘06 elections (doesn’t matter much for me, being in a blue state), but my lean toward the Republicans takes in both sides’ approach to Iraq. Your (and sleipner’s, apparently) lean toward the Democrats takes in only the Republicans’ approach.
Which assessment would you say is more complete? Can you even explain it?
October 24th, 2006 at 2:46 pm
So, there you are, again. Why do the all the extremists go for the jugular all the time. Can’t people think for themselves? Sometimes liberally, then conservatively on another issue? Nope… cause you’re FREAKIN IDIOTS ! Sorry, had ta get that out. Here’s an interesting thing said by a very intelligent Republican; former House Maj. Leader Dick Armey on a CNN interview: ” The religious right has pushed our party very hard in recent years to use the power of big government in a more expansive way to start dictating the terms of morality and righteous behavior in our country that is antithetical to our party and the way we use the power of government to impose standards of behavior on the individual.” Wow, not just a conservative Repuplican, but a large figure in the conservative movement just summed up what so many ‘liberals’ have been moaning about for so long. I just heard it on, of all places, CNN. I know, now you can blame it on the media. But Mr. Armey said it, along with a long list of true conservatives ‘coming out of the closet’, pardon the pun, Mr Foley. See, I just did it there…we just can’t help ourselves !!!
October 24th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
m.takhallus, here you go: http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/iraq/iraq_strategy_nov2005.html
war ain’t for pansies people or we’d have the whole Democratic Caucus out there throwing flowers and love beads at the insurgents.
October 24th, 2006 at 5:54 pm
Paul:
The answer is that neither Right nor Left has a plan for Iraq. There are no good answers anymore. There’s awful, and there’s f***ing awful, and that’s it. The dream of Iraqi democracy is dead. We’re down to hoping we can leave a situation that isn’t actually worse than Saddam.
But the idea that we should reward Republicans because they have f***ed this up so completely that no one has a good idea what to do about it is bizarre. It’s like saying, “Well, if the company CEO had just lost money we’d fire him, but since he lost money, bankrupted the company, destroyed our brand, delisted our stock, alienated all our clients, got arrested for embezzlement and raped his secretary, we’re going to keep him on because no one has a clear idea how to repair the damage he’s done.”
By your logic we’d have kept Jeff Skilling and Ken Lay on at Enron: no one knew how to fix their mess, either.
This is the biggest foreign policy disaster in my life time. A lifetime which includes Vietnam, the Lebanon Marines disaster, the Iran hostages and a few other fiascos. The biggest foreign policy disaster in modern memory. So let’s reward the idiots who caused it and punish the people who haven’t figured out yet how to fix it. Yeah. That makes sense.
October 24th, 2006 at 5:58 pm
Dos Peros:
In other words, no, you can’t explain our policy in Iraq.
October 24th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
m.takhallus: You asked me what the American strategy was in Iraq and so I directed you to the President’s document, aptly entitled “Iraq Strategy”. It is what it is and I would, indeed, be hard pressed to provide further explanation on the document (maybe that is the concession that you are looking for). This is perhaps disappointing to those people who are looking for the strategic & secret rope-a-dope plan for instant victory and it certainly is not as clear as the oppositions strategic plan that can be wrapped up with…Get the F out of Dodge - a sentiment that I understand, but a military strategy that I question.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:51 am
Dos:
So you’re sticking with “Stand up, Stand Down, Fight, Fight, Fight” as the strategy? And when everyone who has paid any real attention starts laughing bitterly at that cheerleader’s slogan of a strategy you just dig in your heels and set your jaw and accuse everyone of cut ‘n run?
You aren’t even paying attention to strategy. You’re paying attention to slogans. The docuument you linked to is from 2005. Even the White House is backpedaling away from it and James Baker will be announcing the next official strategy.
The truth is our current “strategy” is to run out the clock till Mr. Bush can dump this war offf on the next president, like LBJ dumped Vietnam on NIxon. There is no strategy worthy of the title.
October 25th, 2006 at 9:04 am
Well, M.tak, I’m not going to lambast the president for not changing the strategy within a year of announcing a strategy. A difficult war makes wonderful fodder for the opposition party and I believe that is exactly what is going on here. What would happen if we didn’t have this split in the country over Iraq? Would we be more successful? Would it send any message to the insurgents? If the US were united behind the effort, would it send any message to the Iraqi people? Look, the Tet Offensive was, on the ground, completely unseccessful, but it had the absolute desire effect domestically - it was perfect. I for one, while I may be called a “cheerleader”, will not be called a tool or patsy for the enemy. That is just a choice each person has to make. For the U.S., the world’s only superpower, defeat is a self-fulfilling prophecy and that is the only way we can be beat and the terrorist are smart enough to know that.
October 25th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Dos:
I’m sorry to rain all over the right wing’s Vietnam revision but we were there for ten years. More than twice as long as WW2. More than twice as long as our own Civil War. So the idea that we cut and ran is bullshit. It’s a right wing fantasy. 10 years is not a cut and run. 10 years, hundreds of billions of dollars, 60,000 dead, for a country that in the end did not matter to us one damn bit — a country that currently is hard at work stitching tennis shoes for us. That’s not a cut and run. On the contrary, it was too damn long and too damn much for no good reason.
It’s not about standing firm or having the “will.” That’s crap the right wing loves to shovel, but it’s military nonsense. Wars are won with appropraite strategy and well-executed tactics. Particulary necessary factors when the idiot SecDef has decided to prosecute the war with half the men he needed. All the will in the world won’t win a war because guess what, the other side has “will” too.
We cannot somehow “will” the Shiites and Sunnis to get along. And until there is a political solution in Iraq we are wasting our goddamned time. Right now we’re training and arming future militia. You cannot by force of your mighty will cause Sunnis to stop kidnapping Shiites and killing them with power drills.