There is no center--except, perhaps, inside the Beltway. From an important opinion piece by Thomas F. Schaller in the outside-the-Beltway Baltimore Sun:
The one thing media talking heads agree upon is that the center prevails. Turn on almost any of the nation's political talk shows and pretty soon somebody will say how crucial it is for politicians to appeal to registered independents and self-described moderate voters.
They conjure for us an image of the distribution of the American electorate as that of a dromedary's single hump with a large, vital center of thoughtful citizens in the middle, flanked by a downward-sloping share of shrill, radical liberals on one side and grumbling, reactionary conservatives on the other.
The true image is that of the two-humped camel: The American electorate has for some time been bifurcating into two rather distinct camps, with fewer centrist voters.
On a panel at a Chicago convention of political scientists recently, Emory University's Alan Abramowitz explained what's happening.
"Independents made up 35 percent of the 2006 voters, more than either Democrats or Republicans," Mr. Abramowitz said, based on his analysis of data from the 2006 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. "But most of these independent identifiers were not true swing voters - most of them leaned toward one party or the other, and these leaning independents voted overwhelmingly for their preferred party."
What are the implications for this fundamental, potentially transformative shift in the American electorate?
For starters, the major parties' appeals to centrist voters will become less effective and efficient, and should be de-emphasized in favor of a strategy that favors identifying and mobilizing base voters.
Republicans figured this out years ago. Before the 2000 recount had concluded, Bush campaign pollster Matt Dowd wrote Karl Rove a game-changing memo in which Mr. Dowd marveled that the center of the American electorate had disappeared. They had expected split-ticket voters to account for about one-quarter of the electorate, but the figure was closer to 6 percent.
Mr. Rove promptly announced he would target for mobilization millions of evangelicals who did not turn out to vote in 2000.
After the 2006 elections, one might expect Democrats to respond in kind. Their victories were fueled by votes from their base: union families and households, women, nonwhite voters and younger voters.
Indeed, if Democrats are looking for their counterpart to the evangelical vote, they should turn to unmarried women: They are a majority of American women, they will soon be a majority of female voters, and when they vote, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic. But millions remain unregistered.
So why aren't the Dems doing that?
Instead, wrongheaded Democratic strategists continue to believe "NASCAR dads" or "soccer moms" hold the keys to a future majority.
Through the hot haze of America's divided desert, too many Democrats still think the electoral animal approaching on the horizon is a dromedary, while the clearer-eyed Republicans recognize it's really a camel.
The myth of the "vital center," though not true for the country, seems like a classic case of Beltway Projection: On the right, we have the VRWC
. On the left, we have Progressives and most Democrats. And in then, we have the odd Centrist or two: precisely those "wrong-headed Democratic strategists who, representing nobody but themselves, assume a disproportionate importance because they go on TV all the time.
Maybe later I'll have something to say about why these Democratic stragegists are so wrong-headed. (Could it be because it's in their interest to be so?)
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Saw Schaller on C-Span
Some time back, but he gave the most brilliant metaphor for the wrong-headedness of the centrist-leaning strategists - that of a perfectly balanced teeter-totter - which is what we've been moving toward, thanks to Rove et al, a perfectly polarized electorate - the only way to change the balance is to move out to the end of your end of the thing - if you move to the center, without more weight on their side, in fact, with even less weight on their side, the balanced deadlock breaks in their favor, they dip down to the ground again and push off with added strength that derives entirely from the mistaken dynamic move of the other side.
Another problem for us - the SCLM
notion that both extreme ends of the teeter-totter are equally extreme; excuse me, but wishing to fix SS instead of legislating it out of existence is not the equivalent of the flat tax, which would require changing the fucking constitution, speaking of which, dismantling the constitution, in particular the separation of powers, strikes me as a fairly far-out position to be taking these days; it certainly doesn't seem to have undermined Al Queda one little bit, has it? Gee, maybe that's why the oath the President takes upon entering office isn't a promise to protect us, which this president keeps reminding us is his first duty, it's to uphold and protect the constitution, which our framers, silly lads, assumed was the best way to protect the American people.
I think what happened after Bush won in 2004, he and Rove completely mis-read what it meant; 2005 was some sort of definitive proof of what us old-fashioned liberals have been telling the SCLM
and other Democrats ever since Reagan; liberal programs and ideas and ideals are actually supported by a majority of Americans, although most of the SCLM
have already managed to forget those impressive Bush strike-outs on SS, on Schiavo, on tax reform, on making tax cuts and the inheritance tax phase out permanent. It isn't just Iraq that the voters rejected in 2006. Leon Panetta be damned.
The New developing centrist meme
Courtesy of Howard Fineman - 2008 is rife with possibilities for third party candidates. Check out the transcript from last night's Tucker at MSNBC; it'll probably be available this afternoon
Return of the Washington Consensus
Notice how the Beltway professionals are starting to spin the Bush years. Out here in the provinces, many of us see an authoritarian Administration hell-bent upon trashing the Constitution. Inside the Beltway, though, they have a different view - to them, the Bush gang proves that one party cannot rule unilaterally, that each major party needs the other in order to govern.
The current mood in Washington is nostalgia for the status quo ante. The next President, regardless of party affiliation, will consider their top priority to be mending fences between parties. The next move in Iraq by the new Administration will be in the best interests of American political party unity, not the Iraqi people.
Once again, we are going to be told that this election is too important for voters to waste their ballot on third party candidates. Hillary Clinton knows that all she has to do is win the nomination, and the left will hold its collective nose and vote for her. The majority of regular Democrats will blame Ralph Nader for George W. Bush for decades to come. As important as money is to sustaining the process, the real force that holds the Washington Consensus together is the fear the activist base has that doing anything truly radical will cause it to lose its tenuous grip on political influence.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us
That Is A Real Danger, Dr. Sardonicus
unfortunately, it also has some truth - where are the third parties, forget about can they win an election, what the hell have they been doing during these Bush years.
You're absolutely right about the beltway. I suspect that Clinton doesn't get it either, which is why I don't want to see her nominated.
What makes it more likely is these idiotic decisions on the state level to move up primaries. Does anyone have any ideas about how we can start a grassroots movement to get some of them moved back - so that no one can wrap it up at the beginning of 2008?
It seems to me that the
It seems to me that the center has shifted to the right and that there is no real left any longer. Though, I wet the bed so maybe I'm biased.
Hillary doesn't have to get it
All Hillary Clinton (or any one who wins the Democratic nomination) needs to do to keep the left in line is remind us that if she doesn't win, then Thompson or Giulani or some other elephant becomes the next President, and the abomination of Republican rule will continue. If it's a close race, the threat will keep progressives on the reservation, and if it's a landslide, Hillary can claim that she didn't need the left's votes to begin with. This is how minority factions are marginalized in American politics.
Where are the third parties? After the Nader debacle, nobody "respectable" will touch the Greens with a ten-foot pole. To give an example, before the 2000 election, local Green Party leaders were at least able to come in and discuss issues with the leadership of my union, even after we decided to put considerable resources into the Gore campaign. Following Bush's anointment, the Greens became persona non grata at the union hall, and remain so to this day.
The New Party put all its chips on the ballot fusion issue; following a unfavorable Supreme Court decision, they seem to have disappeared. Between the difficulties of fundraising and onerous ballot access laws, competition to the two major parties at this point is all but outlawed.
As for the primaries, the process seems to me to be almost to the point of becoming nationalized. New Hampshire, from what I hear, is considering moving their primary up all the way to December in order to insure remaining first. The best we may be able to hope for is a system of rotating regional primaries, with each section of the country taking turns going first. The major parties, IMO, are trying to make the primaries irrelevant so they can go back to their old practice of counting heads in smoke-filled rooms.
...for the rest of us
...for the rest of us
The Overton Window!
"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"......
Move that Overton window to the far left please! Then we'll get some progressive leaders and some real progressive legislation.
Parties, National Parties, Primaries
1. At the national level, I think the duopoly is firmly in place. Unfortunate, but true, and though it is true that the Greens were only the last in a long chain of abuses and usurpations that caused the the Presidency to be seized from Gore, they were surely part of it. I'd prefer even Hillary's Supreme Court justices to any Republican's. And so on.
2. At the state level, I'm all for new party apparatuses. I might vote Green or independent for the next governor, in fact.
3. One might almost think that the early primaries were designed to allow time for a Beltway front group like Unity08 to get off the ground once the Democratic and Republican primaries were over and the candidates known. Eh?
Dee: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes on shifting the Overton window lft. See #2 above.
Thomas: The numbers show there is no center, shifted right or not. The center is entirely a fictional Beltway Construct, designed to enrich consultants and deny Democrats real power at all costs. See point #3 above.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Amen to Leah's and Dee's points
The left hump is probably where the center should be.
The left hump is miles away from from being as far left as the right one is right. Yet, the MSM acts like the most moderate of Democratic positions is some kind of shrill extremism, and well-reasoned bloggers are painted as much worse than Ann "Raghead" Coulter.
www.vastleft.com
"You don’t lead from the middle, you lead from the front."
A highly relevant slogan from an earlier post by CD--how I miss her--that Drupal's most excellent "Related Stories" feature found and displayed in the sidebar.
No authoritarians were tortured in the writing of this post.
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
i have been baffled, for
i have been baffled, for the last 20 years, that the democrats "running" the party more and more expend so much of their resources attempting to appeal to so-called moderate republicans and independents. as a lifelong registered democrat i have long been waiting for them to realize that they have an obligation to those of us who actually identify ourselves as democrats, a number more than large enough to win presidential elections. i'm giving them one more election cycle before i go down to the election office and change my registration to "independent."
is it really so hard for the democratic "leadership" to distinguish rightwing talking points from reality? and if so, why are they still in office?
democracy? we haven't got no stinking democracy here.
excuse me while i go spit out some more teeth.