Liberal objectives with conservative means

[zipplewrath]

Anyone who remembers Raul Groom from the early days of DU, I still read his stuff on other forums. He wrote something recently that although a bit more on the confrontational side than DU desires these days, contains some realistic observations about the up coming campaigns. I would have avoided the whole ACA thing, around here, and I'm not sure I would have assigned it the concept of the "centrists", but overall it contains some important ideas. The part I bolded needs to be realized in our democratic/liberal discussions more often.

In general people support liberal ends (environmental and consumer protections, full employment, poor people having access to expensive medical care, etc.) but tend to be skeptical of liberal means. So for the most part the politically expedient path is to pursue liberal ends by conservative means.

Centrists(TM) like to act as if calling for liberal ends to be pursued by conservative means is some kind of brave act of speaking truth to power. It's literally the political path of least resistance. It's what people mean when they talk about how "what is popular isn't always what's right." They're talking about the failures of Centrism(TM)!

Often these kinds of things are the best we can do. In which case, OK! The ACA/Obamacare is a good thing and I'm glad we have it. But making it more conservative (especially the parts that were designed to reduce its deficit impact) was a process of making it worse. It would work way better if it were more liberal.

This used to be controversial. It shouldn't be controversial anymore. Conservatives aren't even trying to make these policies better! Compromising with them isn't something we should be proud of, beyond being proud to have gotten something done. You shouldn't be proud of making bad policy for the sake of being "bipartisan." It makes no sense.