General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Is "liberal washing" at the heart of discord in the Dem party? [View all]DirkGently
(12,151 posts)a proposal to simply weaken Social Security or starve a few million children could be taken as sanity. That's what we deal with now -- an endless parade of screaming clowns gibbering about birth certificates and death panels.
So even the most corporatist proposal -- provided it doesn't involve batshit theocracy or intricate theories on how women must be instructed on the use of their own uteri -- becomes the "pragmatic center."
It's sort of like the Overton Window, except we spend our time trying to drag the frame not left or right, but toward anything coherent or even vaguely rational.
This is why I think we need more leftwing crazies. I don't even know exactly what that would look like at this point, but apparently we need something loopy to compromise away in order to have anything vaguely progressive taken seriously.
Otherwise, the extent of our victories going forward will apparently be winning the argument over whether our candidates are crypto space aliens and the Post Office is a Stalinist plot.