Reply #94: Not really... [View All]

[regnaD kciN]

A "centrist Dem in the White House" combined with a solidly Republican Congress (and likely to be more solidly so, what with the successful Texas and Colorado gerrymandering), would be a rehash of the last few years of Clinton...gridlock and compromise with Delay and company, while the latter bash the Democratic president as "too liberal," and react to Democratic moves "to the center" by moving even farther to the right (if that's possible).

The end result will be, at best, another restriction of the "acceptable" range of the political spectrum, so that it will run from Tom Delay and Rick Santorum on the far right to Wesley Clark on the "far left" -- anyone more progressive than Clark (and that would include most of the current Democratic candidates except Lieberman) will be automatically considered too "far out" to be taken seriously in the future.

Don't believe me? Then, let me ask you: after eight years of Clinton, did we see a move toward liberal resurgence? On the contrary, the nation had shifted further to the right than before. I see no reason why cashing in our chips and going with the "'electable' centrist" candidate more than a year before the election will result in anything other than more of the same.

:-(

(Once again, I'll repeat: what bothers me most about this whole Clark issue is not the candidate himself -- about whom I still know little -- but the hard-sell, knee-jerk stampede mentality with which he is being "sold," and the rationale behind it, which seems to me little more than "we're telling you he's electable because he's military, so decide now!" It's like talking to persistant evangelical door-to-door missionaries, continually pushing you to stop thinking critically and take their offered "salvation" now or never...or maybe a particularly high-pressure used car salesman, whose "deals" will "only be good if you buy now!". There may be a time to decide that candidate A, although he or she may appeal more than candidate B, is not "electable" while the latter is. However, that time is not fourteen months before the general election, and even five months before the first primary, when the candidate who's being "sold" has barely been in the race for a couple of weeks, has no prior track record in politics, and hasn't even presented a comprehensive set of positions on major issues yet. Anyway, consider this: if we had used the same "electable" standard four or five months ago, the same case could be made that we all needed to get behind Joe Lieberman!)