Americans Move to the Middle

[groovedaddy]

Can you hear that? I can. It’s the sound of political action committees and party extremists sharpening their wedge issues and setting the timers on their bombshells. The fall’s battle is looming. It’s going to get ugly.

Once again they’ll cast the opposition as binary caricatures to rally their bases, swing the independents and capture the defectors.

The left will be reduced to fist-bumping blacks and intellectual elites with gun aversions and gay agendas. An amoral, tail-tucking lot that coddles criminals, raises taxes and has gone Chicken Little over global warming.

The right will be lambasted as ultra-conservative cretins who want to conflate the Constitution and the Bible, are pro-life before birth and pro-death after trial and blindly follow war-hungry fear-mongers who obsess over “terrorists” like a Tootsie Roll commercial.

And, never the twain shall meet. Left or right? That narrow view is just wrong. Americans are much more complex. Sadly, battle cries drown out nuance in campaigns.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/26/opinion/26blow.html?th&emc=th

[Eric J in MN]

1. Did Charles M. Blow replace a NY Times columnist? NT

NT

[groovedaddy]

4. They published this as a guest op-ed. n.t

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. On a day with the news from Knoxville...

I think that Mr. Blow's editorial rings a bit...hollow. Something is moving out there and it's nasty.

[FreepFryer]

3. What complete bullshit. more like "America Fed Up With Economic Losses Under the Far Right.".

[groovedaddy]

6. Besides, what does "the middle mean?" Ask people their stands on issues

and you find most of us are all over the place, depending on the issue. Ask where working people are on economic issues and most will have views bordering on socialism, if not already way over the line.
People are tired of being screwed over.

[Indenturedebtor]

7. "The middle" is somewhere between communism and facism - IE Socialism

That's what he meant right? Right? Otherwise this "middle" thing has no meaning.

[Vincardog]

5. let's not say the "middle" any more the Corporate approved lie is not the middle it is the

"Corporate view"

[groovedaddy]

8. Nice response at commondreams.org

Americans Move Left, New York Times Misses It
by Jeff Cohen
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/28/10644/