True moderation versus false centrism. How words hurt a party.

[madfloridian]

True moderation versus false centrism.

There is a type of centrism called moderation. There is another type falsely applied which needs to rely on the conservative right wing.

That is what we are facing as a party now. It is a legacy of the think tanks who have controlled party policy since the late 80s. It is showing in the stances our party is taking on issues like Iran, like condemning MoveOn, like giving in on FISA issues like we did.

True moderation means taking sensible, practical positions based on truth. The false centrism that I refer to takes positions based on fear of the right wing, fear of being weak on National Security, fear that we will be attacked by their machine.

True moderates are the overwhelming majority in the party. The centrists who falsely set their own issues on conservative policies in order to win...are in the minority.

Howie Klein of Down With Tyranny and Fire Dog Lake had a really good rant on this a few months ago.

Nothing gets me crazier than when I'm with a bunch of really smart progressives and they start using the reactionary frame of calling right-wing Democrats like Harold Ford or Joe Lieberman or Ben Nelson "moderate." They're not moderate; they're the extreme right-wing of the Democratic Party; well, Lieberman isn't part of the Democratic Party but he was the extreme right of it before Connecticut voters tossed him out. The others, along with many DLC and Blue Dog members, are. In a day and age when members' entire voting record is easily accessible, there is not reason to call someone like Jim Marshall (D-GA) or Chris Carney (D-PA) or Dan Boren (OK), Boyd Allen (FL), Gene Taylor (D-MS), Bud Cramer (AL), John Barrow (D-GA), Heath Shuler (D-NC), Al Wynn (D-MD) or Dan Lipinski (D-IL) a moderate. Well, there is one reason: you accept the radical right's frame of political polarity.

WHO YOU CALLIN' A CENTRIST?

Howie differentiated between "moderate" and right wing.

George Lakoff weighed in as well.

No Center, No Centrists

The very idea that there is a "center" marginalizes progressives, and sees them as extremists, when they simply share fundamental American values. The term "center" suggests there is a "mainstream" where most people are and that there is a single set of views held by that mainstream. That is false.

..."My colleague, Glenn W. Smith, has pointed to the DLC strategy of getting as many "swing voters" as possible and the minimum number of base voters needed to win. That is why the DLC and Rahm Emanuel argued against Howard Dean's 50-state strategy and for a swing-state alone strategy."

...."But worst of all, the DLC has been cowed by the conservatives. They have drunk the conservative Kool-Aid. As Harold Ford intimated in his debate with Markos Moulitsas: To win you have be a hawk on foreign policy, a social conservative on abortion and gay marriage, and not raise taxes. Nonsense

Howard Dean in his book published in 2004 spoke often of the difference between true moderation and false centrism. In this statement he made a good point. It is from a section called:

"We have to reconnect to the base."

In recent years the Democrats, in our pursuit of big dollars, have neglected the people we're there to serve. We let our connection to our base atrophy and have forgotten, as they say in politics, who brought us to the dance. In service to a falsely named "centrism" we've sidestepped every major request from labor unions, especially on including worker protections in our free-trade agreements.

I think a lot of us have grown tired of the false use of centrism, such as we have seen in the votes in Congress recently. Condeming MoveOn to look tough. Wobbling all over the place on FISA for fear of not looking supportive of strict measures.

Even worse, talking so tough on Iran that it appears we will not even try to stop Bush from attacking or bombing them....all to seem tough on National Security.

Real moderates, true moderates do not have to act like that. They have the right take on the issues anyway. All they need to do is stand up with courage.

[Richard Steele]

1. Hear, hear! K&R

[JeffR]

2. Could not agree more

K & R!

[madfloridian]

14. Your sig line and picture are impressive.

We do love our country enough to be ashamed when it does terrible things.

[robinlynne]

3. love it.

[madfloridian]

15. Thanks.

We have done a lot of harm in the name of the wrong kind of centrism.

[OHdem10]

4. There is no center. The Center is a straight vertical

line which separates the LEFT(Democrats) from the Right(Republicans)

Ikf there are people standing on that imaginary center line
this means they have no values, no loyalty to either party.
They cannot have core beliefs. Are their beliefs more Democratic
or More Republican???

Once you pass the center line, there are degrees.

Start--a little left of center Democrats, then Center Left--thenLefties and FarLeft

Start---alittle right of Center Republicans, then Center Right--then RWers
(Far Right)

Calling oneself a centrist is like standing on an imaginary line
with no core beliefs in either party.

The Post is absolutely correct when it says Centrist was develooped
to diminish Progressives. It was developed to diminish Democrats.
I consider myself a proud liberal and stand in the CenterLeft Position
on the scale.

[JVS]

6. If I thought that all the values in the world could be divided into Republican and Democratic...

I'd shoot myself.

Thanks for the chilling thought

[madfloridian]

7. Well, when you think in terms of moderation and being sensible...

that can happen on either side of that line. I guess I would like to think there is a middle, but not even sure about that anymore.

[madfloridian]

5. Speaking of true moderates

Some folks here at DU lately have been pulling the outdated meme on me about my loyalty to Dean.. They really don't get it. One of them told me he was a centrist and we did not know it.

The thing is I was thinking this week about how we are not voting in the primary here because we are protesting the way Florida has lied and blamed others for their actions about the early date. But we don't feel enthused anyway.

I found this article about Dean and centrism, and it really hits home what I posted in the OP. It is from 2003. The title:

Howard Dean: An Old-Style Centrist

This article to me really truly shows what a real moderate stands for. There are many things I don't agree with him on, but this gets to the core of what he stood for.

"I think the country is going in the wrong direction both economically and in terms of foreign policy," he told me in a car-phone interview during a recent campaign trip, "and I don't think the Democrats are going to be able to beat the President with the equivalent of Bush Lite."

As an outspoken opponent of the war with Iraq, Dean has been drawing cheers and lifting the spirits of Democratic activists who are spoiling for a fight. He chastises his colleagues for voting for the war, and for rolling over on the Bush tax cuts and what he calls the "Every Child Left Behind" education bill.

..."Dean is not a member of the Democratic Leadership Council, the group founded in 1985 to promote centrism within the party, but he reads their literature and says they have some good ideas.

"At the beginning I think it was very good, because I think the party wasn't winning elections because we were too far to the left," he says. "Now I think the party has moved too far to the right."

..."Dean may not have a progressive track record like Wellstone or leftwing candidate Dennis Kucinich, but at least he is raising issues that once constituted the core of the Democratic Party's message. He could act as a healthy corrective to a party that seems to have trouble distinguishing itself from the Republicans, even as the Republicans move further and further to the right.

"Harry Truman first introduced the notion of health insurance for all Americans in 1948," Dean points out. "Now people consider it a socialist plot. That shows how far to the right we are. I think it's too far right, and I think most Americans agree with that."

Ruth Conniff is Political Editor of The Progressive.

That is one thing he has done...Conniff is correct. He called our attention to reason so many were voting for this horrible invasion. Acting as a "corrective" to the sharp right turn can be done by a moderate like him.

He sounded pretty moderate in his John Hopkins speech Friday. But he sounded practical and sensible.

[madfloridian]

8. A progressive view of government according to Lakoff

The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on."

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/lakoff/no-center-no-centrists

And from Glenn Smith at Rockridge Institute

For three decades, advocates of "centrism" have used their money to monopolize the Democratic message and leave the progressive base out in the cold, not spoken to. Since its founding in 1985, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been leading this effort. How did they pull this off? Before we get into that, let's call them what they are. "Centrist" implies conciliation, moderation, compromise. It reinforces the mistaken idea that our political life falls along a neat, linear scale from left to right. That metaphor makes the center a pretty good and safe place to be. And that it certainly is not.

The plutocratic Democrats should be referred to not as centrists, but as industrial authoritarians. Their movement was born after the Nixon re-election in 1972. They blamed that landslide on Democratic Party rules changes that audaciously sought to include Americans formerly excluded from the back rooms of power. They fronted for older corporate interests – oil and gas, finance, insurance. The are really 19th-Century paternalists who would save us from ourselves by keeping us far from the plantation's Big House.

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/research/rockridge/the-trouble-with-the-dlc

Ouch, Glenn, but I pretty much agree.

[The Wizard]

9. "The only thing you find in the middle of the road

are yellow stripes and dead armadillos." (Jim Hightower)
Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
Josef Liebermann is nothing but a scalawag. He's the kind of Jew who would have been pushing his brethren into gas chambers for the Nazis, an unprincipled swine who feeds on the misery of others. That sounds very Republican.
Many of the DLC types mentioned have to take those Republican positions because they are in Klan country. Holy Joe hasn't got that excuse. The fact that he got elected should send a message to all con artists: Connecticut is ripe for the picking.

[madfloridian]

11. Article by Andrew Greeley..."Will we fall for war vs. Iran"

Unless we get some major courage I think he may be right. I think if the major players want to stop war we could. But there is too much fear of the right, and it is far too deeply ingrained.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/greeley/606071,CST-EDT-greel17.article

"It would appear, according to news reports, that the hard-liners in the Bush administration, led by the vice president, are pushing for a war with Iran. The tactics are the same. Once you've played the fear card to start one war, the second time is easier.

Iran is a threat to American security and freedom. They are trying to build nuclear bombs to use against us. They are already killing Americans in Iraq. They hate us and our freedom. Eliminating the Iranian government and destroying its nuclear facilities is essential to the security of the United States and part of the international war on terror.

Will the shell game work again? I would like to think that it would not, that the American people will not be won over by "war on terror" propaganda, that Congress would not be taken in this time (not even Sen. Hillary Clinton), and that the national media would raise a loud hue and cry against yet another "preemptive war.''

Yet surely the hawks would shout once again that in a "national security emergency" the commander in chief has the power to go to war without authorization from Congress. The president might argue that Gen. David Petraeus approved the attack. Indeed, those on the dark side could even suggest that a presidential election could be "postponed" until the Iranian crisis is over -- and like the Iraq crisis, that might be never."

This part is scary:

"There is precious little that those who are opposed to such a war could do. The president, his vice president could assert, is the commander in chief. He has the inherent power to start a war if he deems it necessary for the security of the country. The National Security Council could eavesdrop on opponents to the war, and the FBI could turn up with "national security letters" to probe into the lives of these "security risks." The pliant Supreme Court, having permitted the president to seize an election on the grounds of equal rights under the law, could easily phony up an argument that Justices Scalia and Thomas and their allies would support."

[amb123]

10. K & R. Moderates are gutless political cowards.

Thanks for proving that political "moderation" is another word for cowardice. The two parties in America today are not Democrats and Republicans, they are Liberal Patriots and Fascist Traitors.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

12. Just what the fuck is a "moderate dem" these days?

I mean, I could understand people calling themselves moderate dems eight years ago, what what the fuck does it mean now?

"Oh, I think the war was a bad idea, but now that we're there we've got to finish the job."

"Oh, I think gays are people to, but they shouldn't have equal rights."

"Oh, I'm fiscally conservative. We should be more responsible with money, like Ronald Reagan."

What kind of fucking ideology is this? Institutionalized spinelessness?

[madfloridian]

13. Good rant.

The lines have been blurred so much now.