Why would ANYBODY still argue that we have to "move MORE to the center" to win?

[Ken Burch]

The polls all show the country is swinging to more and more progressive positions. The country is permanently against Bush's wars, wants real single-payer healthcare, wants out of NAFTA. The country is moving OUR way. We don't need to run a defeatist, Nineties-style "vote for us and we'll keep the uppity 'special interests' out in the cold" campaign again.

Have faith, campers, we can win on our values. We just need to speak with confidence, with hope and with conviction. And we also just need to make sure we NEVER leave another slur or smear unanswered. Put those two things together, we can win in a walk.

Centrism and the appeasement of life-hating activist hating suburban grumps are no longer necessary. Abandon despair and defeatism, ye who enter here!

[paparush]

1. The Center is SO fucking far to the right these days....

[Buzz Clik]

2. Not to name names, but a move to center for at least one Dem candidate ....

.... would require a shift back to the left.

[redqueen]

3. "Conventional wisdom". (nt)

[skipos]

4. *I* don't say that. I am tired of triangulating, wind sock politics (Hillary). nt

[ClassWarrior]

5. Lakoff argues that there is no political center...

...and therefore it's idiocy to appeal to it. Details here (sorry it's a PDF):

http://www.rockridgeinstitute.org/thinkingpoints/ThinkingPoints_Chapter2.pdf/view?searchterm=myth%20of%20the%20center

Excerpt:

Understanding whom we are talking to — and whom we want to talk to — is crucial before progressives begin to articulate what it is they have to say and how best to say it. This is true for progressive candidates as well as activists and activist groups. The real challenge in this area is twofold: First, we want to activate our base while reaching swing voters at the same time; second, we want to do so without having to lie, distort, mislead, or pretend to be something we aren’t.

The pressure to dissemble comes from certain commonplace myths about swing voters and the “center.” So for starters, let’s put to rest the notion of the political or ideological “center” — it doesn’t exist. Instead, what we have are biconceptuals — of many kinds.

When it comes to progressive and conservative worldviews, we are all biconceptuals. You may live by progressive values in most areas of your life, but if you see Rambo movies and understand them, you have a passive conservative worldview allowing you to make sense of them. Or you may be a conservative, but if you appreciated The Cosby Show, you were using a passive progressive worldview. Movies and television aside, what we are really interested in are active biconceptuals — people who use one moral system in one area and the other moral system in another area of their political thinking.

Biconceptualism makes sense from the perspective of the brain and the mechanism of neural computation. The progressive and conservative worldviews are mutually exclusive. But in a human brain, both can exist side by side, each neurally inhibiting the other and structuring different areas of experience. It is hardly unnatural — or unusual — to be fiscally conservative and socially progressive, or to support a liberal domestic policy and a conservative foreign policy, or to have a conservative view of the market and a progressive view of civil liberties...

NGU.

[PATRICK]

6. Also

the GOP, Bush DC power is swinging away from the people, The courts, the legislation, the behavior, the policies are all out in right field and foul. So why are we running this even remotely, even the tiniest bit remotely, like an absent-minded centrist campaign that grants legitimacy and neighborliness to this crackpot establishment? Like the stolid blundering of the poorly led 2006 Congress?