Comments on: Specter and looming political identity crises

By: Howie Felch

Howie Felch — Sat, 02 May 2009 18:37:39 +0000

There is no legitimate left wing participation in American politics at this point. To call the Democrats even center right is being charitable. Obama himself is no better than a legitimate centrist. I never knew whether to laugh or cry when the ‘pugs would refer to HRC as some kind of far left ideologue. She is clearly a center-right politician by any reasonable standard.

By: Lex

Lex — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 22:41:39 +0000

Thanks for the inside scoop.

I read an interesting conversation recently about Overton windows and how they’re used to shift politics over time. The gist was that the Republicans are very good at allowing the far right to say whatever it wants (in fact, the crazier the better) and then the position that the party takes looks fairly moderate. They move the windows.

The Dems, on the other hand, are constantly trying to get what’s left of the Left to just STFU lest any crazy talk ruins their moderate image.

What would be really cool is if there were actually a place for centrists…but i suppose that would leave them to the left of the Dems, somewhere in Communist territory.

By: Dr. Denny

Dr. Denny — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 21:21:13 +0000

Gosh. WashPo and NYT didn’t have analysis this good. Kudos.

By: CWMackowski

CWMackowski — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:22:05 +0000

It’s all relative, for sure. Our “left” and, say, some of the leftist parties in Europe are an ocean apart–and I don’t necessarily mean the Atlantic.

By: Dr. Slammy

Dr. Slammy — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 15:51:37 +0000

My only quibble with any of this comes in your penultimate graf: …doesn’t that also suggest that the Democratic party has shift away from the left to a more moderate position?

Aside from a few fairly hardcore liberals – and that number is well shy of what’s needed to make meaningful impacts on policy for the moment – today’s Democratic Party (as our colleague Dr. Sid noted a few months back) is several steps to the right of Richard Nixon.

One of our biggest issues as a nation right now is runaway corporatism, and if the Dems step much further in a “moderate” direction we’re going to need to write politicians and citizens out of the Constitution and replace them with CEOs and shareholders.

Of course, it might well be argued that this has already been accomplished….