MoveOn.org bids to take over Democratic Party

[chequita guevara]

It'll be nice not to have two Republican Parties.

[Dinner]

More like a centrist or slightly left of center party and a right wing party.

[chequita guevara]

If you have a statue of a bird, with one outstetched right wing, and no left wing, what will happen when you try and stand it up?

[Dinner]

If it's a Republican bird then apparently it sweeps the elections.

[chequita guevara]

Yeah, well, centrists like Kerry don't excite the party base.

[monkspider]

"If people want to vote for a Republican, they will vote for the real thing."

-Harry Truman

[DanS]

If you have a statue of a bird, with one outstetched right wing, and no left wing, what will happen when you try and stand it up?

Politics is not a statue of a bird.

[Winston]

Agreed. It's more like the thing birds do to statues.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Yeah, well, centrists like Kerry don't excite the party base.

Kerry spent 20 years being a leftist and he only moved center in the last two years. He even swerved back left during the primaries.

BTW Kerry got a record turn out of the left wing base and he got some 95% of the leftist vote. I'd say he excited the base in a completely dominating fashion but that the left wing base was to small to win a national election on.

Thus the need to court the center.

[monkspider]

They have courted the center for two straight elections, and what has it got them?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by monkspider
"If people want to vote for a Republican, they will vote for the real thing."

-Harry Truman

We're not talking about becoming Republicans. We're talking about dumping gay marriage as a central issue. We're talking about demanding Republicans be punished for dumping our nation's children with the largest debt in history. We're talking maintaining a seporation of church and state without trying to expunge all public expressions of religion. We're talking about health care for all Americans. We're talking about spending on defense when it benifits soldiers but cutting the pork and waste which consumes so much of the defense budget. We're talking about pro-consumer laws and actually enforcing our current anti-trust laws. We're talking about spending more on things that matter to Americans like schools, student aid, roads and law enforcement but cutting wasteful spending like corporate & farm subsidies, Bush's missile defense system which fails even the meager tests its supporters rigged in its favor, we're talking about ending tax deductions which encourage American factories to close and move to China, and a dozen other things.

[Rufus T. Firefly]

They are courting the center. They're just not doing it effectively.

Here's the deal with the center: "center" is not an ideology, like left or right. People in the center tend to want things off both the right and left menu -- for example, they tend to want lower taxes, but also to want fairly extensive government services. The way you "court the center" is to make your offerings more appealing than the other guys' -- not because they are more appealing, but because you're a better salesman. The Dems used to be better at this than the GOP; that all changed years ago, though. But there's no reason the Dems couldn't get their own advantage back.

[Ramo]

Actually, what I heard was that Dean advocated going neither left nor right, but simply ignoring the Beltway and appealing more at the grass-roots level.

Yep. It's frustrating that the DLC types still don't understand what the Dean movement is about. It's not about rehashing the liberal vs. moderate battle in any traditional sense (as I keep pointing out, Dean's generally to the right of Kerry); it's predominantly a reform vs. status quo battle. It's about whether the Democratic Party should be funded by small donations and have a grass-roots organization in every state, or whether it should be funded by big money and be run by career politicians trying to hold onto their beltway fiefs. It's also about whether the Democrats should persuade or triangulate, whether they should have a coherent message or a laundry list.

Incidentally, I thought that Dean's speech was very good.

[monkspider]

I should add that I can understand the need to appeal to middle of the road voters, but I believe that the best way to do that is taking a strong, reform-minded approach.

Lurching to the center is a disasterous approach for two reasons. One, it concedes that we were wrong all along on politically-left issues, the issues which should be our bread and butter, and two, everytime we lurch to the center, the Republicans just lurch further to the right.

[Dinner]

Originally posted by monkspider
They have courted the center for two straight elections, and what has it got them?

We've courted the center in four of the last four and a funny thing happened. When we had a candidate with a strong personality who had convincing centrist creditials we won (1992 & 1996). When we had candidates with weak personalities whom didn't have strong centrist credentials we almost won.

The lesson here is have candidates with strong personal charisma and unimpeachable centrist records. That way Republicans can't tar them with the claim so and so is the "most liberal sentor in the entire sentate".