Does Middle of the Road really exist?

BumbleBee -- Your early Thursday evening post was brilliant.

To jb, fishin' and ebrown -- We do need political parties simply for the sake of organization. Having at least two parties allows different philosophies, solutions, actions and reactions to surface. Ideally, a political party should be a sort of delivery system.

0 Replies

ebrown_p wrote:

The system doesn't always work, but at times it does. The leaders of a party must stay in touch with the people or the people will find someone who does.

This is what I meant when I wrote that, ideally, political parties should be delivery systems.

0 Replies

First of all - let me state very cleary that none of my comments are directed at you personally. I have been speaking of the mauch larger class here.

Quote:

I also think the "nutty liberal" slur is overplayed. Progressives who are like me care about issues- the Iraq war, a living wage and civil rights. We reject the messages from the left that I (subjectively) feel are truly "nutty" such as the anti-semitic conspiracy theories, or protectionist isolationalism.

There are millions of average Americans who think much the same I do, and it makes sense for us to work together.

And yet, while you reject the "nutty" contingent, you recognize that they exist and also must recognize that they are a part of the same party. While you are against the war the anti-semetic conspiracy nuts have been using the anti-war sentiment to promote their agenda as well. By pushing your agenda as a part of that party you also carry and promote their agenda by default - whether you wish to or not. This is the heart of my quibble with promoiting the party over issues.

Quote:

My thesis is this (and if I understand you, you will agree with this) "The system works best when it is controlled by the people."

I do agree! IMO, our disagreement seems to be whether the people are driving the parties or the party machines are driving the people.

Quote:

Now you say that the DFA is not representing the voice of the people-- I respectively disagree. I am on of the "People" and they are representing me pretty well on the issues I care about and there are millions of American voters who agree.

This, I disagree with. DFA might represent your voice but it is fairly clear that others simply take their lead from whatever DFA and other progressive groups have to say. How many threads have we had right here on A2K where a self-proclaimed progressive simply cuts and pastes a story from DFA, MoveOn or Democratic underground with no comments of their own? Are those posters expressing THEIR opinon/views or or they simply parroting what they've been fed?

From my observations, you are probbaly an exception to the general rule in that you almost always do put things in terms of what you believe (I can't recall a situation where you haven't.). You are greatly outnumbered however, by those that are simply following along.

If the majority is parroting the line of the progressive groups then who is leading whom?

Quote:

The Democratic leadership put Dean where he is, not because they like having an anti-war Democrat causing problems-- but because with the large minority of support for him, they had to do somthing with him.

Yiup, they put him in charge of the party which allowed his views (and those of that minority to mentioned) to dominate and control the party.

Quote:

The Democratic party is being pressured by its progressive base, that is us educated, active grass roots base, and Dean is part of this.

It appears that you view Dean and his crew to still be the "grassroots". IMO, they transcended that when they took over the party. They have become the establishment and they are now the people pulling the strings and providing direction to groups like DFA to win the internal struggle you mention below.

Quote:

There has always been tension between the old-guard Democratic party and Howard Dean. They have always fought over the war and other progressive issues. Currently they are fighting over national electoral strategy including whether or not they should grow the spine required to support their consituents.

Thus the problem. Who are the constituents that are supposedly being supported? Just the progressives, all of the Democrats (including the nuts) or everyone in their district (including the nuts from both ends of the spectrum)?

A centerist (just to get back to the overall topic) would opt for the latter - regardless of which party the candidate is running from.

0 Replies

plainoldme wrote:

To jb, fishin' and ebrown -- We do need political parties simply for the sake of organization. Having at least two parties allows different philosophies, solutions, actions and reactions to surface.

Need? Not so sure about that.

We've taken thousands of issues and hundreds of divergent ideas on each of them and distilled it all down to a simple yes/no (Democrat/Republican) proposition. I don't see that as either needed or good.

0 Replies

fishin wrote:

plainoldme wrote:
To jb, fishin' and ebrown -- We do need political parties simply for the sake of organization. Having at least two parties allows different philosophies, solutions, actions and reactions to surface.

Need? Not so sure about that.

We've taken thousands of issues and hundreds of divergent ideas on each of them and distilled it all down to a simple yes/no (Democrat/Republican) proposition. I don't see that as either needed or good.

You are overlooking the reality that before something becomes a "simple yes/no," a variant on the recent political buzz word, "an up or down vote," that the issue or idea had a history; that it was debated in newspaper editorials, forums such as this one and among ordinary citizens in face-to-face conversations. Furthermore, it picked apart by attorneys and researchers in relevant fields and pulled on by lobbyists. Then, it is re-examined by the governing bodies in debate.

Let me give you a simple analogy. I used to tell my former husband that there is no such thing as a simple task. Doing the laundry involves sorting the clothes by color, how dirty they are and how soon the garment needs to be worn again; pre-treating, washing either by hand or machine, drying, perhaps ironing, then distributing clean laundry back to the bureaus and closets. Things are the same in the creation of laws, or the ideas and issues that give rise to them.

We need political parties to shepherd these ideas from conception to actualization. What we do not is for political parties to become stumbling blocks to actualization.

And, a personal heads up, this discussion is going swimmingly and some real ideas are floating here and there is productivity. Watch your rhetoric and avoid words like "nutty."

0 Replies

plainoldme wrote:

fishin wrote:
plainoldme wrote:
To jb, fishin' and ebrown -- We do need political parties simply for the sake of organization. Having at least two parties allows different philosophies, solutions, actions and reactions to surface.

Need? Not so sure about that.

We've taken thousands of issues and hundreds of divergent ideas on each of them and distilled it all down to a simple yes/no (Democrat/Republican) proposition. I don't see that as either needed or good.

You are overlooking the reality that before something becomes a "simple yes/no," a variant on the recent political buzz word, "an up or down vote," that the issue or idea had a history; that it was debated in newspaper editorials, forums such as this one and among ordinary citizens in face-to-face conversations. Furthermore, it picked apart by attorneys and researchers in relevant fields and pulled on by lobbyists. Then, it is re-examined by the governing bodies in debate.

I didn't overlook that reality at all. That is what the word "distilled" implies.

There is no real debate in newspaper editorials. You can be almost guaranteed that any editorial in the Boston Globe or the NY Times will reflect the opinion of the Democratic party. Equeally, you can expect that any story on FOX News will reflect the opinion of the Republican party. Disenting views are, for all practical purposes, nonexistant.

When was the last time you sat down with everyone else in your voting precinct and had a discussion on gun control, abortion, a living wage or any other issue? You might have discussions amongst yourself and a few close friends but your friends are likely to hold views similar to your own to begin with. You might meet (as the "Deaniacs" did a few years back) in a local living room but that's a self-selected group that is already like-minded to a large extent and is usually led by an official supporter or local party official with a scripted agenda.

The distilling process leaves a few party officials to decide the party position (influenced by special interest groups) and then they package the research that supports their position (while ignoring all the research that doesn't) and they feed that out to the party faithful as point papers and talking points. Those talking points are then parroted in Editorials, by special interest groups and at local meetings of the faithful. Our elected representatives "debate" bills without even reading them (what morons!) and then cast their vote following the party lines.

As time goes on the points become simple buzz phrases. The NOW position on abortion is the accepted Demoractic Party position, the NRA position on gun control is now the accepted Republican Party position. Forget about all the complexities behind each issue - it's all or nothing, my way or the highway.

Quote:

Let me give you a simple analogy. I used to tell my former husband that there is no such thing as a simple task. Doing the laundry involves sorting the clothes by color, how dirty they are and how soon the garment needs to be worn again; pre-treating, washing either by hand or machine, drying, perhaps ironing, then distributing clean laundry back to the bureaus and closets. Things are the same in the creation of laws, or the ideas and issues that give rise to them.

Ok, let's expand on that analogy. When you do your laundry where do you get most of that information from? The manufacturers (the parties) provide you with tags in your clothes that tell you whether the item needs to be dry cleaned, hand washed, washed in hot or cold water, whether or not you can use bleach, line dry, tumble dry, etc.. 80% of the decision making process has been handed to you (i.e. they are talking points).

How many people read those tags and follow the directions as they are written and how many think about what the clothes are actually made of and decide for themselves how they should be laundered? I'd guess most people just follow the directions (i.e. the party line) without ever thinking about all of the background information that went into printing the tag and that they seldom do the research on their own (why should they when it's been prepackaged for them?).

(You will all have to excuse me as I have to run out for the weekend after posting this. I probably won't be able to respond further until late Sunday or Monday... I'm late! I'm late!)

0 Replies

fishin -- As to following directions -- on clothing tags or anything else -- there are folks who automatically do what they would anyway, and that would include using cold water exclusively or dry cleaners exclusively. Ultimately, that depends on their education (and, of course, you know that I do not mean whether they finished high school or college, but something akin to experience) and their judgment.

While you are right that people largely self-select their audiences there are folks who can not open their mouths without voicing their political opinions. But, consider the shortness of temper here. How many people respond in public lest they end up with a black eye.

Now, when I was in college during the 1960s, there was a great deal of discussion among a tiny group of students, supposedly during a time of activism. Both extremes were represented in this little group. Does that say something about the middle? About activism in general? About the level of information most people have?

0 Replies

Fishin,

There is no place for group hugs in politics.

I understand your desire for Americans to get together to reach a consensus-- this would be a great thing. Unfortunately in the real world this is almost always impossible.

Look at everything that has been accomplished in the history of America. How was slavery ended? Remember the "centrist" solution to deal with centrists resulted in a division between slave and free states, and a compromise that said Black people were 3/5 of a human. But it wasn't the centrists who ended slavery.

Look at what it took to win the right to vote for women. Again it wasn't centrists who prevailed. The suffrage movement was opposed, with vitriol, every step of the way-- and likewise, to win the struggle, proponents of suffrage had to fight tooth and nail.

In every political struggle, there is a winner and a loser. In every election there is one winner who must make important decisions as an idividual with one point of view. In each of these cases, who wins an election or which law is passed, is often very important in a way that will have a great impact on the lives of real people.

Politics was never designed to be a way to stop fights. Politics is designed to give a somewhat structured way to decide who wins and who loses.

If you had put an abolitionist and a slave owner in the same room for a discussion-- do you think that it would have helped anything? What if you had put a John Birch member with a socialist, or a civil rights movement worker with a member of the KKK?

Each political decision is fought first through elections, then through party platforms... and finally through vote trading and debate and arm-twisting and back room meetings among legislators.

This is a messy system, but it is the best that anyone has come up with... and this is the way it has always worked since democracy was invented. The hope is that through elections and public opinion, the various pressures on those in power will somehow result in something that is workable and somehow mostly reflects the will of the people (whatever that means in our very diverse, now polarized society).

But make no mistake, politics is always a fight and if you think otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you.

Politicians who use words like "centrist" or "bipartisan" only do so cynically because they think they can use it to their political advantage. You will note that calls to be "bipartisan" are almost always from the party in power-- currently the Republicans (and a certain Democratic senator now fearful of losing his job).

Right now there several political struggles are taking place that I care about. There is immigration reform, there is the war in Iraq and what I see as excesses of the American government in its so-called "war on terror".

In all of these things, I feel strongly that the United States will be best served if the Democratic party is put back into power-- especially if progressive voters get more power inside the Democratic party. Fortunately it looks like both of these things may happen.

Of course there are plenty of Americans who disagree with me. But each person must go by their own conscience-- and therein lies the political fight.

But at the end of the day either the Democrats or the Republicans will control each house of Congress, and there will be winners and losers and consequences for each one.

0 Replies

ebrown -- You are 100% right when you say that politicians use the words bipartisan and compromise cynically. In general, bipartisan has come to mean do it my way.

0 Replies

Does anyone remember this being said during the Civil Rights Movement:

Yes, I am in favor of Negro Emancipation and I strongly feel that the Negro deserves the unhindered right to vote, but now is not yet the time and these sit-ins, marches and protests are not the way.

Right of center or middle of the road?

0 Replies

Does Middle of the Road really exist?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know