"Centrism in accommodation of nihilism is no virtue." (Commenter 1.1 Elvis Elvisher @ Joe Klein's Time Magazine blog
To win you have to appeal to moderates and the independent center, but people in the center don't really know what they think or believe. That's why the voters there flail this way and that way so mindlessly. They don't know what to think, so they have to be told what to think, and whoever has the strongest message wins. So the task is not to accommodate to the center, because there is no real center; the task is to take possession of the center by defining it.
Republican communication strategists understand rhetorical technique, and they have understood for a long time that it's in the interest of the GOP and the core constituencies it fronts for to make the New Deal consensus that defined centrist politics from the 1930s through the 1970s to appear to be the project of the far left. They have successfully established what was considered as whacky right-wing positions as respectable. They have successfully framed left leaning centrists as extremists, and made it impossible for a real left–the left defined by Chomsky or Nader, for instance–to even be part of the conversation.
It's been masterful accomplishment for these communications strategists on the Right, and a pathetic failure for the Dems who were clueless when it came to defending turf they owned for decades in the American mindframe. Once that turf is lost, it's very hard to win back. And all their attempts so far have been pathetic. For awhile there I thought Obama had a clue, but he's doing it paint by numbers. He's depressingly malleable to the frame that the Right has defined.
He had an historic opportunity while the memory of George Bush and the Republican fiasco was alive in the collective memory, but he wanted to make nice. He let them get away with it, and now, apparently the country has forgotten what a disaster Republican governance is, and this election has legitimated them again. It's really an astonishing failure of imagination and a squandering of the historical opportunity presented by the egregious failure of Republican governance over the last decade.
To be a political centrist at this time in America means that you're frustrated and confused. You don't understand what's going on, your brain is shorting out from holding so many conflicting political cliches, so you're willing to listen to anybody who comes up with a compelling alternative explanation. The Dems had a chance to win the hearts and minds of the center, but they had to make a compelling, impassioned case for themselves. Instead the Tea Party made the impassioned case, channeled much of the fear, frustration, and anxiety felt on Main Street, and that seems to be one of the key factors that swayed the confused middle to the right this cycle.
The Republicans won by default. The Dems were no-shows in this battle to claim the center. The Main Street image of the typical Dem centrist/moderate is the classic corporate Dem like Feinstein, Lincoln, or Bayh. Dem centrism is not about being reasonable and willing to compromise; it's about willingness to accommodate our corporate paymasters. This kind centrism is not the centrism the country wants or is looking for; it's precisely what nauseates Main Streeters frustrated with the state of American politics. Yes, Grayson and Feingold lost their seats, but overall the Blue Dogs were hurt far worse than the Progressives this cycle. Dems who acted like Republicans didn't save their seats. They were given a mandate in '06 and '07 to clean up the mess created by Republicans; instead too many of them timidly aligned with Republican obstructionism.
The Dems have only a predictable, conventional, paint-by-numbers rhetorical strategy. They present themselves as people who have only the most tired, passionless beliefs. So it's no wonder they have a hard time communicating what they believe to a confused and frustrated center persuasively. The GOP wins by default because their "belief" message is strong and clear. The Dems appear to stand for nothing except to get re-elected with corporate money.
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