Drum: Will Conservatives Do The Right Thing In November?
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Dunno.
I mean...obviously the question Drum's really asking is: will enough conservatives do the right thing?
Here's a related question:
Will liberals do the right thing? Hillary in particular?
By which I mean: in order to avoid a Trump presidency, and help bring out the better selves of our friends across the aisle...will Hillary run hard to the center? And will the leftier fringes of liberalism resist the urge to form a leftier third party in response? Are American liberals (or "progressives") willing to forgo their hope of rapid (and, it's start to seem, endless...) progress/"progress"? If not, then we/they aren't really in much of a position from which to criticize conservatives...
Easy for me to say...I want a largely centrist Democratic party. But even though this all aligns with my preferences, I still think it's right.
Dunno.
I mean...obviously the question Drum's really asking is: will enough conservatives do the right thing?
Here's a related question:
Will liberals do the right thing? Hillary in particular?
By which I mean: in order to avoid a Trump presidency, and help bring out the better selves of our friends across the aisle...will Hillary run hard to the center? And will the leftier fringes of liberalism resist the urge to form a leftier third party in response? Are American liberals (or "progressives") willing to forgo their hope of rapid (and, it's start to seem, endless...) progress/"progress"? If not, then we/they aren't really in much of a position from which to criticize conservatives...
Easy for me to say...I want a largely centrist Democratic party. But even though this all aligns with my preferences, I still think it's right.
posted by Winston Smith at
7:16 AM
1 Comments:
I agree with you in principle Winston, but the problem is that for the past 30 years or so, the GOP has moved WAY to the right, while the Democrats have moved only slightly to the left. And some Democrats, especially DLC-types, have already kept the Democrats from moving more to the left. The net effect is to move the Overton Window far to the right.
And this is despite the fact that, policy-wise, much of the country is way farther left than is permitted in *polite* Washington discussion. Just one example: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/08/americans-want-to-live-in-a-much-more-equal-country-they-just-dont-realize-it/260639/ Although there are others.
Obviously, the median American is a low-information voter.
A couple of caveats.
First, if you're just speaking in terms of moving to the center strategically, or rhetorically during the campaign, that is one thing, and it makes perfect sense. You have to gain power to have any appreciable effect.
Also, I realize that the circles you move in are over-run with the unhinged parts of the left. Parts of academia seem like a rathole of sloppy thinking and unreflective orthodoxy.
But POLITICALLY, the conversation is dominated by much more conservative, or should I say right-wing, ideology. And as far as the social sciences, the one that has the most influence in government is economics, and the application of its orthodoxy the past 30-40 years has had a horrible effect, and has helped elevate people like Trump (and people like LePen in France):
http://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system/
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