A Center-Center Nation

Think of this as Volume 11, Number 50 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

Ever since the 2008 election we've had a running fight between mainstream "analysts" (like Karl Rove) arguing that this is a "center-right" nation and progressives  (like David Corn) worrying that Barack Obama's personnel decisions are meant to validate that.

Nonsense. On both counts.

America is not a center-right nation. Nor is it a center-left nation. Americans are naturally centrist, although the center shifts with the times.

The purpose of politics is to define that center. The aim of Barack Obama is to define that center broadly, to build a consensus for a program of institutional transformation, based on the concepts he described during the campaign.

So far he has made a great start on it. We now have a consensus that massive intervention at a time of financial disaster is a good thing, and that the price of such intervention must be a continuing government role in setting and enforcing  rules aimed at market stability. We now have a consensus on getting out of Iraq, on focusing against Al Qaeda, on using diplomacy rather than force of arms, and on re-connecting our policy with our values.

Not bad for a month, for a President who has yet to take the oath, and who won only 52% of the popular vote. Both these enormous policy victories have given the President-elect credibility with which to pursue other elements of his agenda — environmentalism, a War Against Oil, and public works on a massive scale.

Is this center-left? Is it center-right? Neither. It's center-center. It's the political center as defined by Barack Obama, who is my President. And who should be yours. Especially if you're a Democrat.

At the heart of the Republican dominance of our politics for a generation was internal unity. Republicans stayed together, through thick and thin. Democrats were a collection of tribes — blacks, browns, union members, gays, liberals, moderates, feminists.

If we want them to be, those days are over. Now it's the Republicans who are becoming a collection of tribes — extreme neocons, extreme theocons, racists and haters with a dozen different causes but no common cause.

If Democrats stay united they can dominate for a generation. That is the Obama opportunity.

How is this done? By taking the moderates on the other side and accepting them into the governing consensus. This is what Barack Obama has been doing, and we should support him in that  effort.

We need to end the temptation, given into by people like Corn and Jane Hamsher (above), to keep playing the same old game, simply because the other side is playing it. 

If we can just be quiet we will find that Obama has built a broad coalition in which progressives are included but the lunatic right is excluded. To do that you have to include mainstream conservatives, people with functioning brain stems, in the coalition. Take away foreign policy realists, Wall Street pragmatists, and social moderates from the Republican coalition and it's a rump.

This is just what Nixon did to liberals. By excluding only the left's radical fringe, he set in motion a chain of political events through which all liberals were eventually excluded from the mainstream. That's going to be a hard habit for Washington to unlearn, but (thanks to George W. Bush and Sarah Palin) it is being unlearnt.

This won't mean we become a center-left country. The center is being redefined. You're in it, unless you decide to make the perfect the enemy of the good, in which case you are out. You will become  a foil, what Ron Paul and David Duke are on the right, always outside, never validated, all your ideas ignored.

Your choice, Jane.