In the aftermath of the Beltway political group "Third Way" attacking Elizabeth Warren centrism has been under assault. As a middle child, I am offended at this attack on "centrism" by the left. Much like the equally absurd notion that the group calling themselves "No Labels" was a centrist group, Third Way is only centrist from a skewed view of America.
Aside from being a middle child chronologically, my older brother is a wing-nut and my little sister is ideologically to my left. I live in New York City. If you think about the city's grid structure with the east side and the west side as an analogy for the political spectrum, then, looking north, east is right and west is left. The extremes are bounded by rivers, the East and the Hudson. The dividing line is 5th Avenue.
By these parameters, I define the center as one avenue left or right of that divide. 6th Avenue on the left, also known as Avenue of the Americas, and 4th Avenue on the Right, commonly known as Park. I claim that most Americans ideologically live within these parameters and they are the true centrists.
Third Way, No Labels, and the predecessor DLC, claim a centrist label by attempting to occupy the midpoint between right and left as they define it. They define it as the midpoint between DC pols. This is as far from the midpoint as the median can be from the average. Imagine that there were 100 people in a bar and they made a total of $10,000 that day. The average would be $100 per person. If half of them made minimum wage, the median wage would be $29.
Third Way, No Labels, Erskine-Bowles claim centrism. Reducing the deficit is a centrist position. However, when you ask if we should cut Social Security to achieve that goal or raise taxes, raising taxes gets a majority. When you narrow it down to raising taxes of the wealthiest Americans, the majority grows. The most often revenue raising fix to Social Security is to raise the cap on income subject to the tax. Consider then that the cap is currently more than twice the median household income.
The Right talks about cutting spending all the time. True, $17 trillion dollars is a large number. However, nobody wants their own spending cut. We all learned how upset we were when we found out that our flights were delayed by the sequester.
In 2008, both Presidential candidates agreed that climate change and health care needed to be addressed. The solutions proposed did not differ significantly until the side that lost called the other side socialism. Centrist Americans do not live there.
Centrists do not care about Benghazi. It does not affect them. Centrists do not want to be kicked off their health insurance plan. In the 1990's I worked for a company that required our employees to cover an additional 10% of their insurance plan. President Obama was not even a twinkle in Liberalism's eye.
There are partisans on the right who will attack Obamacare even though they would benefit from the law, if only they were willing to accept the notion. They also likely believe that their taxes have gone up under President Obama even though most Americans have paid less in taxes during his presidency than they would have under laws in effect the day he took office.
Paul Ryan, upon completing a "compromise" budget deal with Patty Murray, went on the News talk shows to mention what he wanted to get from the upcoming debt ceiling problem. He did this without acknowledging the fact that the bill he just completed required lifting the debt ceiling. Unfortunately, centrists believe we have too much debt, and he played on that.
A compass always points to true north. Would that there could be a political compass to point to true center.