Simply put almost all legislation that passes would be perceived as centrist by the public. "Centrism" is of course a meaningless concept set by the contingencies of history and sociology. The America political centre would be very right in Australia and lunatic right in Europe. That said "moderate" is a term with vast emotive power.
To a certain extent the Republicans have succeeded as portraying themselves as sensible moderates. The number of advertisements that describe X candidate or Y policy as far left is truly astonishing when, by both US and world standards, X candidate and Y policy are no such thing. Such rhetoric works because outside of a small minority being a radical is a Bad Thing in the mind of the public and today’s voter is a low information voter. Republican effort’s on this front are largely why Bipartisanship has come to mean "let the Republicans get away with things. Indeed the Republican party has pulled one of the greatest con acts in the history of politics, manufacturing acrimony and angst between the parties and then, to avoid further acrimony, painting cooperation with themselves as the only way to overcome the acrimony THEY THEMSELVES HAVE CREATED. A sophisticated form of political blackmail.
We on the left have a love of calling ourselves radical when really, from a global perspective we are moderate centrists. For our small subculture "radical" is trendy. For most of the US though "radical" means "eats babies". Thus we need to make an effort to refer to all of our policies as moderate and almost all right policies as far right because, by world standards they are. There is nothing dishonest about such a strategy since on domestic issues we usually are the "moderates" by the standards of the public. Additionally we are most certainly moderates in comparison to other sane free societies worldwide. We need to pull at the Overton window. In the struggle to pull the political centre leftwards the way to win is to declare victory. This is why I am supporting Obama, as a candidate he has been savvy in painting himself and his positions as moderate, this pulling the centre towards himself on a number of pieces of legislation such as racial profiling and the videotaping of capital crimes confessions.
I’ve reprinted the wonderful comment which inspired got me started on this diary:
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You sell the progressive agenda (6+ / 0-)
Recommended by:sny, billlaurelMD, Bronxist, ChiGirl88, Sagittarius
By redefining it as the centrist agenda.
The problem I have with some other candidates tactic is that he raves like a radical leftwing anarchist, while at the same time trying to give us fairly moderate plans and proposals. In so doing, he redefines moderate plans and proposals as radical leftwing anarchy.
If we take the other tactic, of taking progressive plans and tacking on moderate language to sell them, everybody thinks we are reasonable and supports it.
It's all in the language. FDR knew this, that's why his New Deal proposals were sold as being sensible. The Republicans tried to claim it was radical, but FDR didn't work into that framing, instead he went around.
If you look at it, this is how the Republicans have sold all their radical shit down on us, by claiming it was actually moderate and reasonable. I'm not saying we should lie. I'm saying though, that if you approach it from this position with sound language, we have the facts to support our ideas as good ones. That combination is a winner.
by The Other Steve on Wed Jan 02, 2008 at 08:35:47 PM PST
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