Who Gets To Decide What Mainstream Opinion Is?
That's the phrase coming out of the mouths of all good Washington pundits right now, that the Democrats must govern from the center.I have no idea what that means, and nor do they. There was a time when the "political center" had some actual meaning and some genuine relationship to voter preference, but it's now a concept which has been redefined to be equated with the elite consensus. Centrism is sensible, sensible pundits are sensible, so whatever sensible pundits think is correct is the center. Magic!...
The truth is any agenda that the Democrats are likely to work on is entirely mainstream, and this would probably be true even if they had an 80 seat majority in the House and a veto-proof majority in the Senate. Whether or not this mainstream agenda will be judged as "centrist" by the sensible people who make such determinations I have no idea.
The unfolding battle right now is over who gets to decide what constitutes mainstream opinion.
In addition to what Atrios points out, right now what's galling about the calls that Dems govern from the "center" is that those presuming to dictate what the majority wants from Dems are the same people who said for months that Dems would be courting disaster if they dared question the "commander in chief's" conduct of the war on terror during wartime or if they embraced the "extreme" positions of backing a change of course or some sort of withdrawal from Iraq.
To indulge in a bit of oversimplification, Dems didn't listen to what these pundits were claiming was majority opinion, and instead listened to what the American people had to say about what their own opinions were. And it worked out pretty well for Dems, didn't it. Maybe there's a lesson in there somewhere about how seriously we should take those who are again telling us what mainstream opinion does or doesn't want from the Dem majority right now.
Who are these "mainstream" pundits telling the Dems now how they must govern, indeed! The Dems thumped this radical administration not only with no help from the mainstream press and punditocry, but in spite of them. I trust Pelosi, Reid, Dean, and even Kerry et al to figure out a realistic, reasonable path for how to govern given the circumstances they've managed against all ods to set in motion a hell of a lot more than I could ever again trust "fair and balanced" FOX NEWS, MSNBC, CNN, Broder, and any and all of the rest of the laughable "mainstream" media.
November 10, 2006 12:50 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thank you.
For me the most irritating of all pundits is not one of the usual suspects but Chris Matthews. Matthews is not a wooly-headed left-behind like David Brody nor a rightwing loon for whom Genghis Khan would be too liberal.
What Matthews is is flat out wrong despite reasonable sounding opinions. He relies on emotion and appearance rather than thought more than most.
Chris Matthews raves about Tester and Webb representing the middle. Both are thoughtful liberals unafraid of their opinions like Claire McCaskill or willing to condone torture and repeal the Constitution like Sherrod Brown to show how tough he is on terror. I have heard neither Tester nor Webb praying at the DLC altar of the suffering middle class that excludes the riffraff from the saved.
Matthews' pathway to hell is strewn with fine intentions to do good. He would have been condemned most ferociously by Socrates who thought the worst harm you could do to anyone was to disinform them. There should be no need to mention what befell Socrates for saying bad things about others of Matthews' faith.
Best, Terry
November 10, 2006 1:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Before Tuesday’s election what did we all obsess on, polls. Polling is a way of finding out what the public thinks about not only candidates but issues. The Pew Center has done some great polling and their samples are large.
The common ground is the mainstream, to wit finding issues that generally liberals, moderates and conservatives can agree upon. There can be variations between age groups, genders, geographic regions, urban-rural, religious-secular etc.
Polls help to not only select issues, but to frame positions. The DNC and RNC use polls all the time along with focus groups. Positions must be refined because interest groups on various sides of issues are very powerful. Think of the Clinton healthcare initiative.
November 10, 2006 4:15 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think that's a real oversimplification of what the "center" is saying. Perhaps you've been taken in by Joe Lieberman claiming the center for himself?
I don't know of very many centrist Dems (outside of Joe) who wanted to give a rubberstamp to Bush's war in Iraq. Do you? If you can't name a bunch off the top of your head you are probably engaging in the very kind of stereotyping you appear to be wanting to avoid.
The truth is that Dems did listen to the majority opinion, which is that the War in Iraq has been a disaster, and the quicker we start working to fix it the better it is for all of us. I have no idea where you found that the "majority" felt otherwise. It certainly wasn't borne out in any polling, pre-election or exit.
November 11, 2006 11:34 AM | Reply | Permalink
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[Update]
There are supposedly 3 [now 5] comments on this thread, but when I open it, I [still] see only one post (by terryhallinan). Is anyone else having similar problems? Where are the other posts? I'd like to be able to read them. (I e-mailed TPM about this a few days ago, but I can understand that they were pretty busy with the election and all.)
-- ARG
November 11, 2006 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perm Dude, I think we agree. I, too, said that Dems did listen to majority opinion. That's why they won.
November 11, 2006 1:28 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the computer automatically just stops accepting answers after mine...
:)
There's a strange problem with the timestamp for the replies that might be messing up the system.
November 11, 2006 2:42 PM | Reply | Permalink