I see the voters in any given presidential election as follows: 30% hard right, 30% hard left, and 40% who don’t give a you know what and may go either way. You know the 30% on the right will go for Bush no matter what, and the 30% on the left will go for whoever is on the Democratic ticket. The problem the Dems may have is, they have chosen Hillary, Nancy, and Ted to be their mouthpieces. And their front runner seems to be Howard Dean, who is clearly hard left. Moderates such as Kerry and Lieberman seem to be left out. When W ran in 2000 and Clinton in ‘92, they at least tried to present themselves as moderates. (How much of those moderates showed up in Washington is up for debate!). Granted, W has given the Democrats a lot to be outraged about, with Iraq and the hanging chad thing. But while the Dems’ choices appeal to the most outraged 30% , without appealing to the center they may knock themselves out of the next Presidential election.
I think it’s WAY too early to say they’re not going for the center. Ditto for ruling Kerry out, and Wesley Clark may have an impact. Lieberman is not a moderate. He’s very conservative, no bones about it.
The Democrats, after a year or two of absolute floundering, can really hit Bush now. I think they’d do best to present alternatives. People are upset about the economy, they’re upset about how Iraq is going (soldiers dying, instability, no Saddam, not a trace of WMD), etc. Issues like that - perhaps especially the economy - should certainly appeal to a good chunk of that ‘middle 40%.’ You don’t need to be a liberal to be annoyed if you’re out of work or if your business isn’t doing as well as it was.
The administration is on the defensive at the moment (see their comments today- ‘we never said Saddam was in on September 11th, where did you get that impression… heh…’). Playing up the middle will reduce the Democrats’ options, in my opinion. And let’s not overlook that Gore/Lieberman WAS a centrist ticket, and they lost to Bush. Sorta. Couldn’t really beat him, anyway.
This leads me to believe that your definition of “center” is skewed way to the right.
That’s what happens when people start believing Bill Clinton was a liberal. 
Whatever Dem wins the primaries will tilt hard to center.
“LOL BUSH IS TEH SUCKS!!!” plays well to the wild-eyed lefties who actually vote in the primaries, but when sooner or later, a Dem is going to have to run on something a bit more than that. Then we’ll see them move towards the center. Or not, and GW will just win by a even larger margin.
A thoughtful response indeed. Although it’s true that the primaries and the general election skew in opposite directions.
Hearing Hilary Clinton and Howard Dean described as hard left and Lieberman described as a moderate, reminds me again how out of sync US and the rest of the world are politically. My subjective guesstimate as a foreigner is Americans are:
20% Hard right
25% Soft right
28% Centre
25% Soft left
2% Hard left
For comparison Australia might be:
5% Hard Right
20% Soft right
40% Centre
30% Soft Left
5% Hard Left
I think you’re way overestimating the size of the far right, Eolbo. The people on the far right are very vocal, organized, and powerfully placed, which skews things a good deal.
I hope so. My guess is outside looking in of course, and you have that big scary Christian right bloc for which we have no real equivalent here. I’ve read its as many as 70 million Americans.
Just off the top of my head, that sounds more like the number of people that identify as “Christian” in general, rather than the Jerry Falwell-esque bible thumpers. After all, Al Gore identified as a Christian.
Gore could actually Bible-thump pretty hard when he wanted to.
Christianity isn’t that homogenous. Some of the most Christian people I know are pro-choice and pro-gay rights. The religious right is very powerful; it exerts a lot of influence on the Republican Party, and thus on the political system as a whole. But a lot of people, including many other Christians, think they’re a big damn joke and wish they’d go away. 
I agree that the Repubs have skewed so hard to the right that the center is actually well to the left of them now. The Dems could probably attract a lot of center votes with a “leftish” candidate who played the economy hard. Remember, a jobless recovery is no recovery at all for most working folks.
I thought that the goal in this next election would be to get more of the core voters out to the polls. Correct me if I’m wrong, but couldn’t the Dems have won Florida in 2000 if all of the registered Democrats had actually voted, and voted Democrat?
There’s also huge chunks of the country where the Repubs would read pretty left-ish to some other huge chunks of the country. For example, look at New York: Republican mayor, Republican governor, etc. but certainly no bible-thumping. Heck, the Mayor’s not even Christian, divorced, pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, etc. but fiscally conservative. He’s semi-living with his girlfriend and his Repub predecessor, when his marriage broke up, moved in with a friend of his and his gay partner. Most of the Repubs I know are genuinely distressed over the wholesale Democrat endorsement of abortion or fiscal policies or military policies, but none of them are fundies and most of them will vote for a Dem they like if they want to no matter what their official affiliation.
Whoops, I take that back–there are indeed places in New York where you’ll hear every Sunday bible-thumping God-fearing thunder and lightning sermons denouncing the sinful world and stressing self-reliance and pride in your people. Thing is, the gentlemen giving the sermons are not white. Members of the big scary Christian bloc too?
Some discussion of the Christian right here
This extract discusses size, estimates varying with measurement method:
Forgot to add that extract pertains to constituency, not necessarily to political activism or affiliation.
Forgive me for responding to my own post, but it appears to me after reading the previous posts that ‘right’ and ‘left’ may be relative concepts rather then written in stone.
Jeebus, can’t people even remember half a decade any more? EVERY election, the primaries involve politicians playing to their base, and the general election involves politicians playing to the center. The only difference is that an unchallenged incumbent doesn’t have to, so he always takes the moral centrist high ground early. Happens every single time.
I mean, doesn’t anybody recall those lovely South Carolina Republican primaries the last time around? You think Dean’s looking out of mainstream now, go back and look over some of the reports from back then.
Probably. And Gore did win the popular vote overall.
Thanks, laigle, for pointing out how old and stale these issues really are.
The terms “right” and “left”–I think they originated with where the parties were seated in revolutionary France–DO mean something relative to one another, but:
(a) how much ground they cover–how far they extend ideologically–varies greatly from time to time and place to place (in terms of who falls under the label);
(b) pols and activists willfully misapply the labels to their own advantage;
© individuals may well take a “right” position on one cluster of issues, then tack “left” on others. For example, a good many Catholics are labor-left on issues involving work and money, but are nevertheless (?) anti-abortion and anti-gay. Then there are the wealthy gay lifestylers who vote for, say, McClintock to keep their taxes low.
Bill Clinton is labelled “conservative” by his detractors on the left, “liberal” by his detractors on the right. His so called third-way or “triangulation” method involved picking and choosing, tacking right and left, and in general weaving a big (and unweildy) mosaic out of many possible positions. He should probably be called something like a “classical progressive”–more Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson than Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. Yet–a peculiar irony!–Ronald Reagan was more a classical progressive (in that sense) than he was a true Coolidge-type “conservative.”
Hillary? Pretty square in the center from all I can tell, for all the attempts of the right-oriented sky-is-falling-and-it’s-the-Clintons-fault publishing industry to present her as Madame Mao.
How about George II, Cheney, and Rummy? The Euro-Left world likes to see them as something like that idiot who ran the Taliban, or maybe the Japanese Bushido movement. I don’t know them personally, but such categorization strikes me as ludicrous and ahistorical. If their military views seem a little retro, the retro goes back to Winston Churchill rather than, say, the Crusades. They’re patriotic nationalists (with moralistic pretensions that may well be sincerely felt) who favor “the best defense is a good offense”. Given that sober diplomatic internationalism was powerless to prevent or dislodge the Taliban, the Bushidos, or the 9/11ers, they do have something of a case.
So “are the Democrats making a mistake by not going to the center”? First up, NO DEMOCRAT RUNNING IS TO THE LEFT OF CLINTON ON MOST ISSUES. No one is talking “the socialist road.” No one wants to strictly control profits, prices, wages, and dividends. (Historical reference #1) No one wants to take over the steel mills. (Historical reference #2). No one wants to “make the rich pay their fair share”–unless you buy the argument that repealing controversial tax cuts in wartime constitutes “soaking the rich.” ALL the candidates have a more passionate commitment to free market capitalism than did, say, Hubert Humphrey. Far as I know, the only candidates who favor reinstating the “general right to welfare” are those who entered the campaign for reasons other than becoming President–Sharpton, Mosely-Braun, and Kucinich. So who exactly is the extreme leftist that might lead the Dems away from the center?
Most Americans are not willing to say that going INTO Iraq (as opposed to not coming OUT) was a mistake. But any tendency to link simple reservations like Dean’s with 60s-style peaceniks has little traction in the country at large. Except in the “minds” of such luminaries as Anne Coulter, having some such reservations is a sign of being willing to think, not of leftish treason.
On the other hand–JOE LIEBERMAN is an extreme conservative?? So Al Gore was a Barry Goldwater in Democrat clothes? What does that make Jesse Helms, Godzilla? Jeez, the guy is pretty much a traditional American “liberal” on just about everything–except he’s a hawk on the defense of Israel (as are a great many people who voted for McGovern, Mondale, and Dukakis).
Then again, I’ve heard his voice described as “whiny,” whereas to my ears he has a deep, rich baritone. Go figure.
But in general, the issue is not whether either party will nominate someone who strays too far from the “center” (AS IF we can ever expect bold and fresh ideas from career politicians), but whether the Dems will manage to put forth someone who is relatively scandal-free and who inspires more excitement on TV than, God save the Republic!, George W. Bush.