# The quietest voice in America **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 17, 2011, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081 "2011-03-17T22:50:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/41 "2011-03-18T03:45:16Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > After a little thing called the Civil War, which just might qualify as strong opposition to reform. Nor were the Republicans the conservative side in that dispute. > > What you provided was a list of fights that the conservatives lost. Modern political labels didn’t really apply then. ---
**Author:** ![penultima\_thule](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penultima_thule/32/3833_2.png) [@penultima\_thule](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/penultima_thule)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 3:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/42 "2011-03-18T03:45:36Z")
Well that serves me right for asking about truisms of American politics and hoping not to cop the whole gambit of truisms. > [@](#): > > far-righters foaming at the mouth… > gay marriage … > UHC … > political spectrums must always move to the left … > Prop 8 and has helped overturn DADT… > Feminist-progressive social policy … > Slavery … > Sufferage … > bombing of Cambodia :eek: Sort of intergalactically missing the OP but actually answering the question. Curtis, go and shit in your own thread. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/43 "2011-03-18T03:46:08Z")
> [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](#): > > Modern political labels didn’t really apply then. Then why are you trying to cite them as examples? ---
**Author:** ![Agnostic\_Pagan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c4cdca/32.png) [@Agnostic\_Pagan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agnostic_Pagan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/44 "2011-03-18T08:21:14Z")
> [@penultima\_thule](#): > > Well that serves me right for asking about truisms of American politics and hoping not to cop the whole gambit of truisms. > > Sort of intergalactically missing the OP but actually answering the question… 😃 I thought I recognized the thread title. And this thread has become an example of what I stated. Note the lack of moderate voices in GD overall. The mostly sane people avoid this place like the plague. (Or at least the ratio of lurkers to posters is probably the highest in here or the Pit.) What makes the US very hard to govern from the middle is that they are generally apathetic about politics. They may be very certain where they stand on issues and generally well-read, but they do not campaign for those issues, donate money to candidates, or pay attention to Congress or the White House unless it hits the 5 o’clock news - and that is the extent of the attention. So they are very difficult to build a coalition on since it is also very difficult to tell where they actually stand on issues. Polls are highly unreliable in that regard as well, since most of the middle does not respond. Personal anecdote: I am the only highly politically active child among six. Two others are moderately active - making sure to vote in every election and make an occasional donation of time or money. And one is D and the other R. The other three might vote in the presidential election. And I am the only one who would gladly participate in a poll. The rest will find something else to do. And I know I am an outlier in most of my responses. The middle is good for turning out to vote every four years, but not more than that, so midterms, local issues, and other off-term elections (spring turnouts are abysmal) are also dominated by partisans. And the gerrymandering in the US also makes it very hard for moderate representatives to be elected at both national and state levels. So even if the top guy or gal is moderate, odds are the legislature they have to work with is filled with partisans who represent their base, not their overall constituency. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 12:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/45 "2011-03-18T12:15:29Z")
> [@](#): > > He (Obama) wants to govern from the middle In a sense, this is true. Obama wants to govern from what the SDMB thinks of as “the middle”, but the SDMB is well to the left of the US. So Obama is trying to govern from a moderate left position. He just isn’t very good at it, so he isn’t particularly successful. It is possible that he might do better now, with the Republican House to pull him back towards the center, as happened with Clinton (plus Clinton was tied up in impeachment and Operation Wag the Dog and so forth, so he didn’t have time to do anything else stupid like trying to increase the deficit and defeat welfare reform and so on). Possible, but not likely. In sum, the middle does hold the power in America, but the middle isn’t where the extreme lefties think it is. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/46 "2011-03-18T13:48:48Z")
You live in your own world. don’t you? ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/47 "2011-03-18T14:03:41Z")
The Dio Show is not a documentary, **Diogenes**. Things don’t change because you try to define them away. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/48 "2011-03-18T14:12:41Z")
You’re just hijacking the thread now. Obama is a conservative, dude. He’s right of center. The political right in the US has become so perverted in its perception of the center that it now thinks the policies of Ronald Reagan were “socialist.” ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/49 "2011-03-18T14:37:02Z")
You must have missed the word “don’t” in post #47. Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [March 18, 2011, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081/50 "2011-03-18T18:28:40Z")
> [@dhkendall](#): > > In Canada, the Liberals (the centrist party) has been referred to as “the natural governing party of Canada”. I believe (but haven’t run the numbers) that there have been more Liberal governments than conservative The Liberals have held power for more years than the Conservative-PC-Conservative party has. At the rate they’re going, though, the “natural governing party” moniker might be in danger. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-quietest-voice-in-america/575081.md?page=2)