@thunderbolt23:
“EVERYBODY who liked Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann’s piece in the Washington Post on Sunday has something to quibble about, so I’ll get mine out of the way now. Messrs Ornstein and Mann write: “While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.” It’s not entirely clear what time period the authors are talking about, but their observation doesn’t work for any time period I can think of. The Democrats, as far as I can see, have moved from their 40-yard-line to midfield, or their opponents’ 45. As recently as the Clinton presidency, Democrats actively pushed for gun control, defence budgets under 3% of GDP, banning oil exploration off America’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, a public option or single-payer solution to universal health insurance, and…well, Clinton-era progressive income-tax rates. Today these positions have all been abandoned. And we’re talking about positions held under Bill Clinton, a “third way” leader who himself moved Democratic ideology dramatically to the right, the guy responsible for “ending welfare as we know it”. Since then, Democrats have moved much further yet to the right, in the fruitless search for a compromise with a Republican Party that sees compromise itself as fundamentally evil. The obvious example is that the Democrats in 2010 literally passed the universal health-insurance reform that had been proposed by the GOP opposition in the Clinton administration, only to find today’s GOP vilifying it as a form of Leninist socialist totalitarianism.”
"On a recent primary night, MSNBC host Chris Matthews was comfortably bantering on his program with former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele and EMILY’s List President Stephanie Schriock when the conversation suddenly offered a revealing moment about the direction of America’s two dominant political parties.
Matthews didn’t even bother asking Steele whether the GOP was moving to the right on the ideological spectrum, he simply asserted it.
“Moving?” a wide-eyed Steele interjected, triggering laughter all around. Whether they like it or not, most every sober Republican agrees on the rightward trajectory of their party.
But when Matthews posed a similar question to Schriock about the Democrats, there wasn’t an immediate, simple, gut reaction.
“It’s a good question,” Schriock replied, pausing for a few seconds before settling on “no.”
“I think it is … commonsense, middle America with a voice for economic opportunity,” said the leader of the most prominent interest group for female Democrats in the country. “I don’t think that’s taking the party to the left, I think that’s where the Democratic Party is.”
“The irony here is that Ornstein and Mann are explicitly arguing that reporters and pundits should drop the “both sides are responsible” pose and call a spade a spade. But even they feel the need to hedge a little. Nevertheless, the truth is that both sides haven’t moved away from the center. Only Republicans have, and Democrats have spent the past 20 years chasing them in hopes that eventually they could reach some kind of reconciliation. But it never did any good. The Democratic move rightward was interpreted not as a bid for compromise somewhere in the middle, but as a victory for a resurgent conservative movement that merely inspired them to move the goalposts even further out.”
