Despite Frank’s best efforts to make the argument, though, centrism did not die in Massachusetts, because it has not been perceived to be the thing voters were repudiating. That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the thing voters were repudiating, but it means that very few in the media and the political class are willing to believe it. Frank cites all of the right data to make his argument, but something I have realized during the last couple of weeks is that no one of consequence is interested in correctly assessing what the public wants. Republicans have their ready-made narrative that they are going to tell to anyone who will listen, and most Democratic politicians seem to be reacting as if they still lived in the mid-’90s or even earlier. They remain terrified of being associated with real liberal convictions. The instinctive impulse to retreat, cower, fall back and give ground to more assertive Republicans has not been beaten out of them yet, and perhaps it never will be. One thing that is very frustrating about this dynamic is that it greatly aids in the perpetuation of corporatist, militarist centrism as represented by the likes of McCain and Lieberman, and it ensures the perpetual marginalization of any remotely coherent or consistent conservatism. Conservatives effectively pay tribute to a centrist establishment that has nothing but contempt for them and their interests, and so then end up tying themselves to this establishment and defending its interests against left-populists with whom they probably have much more in common. Eunomia ☀
Sunday 31 January 2010
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