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Center of What?
Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake blog has a commentary on Centrism at The Huffington Post with an interesting collection of comments.
The term centrism is like a Rorschach test. Everyone brings something different to the interpretation. For many it is an absurd attempt to take the average of opposing views. For some it is a cowardly effort to avoid taking a stand.
For me it is less about the issues and more about a commitment to the process of building consensus among stakeholders.
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7 Responses to “Center of What?”
Jane should be less occupied with centrists and more with writing the usual left-wing talking points.
Here, some perspective.
Those Poor, Uninterested and Uneducated Centrists
by Michael van der Galien
If one wonders what the far left in America thinks of centrists, I would say go over to Firedoglake.
Jane Hamsher on centrists:
1) Those “centrists,” the people who can be convinced to swing Democratic in one election and Republican in the next, who don’t make up their minds until the night before an election or just run in the voting booth and pull all the top levers are probably not engaged in the political dialog to the point that they will want to “interact” with those who bring them their news. They might be stupid, apathetic or working three McJobs just to make ends meet but they’re probably not going want to spend their leisure time shootin’ the shit with VandeHei. People who are engaged political junkies tend to have strong opinions and they want to interact online with others who are like minded. If there were a great gaping demand for a moderate site, Joe Gandelman would be a rich man.
Joe himself linked to this article earlier today, but I want to comment on it a little bit myself as well.
The parapraph I quoted above portrays an unbelievable amount of arrogance. Seemingly, Hamsher believes that “centrists” are stupid and / or poor and, as such, not interested in politics. She should, for a change, try to read centrist blogs on a daily basis. The articles posted at such blogs and the comments left by readers might, perhaps, teach Hamsher a valuable lesson: centrists are centrists because they realize that the left and right harbor too many extremes and because they realize that ‘[to] compromise’ is not a dirty word.
Of course, that would require Hamsher to do a lot of thinking… we cannot possibly expect her to do that since doing so would be contrary to her nature.
Perhaps her article was a slip of the tongue, or better, fingers. Perhaps she was still so incredibly thrilled that she brought Ned Lamont to great success as the new Senator of… o, wait, she and her buddies failed miserably on that one.
Anyhow, some advice for Jane: please refrain from giving your opinion about centrists. Just do what you always do: repeat the talking points of the far left and demonize everyone who disagrees with you. After all, it’s what you do best.
Thank you.
I learn more from reading stuff I am not inclined to agree with. Huffington, Kos, Red State, Captains Quarters, etc. They help me better understand what I believe and why.
One of the comments on Hamsher’s post I first recoiled from. It was too simplistic. Then I looked again and began to agree.
This commenters said to throw out all of the political classifications and look at politics and politicians as good or bad. Good were people and issues who wanted to make our lives better. Bad where those who were only interested in promoting greedy interests.
Hamsher’s huffpo piece is exactly right.
Actually, I think she has yet again confused “moderate” with “centrist”.
Polimom, Hamsher doesn’t understand anything about politics, except for what she considers ‘liberalism’ (and lets face it, traditional liberalism means quite the opposite of what she favors on quite some occasions but okay).
She is emblematic of what is wrong with most self-described “liberal leftists” these days. Namely, a myopic understanding of politics, heavy on polemic and light on substance.