Our political Quote of the Day comes from one of my favorite former officials and present pundits, CNN’s David Gergen, who thinks the seven GOPers at last night’s debate in New Hampshire played well to the Republican Party but may not have played well to the country at large. And, in particular, he believes moderate independents ended the night feeling more ignored than ever:
My bet is that with the exception of a few remarks (e.g., Gingrich on Medicare), these candidates played very well with the base of the Republican party, and that base continues to grow more conservative.
But for moderate independents who listened to the whole two hours, I imagine that there was growing discomfort. Why, they might ask, was there so little compassion for the children of undocumented aliens? If a child is of school age, do these candidates honestly believe that she should be turned away from public school? Or when sick, denied emergency hospital care? Surely, they do not, but one could easily have come away with that and similar conclusions.
With the center of the Democratic Party moving left, we seem to be heading into even more partisan and polarized politics. Millions of Americans are yearning for something better.
Indeed: America’s political center may shift right or left but increasingly centrists are finding they are looked upon by their parties’ bases with scorn and America’s debate is often set up as left versus right, conservatives vesus liberals progressives. More and more, moderates and centrists are afterthoughts — if they are thoughts at all.
But on election day their votes will matter.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.