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"America has two great dominant strands of political thought - conservatism, which, at its very best, draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which, at its very best, breaks down barriers that should never have been erected." -- Bill Clinton, Dedication of the Clinton Presidential Library, November 2004

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Thursday, June 17, 2004

 

the center of mass

posted by Aziz P. at Thursday, June 17, 2004 permalink View blog reactions
Robert had a great capsule history of the great drift in American politics that I think bears wider audience:

In 1964 the Goldwater faction bullied their agenda and won the presidential nomination Barry and away from Rockefeller. They didn't even want Nelson to be on the ticket as VP.

After how shabbily he was treated, Rockefeller withdrew from politics altogether.

That '64 convention was the start of the conservative revolution.

But Goldwater today would be considered far too liberal for the hard-core right.

Dean is really a fiscal conservative and social progressive in the mold of Rockefeller.(in 1964)


The problem with most conservatives is that they define anyone who is socially liberal as "Leftist" - ignoring the fact that those positions have essentially become mainstream. The center of mass in the social sense has moved left, whereas the political debate has shifted right (as Robert ably explains above). The resulting disconnect has left a lot of people out in the cold, ie reduced voter participation. Why? because only the people who were to the right end of the social spectrum still remain represented by the political debate.

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About Nation-Building

Nation-Building was founded by Aziz Poonawalla in August 2002 under the name Dean Nation. Dean Nation was the very first weblog devoted to a presidential candidate, Howard Dean, and became the vanguard of the Dean netroot phenomenon, raising over $40,000 for the Dean campaign, pioneering the use of Meetup, and enjoying the attention of the campaign itself, with Joe Trippi a regular reader (and sometime commentor). Howard Dean himself even left a comment once. Dean Nation was a group weblog effort and counts among its alumni many of the progressive blogsphere's leading talent including Jerome Armstrong, Matthew Yglesias, and Ezra Klein. After the election in 2004, the blog refocused onto the theme of "purple politics", formally changing its name to Nation-Building in June 2006. The primary focus of the blog is on articulating purple-state policy at home and pragmatic liberal interventionism abroad.