Legal Commentary

Progressivism: The New "Center-Right"

By Big Tent Democrat

Back in the day, one of the reasons Matt Yglesias gave for preferring Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton was that Obama was perceived as being more Centrist than he actually was while Hillary was perceived as more progressive than she actually was. Of course Yglesias was wrong - Obama was actually perceived as more Leftist than he actually is and Clinton was perceived as more Centrist than she actually is. My preference for Obama was simpler - the Media loved him and hated Hillary (there is not a dime's worth of difference between them on policy.) Indeed, I think Yglesias suffered (suffers?) from CDS himself (thus his self delusion on how Obama was perceived.)

Now Yglesias uses the same theory, but in correct fashion this time imo:

David Sanger for The New York Times:

Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury - suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party.

. . . [I]n some respects this is the genius of picking a relatively moderate cabinet. We’ve got Rahm Emannuel promising to “throw long and deep” on health care and energy, Tom Daschle spearheading the charge for universal health care, the president-elect talking about hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending, and endless reiteration of the idea that there will be no retreat from the campaign’s ambitious goals on carbon curbs. Putting reassuring faces on an agenda of ambitious policy change strikes me as dramatically preferable to appointing a lot of liberals whose job is to sell the progressive base on the need to trim and abandon campaign commitments.

. . . If universal health care, a clean energy economy, withdrawal of troops from Iraq, an end to torture, and massive new infrastructure investments are a “center-right” agenda because Tim Geithner is Secretary of Treasury then I’ll take it. The crux of the matter is to keep pressing for the agenda.

(Emphasis supplied.) I completely agree with this. Concentrate on the policies, not the drama. For the past two years, I spent a lot of time criticizing Barack Obama for his Post Partisan Unity Schtick. But the circumstances have made all of this moot. the calamities the nation faces make the selling of the progressive agenda unnecessary. Whatever agenda Obama seeks to unveil will be the Center.

Two years ago, I wrote:

And that is FDR's lesson for Obama. Politics is not a battle for the middle. It is a battle for defining the terms of the political debate. It is a battle to be able to say what is the middle.

By default, President-Elect Obama gets to define what the middle is. I believe he will define progressivism as the middle. If that is called "Center-Right," so much the better. Consider what that makes Extreme Republicanism (out of the mainstream of political thought instead of occupying the White House) and what that makes the formerly loony Left (the respectable Left flank.) Role reversal. This is a good thing.

For those who care, it was no accident that I always called myself a Centrist.

See also Drum, Digby and Sirota on the issue.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on November 23, 2008 (boomark / email).