Democrat centrists duel with 'netroots'

Progressive causes are socialist causes and the middle is looking for alternatives. Justice Kennedy's “... evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” is the epitome of elite socialism, looking to international solutions outside the Constitution for standards of mature societies. This is the root of progressive causes. The middle are not looking for a group of social elites to make decisions for them, e.g. the immigration debacle, the ambiguity of supporting the troops but not war or current energy crisis. The middle is looking for immediate answers and realistic foresight horizon stability, e.g. drill now to maintain economic and energy stability (survivability) and plan and transition off of carbon vulnerabilities. As General Petraeus is doing, control the non linear nodes and then work toward stability of the entire system. The middle is fairly pragmatic, we are where we are, now where are we going? It takes integrity to lead toward where we are going, not oscillating between what we want to hear and what the candidates record shows they will actually do.

The one given in this election is that Democrats will continue to control congress, near certainly with expanded majorities. Centrist swing voters will once again decide the presidency, and after the years of Bush extremism and failure, are more likely to vote for a moderate, bi-partisan leaning, pragmatic candidate, than for an ideologue of any stripe. McCain won the votes to secure his party's nomination precisely because Republicans knew he was their only candidate able to appeal to these voters. Obama's track record is firmly on the left, he ran well to the left of Hillary to secure the votes necessary for nomination, and now his pronouncements have swung to the center in recognition of who will decide the election. If moderate voters believe Obama will govern as a centrist, the election is his, but if most believe or fear that he will govern as an ideologue, enough moderates may opt for the seasoned Republican maverick, and divided government. Obama's task is to convince voters that in spite of his beliefs and voting record, his core interest is that of the Nation, and that he is pragmatist enough to make the right decisions for the times. Voters must also believe he will hold firm to those decisions when they are in the national interest, but correct them when events prove they are not. The Bush regime proved abysmally lacking in this facility, but McCain is the one among them legitimately able to disclaim such stubbornness. Obama has already demonstrated that he is neither a true believer nor wholly beholden to the progressives, in the sense that he is open to revision on many of the gray issues which they tend to view in black and white. He must continue to do so in order to convince us that he is a sufficiently principled pragmatist, and will govern as such, to be entrusted with the kind of power that was tragically handed to Bush.

Netroots is as poisonous for the Democratic party's prospects as the Radical Right is for the GOP. I will vote -- in Presidential and other elections -- for whichever candidate is best able to resist pressure from (and most willing to openly chastise) the "holier than thou" extremists in his own party. If the Netroots folks succeed in driving Lieberman and other centrists away from the Democratic party, I (and I suspect many others) will be happy to folow the exiles and be tempted to oppose the Netroots activists even on issues I did not previously feel strongly about. We'll see how things look in November.

There are no centrist Democrats. There is the left and the far left. The only battle is tactical, how best to advance the agenda. The agenda itself is not in dispute.