Centerfield

I've argued for years that politics and religion are much the same thing in many ways, down to and including the concept of fundamentalism, where people are willing to accept all sorts of dubious and/or untested propositions--as long as those propositions echo/support their convictions.

The Right's "echo chamber" is both larger and more coherent for good reason--their political and religous convictions more nearly coincide, and are, across the spectrum, more nearly aligned with each other than are those of the Left, which is MUCH more diverse in that regard. Lower level of intra-party cognitive dissonance. I'm even tempted to say that's part of the definition for the difference between the words "conservative" and "liberal" in modern usage.

I'm with Dr. Frank on the Dean phenomona. I remember much the same attitude among the Gingrich Republicans and the hate-Clinton crowd as we see now with the Dean Democrats and the hate-Bush crowd. Same tune, somewhat different lyrics.

Um.. Ditto, I've had this exact thought running through my head for a few months while hanging out at dailykos. While it's not as pronounced or big as on Freeper, LGF or different communities it's a little disheartening to see it on the left.

Yup. I think Dean is going to find out he's got a hothouse flower problem.

But if the RW echo chamber is bigger, I think it's because the RW was sooner to perceive a need for alternative expressive outlets, and because they had a base in talk radio which fostered organized growth on the web.

I'm not sure how much more "diverse" the LW really is. I guess. The Left is a fragmented group of different special interests, and I'm not sure that it's just more diverse, but that it's a group composed of many groups each of which is narrowly focused on a specific special-interest agenda. One usually focused primarily around identity politics.

Democrats have not been especially successful in crafting a common ground of interests for the different members, because to the extent that they become general interest common ground, they become things like prescription drug coverage and child tax credits. The more common the ground, the more likely it's an issue for many, and the more likely it goes mainstream and is solved by a brokered bipartisan effort.

To some extent I think the democrats have a problem that as people mature they "graduate" from identity politics and the simple solutions of government funded fixes. It's the old Churchill saw that"if you're conservative at 20 you have no heart, and if you're a liberal at 40 you have no head. I think centrists fit into this as the people who have hearts and heads, who recognize the way markets, supply and demand, etc drive things, and are willing to admit that we have to work with these mechanisms. But who at the same time are not especially willing to simply dismiss the extent to which markets are imperfect, cruel, inhuman.

I recognize that the economics of markets are the tail that wags the dog, that overregulation and bureaucracy can have a negative stifling effect. It's important, but not enough to get me to overlook that the people are the dog, and the dog is more important than the tail.

I don't have a lot to what you guys have said so eloquently above ... other than yes, this is pretty much what's going on in America today.

We find ourselves more and more intensely polarized. I was thinking about this a bit after visiting with some of my family over the holidays. I'm probably not the only one who has some parts of my family in one camp and some parts in the other. I was visiting down south with the conservative camp, and we talked about politics for a while. They were curious about all these rumblings of differences between Dean Democrats and the DLC crowd. I explained what I thought of as the difference between the more moderate Democrats who follow the Clinton tradition and the new Dean folks, and how Gore seems to have basically moved to the Dean camp.

Interestingly, the conversation pretty much stops there. A lot of folks are so invested in how Clinton was evil personified and represented everything wrong with liberal America that they can't bring themselves to even begin to think of Clinton as "less liberal" than this emerging liberal icon Dean. It's just an uncomfortable train of thought for them.

Furthermore, pretty much anyone connected with the Clinton era in any way is fundamentally tainted. Lieberman, for example, can't be a principled guy fighting for a moderate agenda because, you see, Gore was part of the Clinton administration, and Lieberman then joined the Gore ticket. Gore, at that point, was as demonized as Clinton by the right -- so Lieberman follows suit because he supported Gore.

I think there's some basic role for us in the middle in trying to break these intensely-held political worldviews. We can do it by responding reasonably to politicians on both sides of the aisle. I don't personally think either side has a lot of true-center centrists. Lieberman has a predominantly liberal voting record, and guys like John McCain have a predominantly conservative record. Our goal isn't really to "fawn all over" our moderates the way the left and right do with their candidates. It's to be realistic about all these things and to offer a factual and credible view of it all.

And just in case you're not sure about Left-wing arrogance and self-assumed superiority, there's this from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (and I swear I will NOT comment on the newspaper title...)

The S factor explains Bush's popularity

In which the author claims that Bush is popular only because people are stupid!

Bill,

I find your holiday dinner anecdote fascinating, because I don't know enough Clinton-haters to fill up a room. It's interesting that they can't see shades of difference among center-left and further left, just as many liberals lump everyone on the right into one big pot.

That's fascinating to me, too. I grew up in the deep south, attended one of the most traditional southern colleges (Vanderbilt) ... and, while I don't live in the south anymore, our little suburban community in central Ohio is distinctly Republican.

I guess I have the opposite experience from you.

If I convince my wife to put a Lieberman sign in our front yard, chances are it'll be the only one for a Democratic candidate on our block.