Has the pendulum stuck over on the right side?

[sleigh]

Been musing on politics a bit... I'm increasingly disheartened by the Obama administration, which appears to be so solidly Centrist that they might as well be Republicans, except that the Republicans have shuffled desperately away to the right toward their loud and paranoid fringe. I don't think I've changed my social/religious/political views all that much, but somehow -- without me moving -- the political tide seemed to have gone out, leaving me mired to the ankles in the wet sand of the far left.

Damn. A decade or two ago, I used to place myself somewhat left of the middle in the political spectrum, but certainly nowhere near the left fringe. I felt myself to be mostly in the mainstream of the Democratic Party. Now, I need binoculars to see the middle. I listen to the Tea Party advocates howling that Obama is a "socialist/fascist/communist" and wonder what in the hell they're raving about. Thus far in his first term, Obama has shown himself to be about as socialistic and leftist as Eisenhower. And the right side of the spectrum -- the Palins, the Huckabees, the Bachmanns, the "Christian" fundies -- well, they scare the hell out of me.

Right now -- through my spectacles -- I see a Democratic party that is no longer liberal, but decisively Centrist. I see a Republican party that is cloaked in the mists well off to the right, and I see a vocal faction within that party that wants to drag it even further that way.

And over here on the left, there are the sand people, stranded by the receding political tide.

Is that the landscape others see? Or have I unknowingly walked left away from the center and stranded myself?

Comments

[sleigh.livejournal.com]

Well spoken, Alis. Believe me, I'm fully aware that a candidate who matched my social and political views precisely would be unelectable. I'm pragmatic enough to know that elections are always won by embracing the center. But... I still contend that the center has shifted and is no longer where it was. Look at Nixon's health care proposal from 1974 (http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Stories/2009/September/03/nixon-proposal.aspx) -- back then, the Dems railed against the proposal as not going anywhere near far enough... yet in some ways it goes further 'left' than many of the plans put forward by the current congress. (I recall Ted Kennedy saying decades later that he wished he actually worked to get Nixon's plan passed, since all of the plans since then to reform health care have utterly failed.)

In the end, though, you're absolutely right -- only history will tell us how well Obama has performed.

[kateelliott.livejournal.com]

It is ironic, isn't it? Nixon!

I wonder, though, if the situation we find ourselves in is as much about the center shifting as it is about health care having become the province of entrenched profitmaking interests. The greater institution has been eaten by those who are making money off it, and they have an immense amount of money to spend to keep the status quo, which rakes them in the big bucks. I'm not as sure it is right left or center. (I could see this same thing happening incrementally to schools, forex, which would be a disaster on a similar scale.)

But your point is absolutely correct: Nixon's position in 1964 would be the center left position today. otoh, what were the rightwingers saying about it at the time (I genuinely don't know).