All three Democratic presidential losses in the Eighties were caused by centrism.

[Ken Burch]

303. How old were you at the time?

I'm thinking you just learned about this later, from the version of "history" presented at DLC/Blue Dog/Third Way meetings.
I was there and I lived through it. I know what the economy was like, what the candidates said, what the voters(especially the voters we actually had a chance of getting felt, and what would have turned large blocs of nonvoters into voters if our ticket had committed to it.

The only votes Democrats get are people who are left out in the cold by austerity, by "pro-business" economics and by deregulation/privatization. We don't ever get, and we can't ever get, the votes of people who look down on labor and the poor or who see themselves as "winners" in times like the Reagan era. We don't get CEO's or bankers, we don't get people who own Applebee's or WalMart franchises, people who want unions weakened or broken, or people who still resent affirmative action or "welfare mothers".

We get people who are getting screwed, people who have no hope under the status quo and people who dream that things can be different...the people "third way" Dems don't care about. Our focus should be on winning the trust of the people in those groups who, since 1980 in particular, have either given up on voting or never saw starting to vote as worthwhile. That's where our future lies...NOT in promising the smug, the privileged and the fearful-of-change that we'll protect them against the peasantry and the outcasts.