My 2c on the Hillary question

[Scootaloo]

92. Oh dear.

Brooklynite, are you familiar with false compromise fallacies? it's the beleif that the middle point between two arguments must be the correct one. Also, are you familiar with the fact that people will lie to each other, and themselves, in a quest for social standing?

The "bulk of the voters are still in the political center" in the same way the bulk of Americans are middle class. They're not, but the social expectation is that "the middle is just right" and anything outside that middle point is 'fringe' and thus socially undesirable.

By the numbers, most Americans are actually poor and lower-income, a number that is increasing (yay centrism!) However, more often than not, even some guy living paycheck-to-paycheck and constantly owing his landlord half of the rent is going to claim to be "middle class." not because he actually is, but because that's the perceived societal norm. Admitting that he is in fact poor conjures all sorts of social stigma - he's on the fringe, an outsider, beyond "mainstream," practically an alien (and this is without touching on the calvinist financial perceptions of America, where poverty is a character failing rather than an economic problem)

Politics plays the same way. When presented policy-by-policy, more Americans favor liberalism. Even self-professed conservatives prefer liberalism (so long as you don't tell them what it is, because hey, reactionary conditioning.) So why the "moderation" fetishism? Same thing, the Goldilocks Principle of american society, where being in the middle is "just right." There's social pressure to cast oneself as "middle ground" because that is perceived as "normal," 'mainstream," etc.

Now. I want to hear two things from you.

ONE: What liberal positions are you willing to sacrifice or even strip entirely, in order to achieve "appeal to the center"?

TWO: Which particular liberal policies killed the elections of McGovern, Mondale, Dukakais and - oh, you forgot Kerry. What conservative policies brought victory to Carter, Clinton, Gore, and Obama?