Krugman slams centrists [View all]

[Marzupialis]

Centrists go around pretending that there are two extremist parties in the USA; but today Paul Krugman points out that a Centrist group that offered an alternative to both parties (called "Americans Elect) was a big FAIL. Krugman adds that there is already a centrist party: the Democratic Party:

PAUL KRUGMAN, 5-14-12: So why Americans Elect? Because there exists in America a small class of professional centrists, whose stock in trade is denouncing the extremists in both parties and calling for a middle ground. And this class cannot, as a professional matter, admit that there already is a centrist party in America, the Democrats — that the extremism they decry is all coming from one side of the political fence. Because if they admitted that, they’d just be moderate Democrats, with no holier-than-thou pedestal to stand on.

Americans Elect was created to appeal to this class of professional centrists — which meant that it was doomed to go nowhere. Because outside that class, the large number of people who believe in all the good stuff the centrists claim to favor are, you know, going to vote for Obama. The large number of people who don’t believe in any of that are going to vote for Romney. All AE could ever have been was a distraction; and it turns out not to have managed even that.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/15/thing-falls-apart/