Democrats should stop chasing the 'sensible centrists' [View all]

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They don't exist. Voter suppression, on the other hand, is very real.
NOAH BERLATSKY

Republicans jostle to prove they are true conservatives; Democrats jostle to prove that they aren't liberals. So it has been since Clintonian triangulation in the 1990s brought us welfare reform and race-baiting Sister Souljah, and so it remains today, if Dick Durbin is to be believed. The No. 2 Democrat in the Senate declared last week on Chicago radio that, to defeat Donald Trump, Democrats need to be sure not to "overdo it" by moving too far left. "We have to really appeal to the sensible center," Durbin said, showing a touching faith in the swing voters who just last November chose a self-confessed sexual abuser over a sensible centrist.

Durbin was, to be fair, explaining why downstate Illinois Democratic candidates were likely to be more conservative than Chicago-area candidates. But "local candidates should fit their constituency" is a different argument from "Democrats need to be more centrist." For example, Dianne Feinstein is considerably more conservative than her constituents, which is why she's facing a primary challenge. Some Democratic candidates will be more to the left than others. But that doesn't mean centrist voters are the most important overall, nor that they are necessarily "sensible."

On the contrary, the results of the 2016 election strongly suggest that voters are not sensible at all, if "sensible" means "voting on pragmatic centrist policy proposals." Trump barely had policy proposals, much less pragmatic ones. He babbled about a wall and offered vague promises about magically making coal mines great again. His proposals were so obviously incoherent that his media enablers were forced to mutter about how people should take him seriously but not literally, by which they meant that people should vote for him even though he was spouting nonsense.

The thing is, voters' policy preferences are generally nonsensical. There is no "sensible center." Instead, there's a squishy non-ideological muddle.

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https://psmag.com/social-justice/democrats-pls-stop-chasing-mythical-centrists-start-fighting-voter-suppression