Reply #117: That's the problem: the center keeps shifting

[primavera]

What Lieberman and the DLC have never realized is that as soon as you give Repukes an inch, they'll take a mile. They won't say thank you or acknowledge that you've attempted to meet them halfway, they'll just exploit your weakness and assume an even more extreme right-wing position. Since, in moving towards the center, Dems like Lieberman had to abandon their former Democratic positions in favor of the new centrist ones, the public will perceive that both sides of the debate are now in consensus that the old Democratic positions are now officially history, and the entire political spectrum will shift to the right, with today's center becoming tomorrow's perceived left. And the process repeats itself every time centrists sell out to achieve a new center, which is an impossibility as the center will move farther and farther to the right every time they sell out the left and they'll have to move even farther to the right to catch up with the new "center." A center can only exist so long as there are two teams pulling on opposite ends of the rope: if both are pulling on just one side, all of the rope collects on that side.