"Moderates" are not the answer

I would have responded to Kevin Drum's posts on what's wrong with the Dems and why they need to get centrist but Avedon Carol already dispatched his posts with the ultimate reply so I'll just quote her instead.

I'm sick and tired of being told the base is too far left. What does the base believe in? Universal health care, universal education, safe and fair employment, a healthy economy that provides good jobs, regulation to prevent corporations from defrauding us, care for our environment.

The exact same things that more than two-thirds of Americans believe in.

There's nothing wild or extreme about that - it's absolutely ordinary, moderate, apolitical American stuff.

...Maybe people are voting for Republicans because the Republicans claim to support these wild, left-wing beliefs, and the Democrats don't.

...So, as far as the public is concerned, Democrats promise healthcare and don't deliver. This is currently a vital issue for most Americans, and they think the Democrats just pissed it away over gay rights. That's the kind of thing that could really make people lose faith in a party.

If the Democrats want to win, they need to find a way to beat that perception. Maybe the first thing is to start asking why the Republicans are more focused on gay rights than on issues vital to the security of Americans, instead of pretending it's "liberals" who are doing that.

She points out Dems should be shoving this tripe back into the GOP's faces. She's right.

Furthermore, as Avedon states, I also really like Kevin but I don't think it helps the Dems to buy into this "conventional wisdom" on centrism. For one thing, although people self-identify as centrists, I don't think they really exist, at least not in the numbers they're credited with and it avoids the problem of not rebuilding the party on a platform that emphasizes distinct differences in policy rather than blurred similarities.

"We agree but we can do it better," is not a platform; it's a smokescreen and the voters see right through it. As to how the Dems can't afford to reach out to the leftists because it will alienate the moderates - how ridiculous. They lost the last two major elections with that strategy. The only thing they have left to lose, is another failure at the polls.