Meet Me in the Political Middle: Commentary on the 2012 Race

When it comes to politics, I can be found all over the map depending on the issue.

On some matters, I lean toward the left, on others toward the right. I’ve voted for Democrats and for Republicans. I vote the person, not the party. I vote on character and policies, not on partisan litmus tests. I don’t believe that one of the two main political parties is entirely evil and hell bent on wrecking the nation while the other has only the noblest, best intentions for the United States in mind. No one party corners the market on the most ethical, intelligent, reasonable and pragmatic solutions to the nation’s problems. They’ve both got gigantic flaws and lunatics in their ranks.

There are some politicians who are Democrats and some who are Republicans whom I admire and have enormous respect. There are crazies on both ends of the political spectrum – on the far left and far right of both parties – who try to push their presidential (gubernatorial) candidates and legislative leaders to the outer wings during primaries, rendering the candidates, in the end, looking like unbalanced hypocrites when they turn around and seek to claim the middle, moderate ground during the general election because that’s where the undecided voters reside. (Those folks on either ends of the extremes are likely going to vote party line in the general election, while those who are more moderate could go either way.)

The tactics of our political parties make our candidates behave worse, not better. The parties pressure well intentioned officials to support bills in which they actually don’t believe, to give lip service to issues with which they don’t agree. If an elected official dares to go rogue on his or her party and defy the demands of the party leaders, the fierce partisans and political establishment mete out punishment in the form of party-funded opponents in the primary, of being stripped of one’s seat on legislative committees and of one’s district suddenly seeing public monies evaporate, all as a penalty for not towing the party line. Politicians in our system have a very difficult time remaining true to themselves because not only are they expected to do what the establishment and the party leaders want them to do, but because there are also powerful, wealthy lobbying groups who wield tremendous influence and power over the process (by not making hefty campaign contributions or by throwing support behind a rival candidate, etc.) if they’re dissatisfied.

This makes those of us who find ourselves in the political middle disillusioned with politics and the political process. Watching the primary candidates reach out to the extremists, moderates frequently feel alienated. It’s only when the general election rolls around and the candidates stop staking out positions on the far left or right and try to say, “Hey, I’m in the middle with you guys too” that people who might be a little liberal and a little conservative depending on the issue feel as though the politicians are finally speaking their language. But once that person is elected, he or she is forced to become partisan again because partisanship seems to be the only way of doing business these days.

A confession: I used to hold pretty partisan positions when I was in college. I did not take the time to listen to the other side. I saw the world as fairly black-and-white and invoked lazy caricatures of those folks who lived on the politically polar opposite plain than I did at the time. Then I gradually started to let go of the angry partisanship which marked my college years and actually began listening to the whole spectrum of ideas. Then, after an incident made me feel as though I’d been sold out by the political party to which I was registered, I angrily switched sides (my husband was stunned). In the last few years, however, I’ve started to realize that maybe I’m not a one side of the aisle type of gal after all. I am, indeed, somewhere in the middle.

Just this week, for the first time since I was 18 years old, I unenrolled from all political parties because I’ve had enough. I’m hardly alone (despite the fact that those who reside on the sanctimonious, narrow-minded edges of both political parties say that being an independent moderate means you’re wishy-washy). Earlier this month, pollsters from Rasmussen Reports found that, “The numbers of Americans who are not affiliated with either major political party has reached the highest level ever, as the number of Democrats has reached an all-time low.” In fact, the American electorate is roughly divided into thirds when it comes to party registration, according to Rasmussen:

• 33.5 percent are Republicans
• 33 percent are Democrats
• 33.5 percent are not enrolled in a political party

But even among those who are registered with a party, which I was until this week, they aren’t necessarily dogmatic about their party affiliation. Why else was the term “Reagan Democrat” invented?

This is why a group like No Labels, which calls upon us to ditch the “hyper-partisanship” which “dominates today’s political debates” and seek out moderate solutions, is so appealing to me. Yes, the organization seems very Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idealistic as it aspires to prompt elected officials to be reasonable, given that reasonableness is anathema to partisans and pols who are posturing themselves for re-election and want to look “tough.” But at least it doesn’t represent unthinking, unbending lockstep partisanship that sacrifices the common good at the altar of party unity.

So for the duration of the 2012 presidential election season, I will be periodically weighing in on events from my new post, smack dab in the unenrolled middle, where at least a third of the rest of you reside. I’ll continue to listen to both conservative and liberal radio shows and watch conservative and liberal TV talk shows. (All the better if they’re combined in one like Morning Joe, which features conservative Joe Scarborough and liberal Mika Brzezinski and doesn’t demonize all Democrats or all Republicans.) I will continue to cast a skeptical eye on all politicians’ assertions and assignments of blame for this crisis or that one. And I’ll do my best to try to look at the issues from here in the political middle. I hope you’ll join me.

Image credit: No Labels.

Processing the Tucson/Giffords Shooting

We all want answers but answers might be hard to come by after a reportedly mentally disturbed 22-year-old opened fire this weekend on a public gathering featuring a U.S. Congresswoman and her constituents outside of a grocery store in Tucson.

We all want it to be easy to be able to point to someone, or a group of people, and say, “There! She’s responsible! She’s the reason why this happened!” or “They did it! Their inflammatory signs made the shooter snap!” or “His parents! They must've been bad!”

But sometimes the uncomfortable fact is that there are no answers because there are unstable people who live in this world who will, one way or another, try to hurt others. And as far as the shooter in Tucson, we might not know for some time whether anything could have been legally or morally done to prevent what happened on Saturday. As we get more information, maybe that question will be addressed more comprehensively. We'll have to wait and see on that front.

In the meantime, it’s sickening to see that the folks who reside on the outer left and right fringes of the political spectrum have their index fingers poised in the pointing position and are blaming the people who hold the polar opposite political beliefs than them for the actions of a mentally unstable individual.

When I was at my daughter’s basketball game on Saturday I was keeping close tabs on the breaking news via Twitter about Rep. Gabby Giffords and the folks who came to see her who police said were gunned down by Jared Loughner. And as news reports were flooding in – many of them containing erroneous information – the blaming started right there on Twitter. It was Sarah Palin’s fault. It was the Tea Partiers. It was talk radio. It was Snooki. (Just kidding, no one blamed Snooki, at least for this incident.) They didn’t wait to see what information we learned about the shooter and his background and whether, in fact, his motivation could be discerned at all. They just impulsively blamed their political foes.

Then the folks on the right got angry and said there was no evidence that the shooter was one of them. Then the finger pointing was returned and the likes of Keith Olbermann and left-leaning bloggers were blamed for THEIR angry words.

Enough.

Seriously.

I hate watching people try to score political points while a set of parents is burying their 9-year-old daughter who went to visit her congresswoman at an event at grocery store and would up being murdered, and while a congresswoman had parts of her skull removed so the swelling in her brain, through which the bullet traveled, won't cause more damage. This is not the time to try to "score" political points.

So when I read David Brooks’ column in the New York Times this morning, I finally found something with which I could agree:

“These accusations – that political actors, contributed to the murder of 6 people, including a 9-year-old girl – are extremely grave. They were made despite the fact that there was, and is, no evidence that Loughner was part of these movements or a consumer of their literature. They were made despite the fact that the link between political rhetoric and actual violence is extremely murky. They were vicious charges made by people who claimed to be criticizing viciousness.


. . . [T]he political opportunism occasioned by this tragedy has ranged from the completely irrelevant to the shamelessly irresponsible.”

Brooks seems to share a similar view on how this whole thing has played out as The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart, he of the famous “Rally for Sanity,” of which we could use a whole lot more. (See his commentary above.) I especially loved the part where Stewart said in his monologue:

“We live in a complex ecosystem of influences and motivations and I wouldn’t blame our political rhetoric any more than I would blame heavy metal music for Columbine, and by the way that is coming from somebody who truly hates our political environment. It is toxic. It is unproductive but to say that that is what has caused this . . . that I just don’t think you can do.”

I too want to see more political moderation, want to see the end of the political tactic of transforming and dehumanizing those who don’t believe what you believe into enemies who hate America, ascribing to them all manner of evil (which is why something like a No Labels movement appeals to me). But that’s a discussion for another day. Not today.

I think it’s a sad state of affairs when some of the most sane commentary we’re heard can be found on Comedy Central.

No Labels: A Moderate Movement Which Really Scares, Irritates Partisans

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What does it mean when people on the political left and the political right absolutely freak out and take aim at you and call you names because you want to change the way of doing business in American politics? Perhaps it means that you’re onto something.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about a new non-partisan, middle-of-the-road political group No Labels which extols the high-minded ideals of putting aside hyper-partisanship and ditching the Democrat/Republican/liberal/conservative labels in favor of making commonsense decisions about issues and finding ways to work together in the arena of ideas, all while refusing to demonize those with whom you disagree. At the time, I wrote that while I love the group’s premise, I wondered if they had a snowball’s chance in hell of ever seeing anything they stand for come to fruition, questioned whether this was just a quaint Mr. Smith Goes to Washington notion or a workable blueprint for ethical, civic discourse in the future.

I routinely watch the MSNBC talk show Morning Joe each morning because of the fact that it embodies the No Labels notion: People from all points of the political spectrum INCLUDING those in the middle -- who usually get ignored because it’s not as “exciting” to interview someone who refuses to throw rhetorical darts at others -- are featured and they all engage in vigorous, intellectual debate. I like that. It compels me to think, prompts me to assess the various political positions and tease out the areas in my own head where people, should they be willing to do so, could carve out a workable policy. Joe Scarborough, one of the hosts, a former Republican congressman and has appeared at No Labels events, has famously criticized and praised both Republicans and Democrats and he doesn’t shy away from staking out his positions without making it personal. The guests on the show reflect that.

And yet the likes of left-leaning columnist Frank Rich from the New York Times have taken on Morning Joe (which he called a “clubby and chipper . . . gabfest”) and No Labels which he derided as having a patronizing raison d’etre while likening it to “a progressive high school’s Model U.N.” (Pot, here’s the kettle . . .) Then he added this: “The notion that civility and nominal bipartisanship would accomplish any of the heavy lifting required to rebuild American is childish magical thinking, and, worse, a mindless distraction from the real work before the nation.”

Childish. It’s “childish” to say that when elected officials disagree that perhaps it would be wise to seek areas of common ground and try to work from there instead of retreating to opposing corners and hurling spitballs? It’s “childish” to suggest that it’s unproductive to demonize people because of their political labels because that’s not how the hard world of politics operates?

I teach my kids to behave in the way that No Labels is advocating that those in the political arena embrace: I ask my children to build consensus, to listen to one another and to ignore the urge to pillory someone personally because he or she doesn’t agree with you on everything. (This approach works in a good marriage as well.)

Over on the left-leaning Salon, Alex Pareene dismissed No Labels' organizers as “the idle rich” who are “fantasizing that they’re smarter than everyone else.” Really? It’s smug and elitist to ask that people find ways to work together despite the fact that the leaders of the two political parties do not want bipartisan cooperation because it could hurt their chances of gaining political power? Asking for folks to stop acting like mindless, lockstep political automatons is a fantasy and smacks of sanctimony?

The right-leaning National Review likened No Labels to “a giant, self-parodying prank.” Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh also attacked No Labels by calling the notion of organizing around the “moderate center” as “fraudulent.”

I could list pundit after pundit – who makes his or her living off of stoking the embers on the conservative or liberal ends of politics – who has similarly attacked the No Labels people as wimps for not firmly planting their political flag in red territory or blue territory because, to these pundits’ way of thinking, you’ve got to be in one side OR the other or else you’re a spaghetti-spined idiot . . . never mind the fact that, according to the Gallup organization, as of their December 10 poll, 34 percent of the American electorate define themselves as Independents, as compared to 33 percent who identify themselves as Republicans and 32 percent as Democrats. Apparently the American public is comprised of fence-sitting, fraudulent “magical thinking” morons too. (The Gallup data says 48 percent of those polled “leaned Republican” while 44 percent “leaned Democrat.”)

What puzzles me is this: It’d be much easier to just accept the political institutions as they are, to just fall in line in one of two major political parties and do what the leaders tell you to do. (Failure to tow the party line could result in leaders taking away your office or funding for your staff, eliminating projects in your district, threatening to run other people against you in a primary, etc.) How hard is it to just say, “That’s my party’s agenda and I’m following it . . . This is what the party leaders want, so I’m sticking with my party,” as opposed to evaluating an issue on a case-by-case basis, having a spine, making your own evaluation and deciding what's not only is best for your constituents, but for the nation as a whole, putting your country AHEAD of your political party? To run for office without the support of the Democratic or Republican parties, to vote independently of what your political party leaders want, is clearly the more difficult road to travel.

The more these folks protest and name call, the more I think No Ideas is onto something, perhaps something big.

Image credit: No Labels.

Centrist Political Group Trying to Promote Civil Bipartisanship, But Will It Work?

Okay, so it’s got a pretty lame name, this new bipartisan group, No Labels, which is calling for D.C. politicians to stop insisting that every issue be seen strictly through a partisan lens and demands that lawmakers put aside their fierce political cynicism in order to seek consensus, all the while trying to be a tad civil to one another, as opposed to demonizing and screaming at one another.

All of these goals sound so eminently reasonable, in the way that Jon Stewart’s Rally for Sanity sounded reasonable. Who WOULDN’T want to seek out the middle ground of issues, where most Americans find themselves, as opposed to the noisy political edges which suck up all the oxygen and media coverage. (It’s a lot more fun for the media to cover nastiness and sniping from either side of the political aisle -- particularly when they hurl insults at one another, throw up roadblocks and offer poison pill amendments to bills -- than it is to cover the moderates in either party ‘cause they're not turning red and calling the people who don't think like them soulless monsters.) The way things operate nowadays, there’s nothing to be gained by staking out a moderate position on anything, not when the parties are currently doing business with a “you’re either with us or against us” mentality.

Which is why something like this “No Labels” group (seriously wish they’d come up with a better, snappier name) -- comprised of people who don’t lambaste a Republican who works with Democrats or who doesn’t tow the party line as a RINO (and the same for a Dem who works with Republicans) -- seems so promising, at least to those of us who aren’t on the political extremes and who don’t see it is as a mortal sin to agree with (or seek out agreement) with someone from another political party.

Here’s an excerpt from this organization’s “declaration:”

“We are not labels – we are people.

We care deeply about our country.

We are frustrated and concerned about the tone of politics.

We are passionate about addressing America’s challenges.

We are Democrats, Republicans and Independents.

Most importantly, we are Americans.

We believe hyper-partisanship is destroying our politics and paralyzing our ability to govern.

We may disagree on issues, but we do so with civility and mutual respect.

We believe in the vital civil center — a place where ideas are judged on their merits.

. . . And yet, we have a crisis of governance – A crisis that compels us to work together to move America forward.

We must put our labels aside, and put the issues and what’s best for the nation first.”

Hmm. What to make of this? Idealistic for sure, Frank Capra/Mr. Smith Goes to Washington idealistic. But will it, can it become a bona fide “movement” with real clout with lawmakers? Can it make a difference?

The Huffington Post reported that No Labels will have its first, splashy launch event on Dec. 13 at Columbia University where several prominent current and former pols will discuss the virtues of political civility and moderation, including Joe Scarborough, the Republican former congressman and current host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe. His co-host, Mika Brzezinski, who leans toward the Democratic side of things, will moderate the panel.

Among the other scheduled launch party participants Huffington Post named included: New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, Independent (formerly Democratic) Senator Joe Lieberman, former Republican Rep. Tom Davis, Republican Rep. Chris Shays, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former Republican Gov. Christie Todd Whitman.

Think something like this has a shot of altering the dialogue in D.C., of promoting bipartisanship and actually getting stuff done or is it, to quote another Capra film, just “sentimental hogwash?”

Image credit: No Labels.