The Centrism Puzzle

There are still a lot of liberals angry at "centrists." Ian Welsh at BOP has criticized the idea that we need to reach out to the middle and focus instead on expanding liberalism. This approach has been very popular among many on the left, MyDD and others among them. I think there is something to this idea - the basic DLC strategy seems to be to compromise on all outstanding issues, which reduces Democrats to an indistinct mush that no one will vote for. And I think that the DLC attack on Kerry etc. is largely misguided, given that Kerry essentially adopted their script in the last election by focusing on the mishandling of Iraq (rather than attacking the war itself) and avoiding a sharp populist critique on economics. Kerry essentially ran on competence, which the DLC seems to have been suggesting, and it didn't work. The DLC "purge the left" idea is ludicrous, and it seems far too eager to feed the (slanderous) Republican attack on liberalism.

At the same time, just working on mobilizing the left is probably not going to work either. The DLC and its supporters are right when they note that that simpleminded populism or straightforward liberal appeals to the electorate are insufficient to build a political majority. Democrats have to come to grips with foreign policy and "values" if we are to get back into the game.

So let's stop shooting spitballs at eachother and find some way to take the valuable insights of both. Robert Kuttner, for example, makes an excellent point in the Prospect:

...the cultural conservatism of many moderate-income Americans attracts
them to Republicans who don't serve their economic interests. But cultural
moderation will not save the souls of Democrats unless they start delivering the
goods economically.

Centrism doesn't work without a hard-edged policy to differentiate the left from the right. And liberalism doesn't work without an understanding of what is driving working class voters away. In short, we need to craft a rhetorical strategy that wins over voters who are moderate culturally but economically populist. We can't just be centrists or liberals. We need to be both.