The most optimistic article you’ll read all week
by digby
It’s from Mike Konczal in The Nation:
I come to bury centrism, not to praise it. Discussions of the economy during the 2016 campaign will look very different from those of the past two elections, because centrism as an ideological force has collapsed.
An optical illusion has shielded centrism from critique. Centrists position themselves as anti-ideology, representing a responsible compromise between liberals and conservatives. The word conjures sobriety and restraint, caution and moderation—all of which sound compelling in uncertain economic times.
But institutionalized centrism is more than that: It’s an elite group of thinkers and writers, popular in Washington, DC, and favorable to business leaders, who told a very specific story about what was happening during the Great Recession. They populate the opinion pages of The Washington Post and think tanks like the Bipartisan Policy Center, and they influenced officials like former Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag. Circa 2010, they argued for a “sensible” response to the Great Recession: reduce the deficit to fix the short-term jobs crisis, privatize Medicare, and focus on the long-term economy—since, they claimed, working Americans would eventually bounce back during the recovery. Democratic candidates took these positions seriously. Yet each element of the centrist story has turned out to be absolutely false. read on …
He’s absolutely right. I just wish I could be more sure that reality was going to guide us rather than habit of mind or stale ideology. And then there’s no guarantee that centrism will be replaced with liberalism. It could go the other way. But no matter what, if centrism has taken a fatal hit it’s a good thing in itself. It has a lot to answer for. Whether it ever will answer for its failures remains to be seen. Just look at the VSP zombies on foreign policy. Or the Wall Street whiz kids who nearly destroyed the global economy. They never seem to pay much of a price.
Still, this is an optimistic piece. We’ve been mired in this centrist fantasy for a very long time and it’s finally starting to come apart. As Konczal says maybe now we have a shot at getting it right.
