WP op-ed: "The Death of Triangulation" by Eli Pariser

[DeepModem Mom]

The Death of Triangulation
By Eli Pariser
Thursday, August 10, 2006; Page A23


Primary winner Ned Lamont yesterday. (By Bob Child -- Associated Press)

Ned Lamont's victory Tuesday night in Connecticut's U.S. Senate primary is great news for Democrats. And it's a watershed moment for the growing majority of Americans, in red states and blue, who want change....

***

It's certainly understandable that Republicans would prefer to see Democrats continue to run the temporizing candidates whom they've had little trouble trouncing for the past decade. But you'd think Democratic strategists would be jumping for joy -- after all, they should be able to ride the anti-incumbent feeling to victory in November. Instead, we hear the perennial pundit nattering about moving the party too far to the left. And Marshall Wittmann of the Democratic Leadership Council -- who stubbornly refuses to address the real civil war in Iraq -- invokes the specter of a domestic civil war within the party.

That's because while Lamont's victory is a promising development, it marks the beginning of the end for an old favorite of Washington insiders -- the tactics of triangulation. Originally employed as a survival strategy by a Democratic president in the wake of 1994's Republican revolution, the policy of seizing the political middle ground no longer makes sense in an era when any attempt at bipartisanship is understood as a sign of Democratic weakness and exploited accordingly....

***

With triangulation passing, a new era of bolder, principle-driven politics can begin. Lamont's success should be the opening salvo in a 90-day campaign to establish the clear-cut differences between Democrats and Republicans. Most independent voters, like Democrats, want change, but many of them aren't sure yet whether Democratic candidates are capable of giving it to them. Now's the chance to seize that mantle....

(The writer is executive director of the MoveOn Political Action Committee.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/09/AR2006080901515.html?nav=hcmodule

[McKinneyIsAHero]

1. The most awful part of this is that Lamont is referred to as the "far left

By way too many. He's not that far to the left. On many issues he's to the center, even to the right of public opinion.

By determining him to be of the "far left" the media is creating an ideological limit which people shouldn't cross. That's patently undemocratic.

[Wetzelbill]

2. labeling someone Liberal, Far Left, or out of the mainstream

is little more than condescension toward someone a person has a disagreement with. Right Wing people often call John McCain "librul." Not because he actually is, but because they disagree with him. These terms are hurled as insults rather than some kind of truism. Lamont's biggest sin for these guys is he challenged and beat somebody who was so entrenched he should not have been challengeable. Lamont could practically be a Nazi and people on the Right would still label him "far left."

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Reagan started the movement of denigrating "Liberals". Poppy Bush

continued the new tradition with his "L-word", implying it was too profane to pronounce the entire word. And democrats let them get away with it. Enablers to abusers.

[DeepModem Mom]

4. a.m. kick