Elections, Jamie O, Political Crack, So Called Liberal Media

Harris, Walz, And Whatever The Center Is

Soon after Trump’s assassination attempt, the buzz in the media was he was a changed man. He was affected by the near miss, and now was even “spiritual.”

There was even some chatter that maybe he would stress a unity message. This was, of course, a lot of nonsense. Trump is showing no signs of trying to appeal to moderates, even at the Republican convention, where he gave a bizarre address.

Of course, not to be denied, the media still tried to run with the Trump the Uniter message.

I bring this up because part of this narrative, which lasted all of a few days, was that Trump was going to be reaching out to the center and a kinder gentler Trump would be appealing. Such craziness was yet another example of the media’s obsession with “the center.” Almost always, the narrative is whenever the center is talked about with respect to the GOP, they are the ones reaching out, and the Democratic Party is the one who must sacrifice any liberal or progressive ideals in order to reach out to this mythical center.

The question I have is, in 2024, what exactly is “The Center?”

At the Republican convention, you saw people holding signs calling for mass deportations. This means 22 million people are rounded up, which would include those in mixed-status households. Round-ups like this tend not to be polite, so there likely would be at least some violence. Before people are forced to leave, they would have to be put into encampments, which would mean we would have another long and tiresome debate about whether they are concentration camps, which would be meaningless given there would be suffering happening in these camps.

On one side, you have people appalled at the idea of such a horror in the U.S., and on the other side, you have people who are electrified, thrilled, and even laughing with glee at such an image. What is the center here? I would imagine the best way to think of the middle here is someone who isn’t actively cheering for such a horror, but is against doing anything to prevent it.

Are there that many voters who fall in such a category? I have no idea. But this is what the “center” looks like. I say this because the usual calls for Democrats to reach out to the center apparently include the idea that Tim Walz, by some accounts, holds some radical ideas.

These ideas include Walz wanting kids to learn in schools without empty stomachs, because by gosh it’s the right thing to do. That is exactly how Walz presents it, in this folksy style that takes a lot of the piss out of the standard right-wing counter to such things, calling it handouts to the lazy. This drives the right crazy but also drives some of those in centrist media crazy as well. For many Very Serious Centrist Minds of the Discourse, their idea of connecting with moderate voters includes things like firing Lina Khan, the head of the Federal Trade Commission, for being too mean to large corporations. Things such as pointing out that these days, Republicans are weird and giving school kids free school lunch and breakfast were not reaching out to the center, the Great Minds so declared.

Perhaps the most notable missives demanding the Dems crawl to the Center came from the Crown Prince of Very Serious Centrist Minds, The Wizard of False Equivency, Jonathan Chait. Last week Chait, demanded that Harris and Walz “capture the center.”

The problem is that this center basically is people who don’t really have any set principles, nor do they seem to have any coherent ideas on policy. This so-called center does seem obsessed with “unity,” or at least what the centrists view as unity, which means demanding the targets of the targeters understand why they are being targeted, and if that doesn’t work, to shut the hell up. If the right doesn’t come around and unite with the left, then that’s the left’s fault. While there are people like this in the general population, the ones in the media have a platform that they use to attempt to spread this nonsense.

I get the feeling that these people are quite angry over Biden dropping out. Perhaps because their obsession with Biden’s age no longer means anything. There is also some apparent frustration that Kamala Harris was smoothly transitioned to the Dem nominee without their stupid Thunderdome-at-the-Convention ideas to pick a new candidate. The latest stance of these folks is the idea that no one has any idea what Kamala Harris stands for, which is absurd. An example:

“The candidate who wasn’t there” is classic snotty-snark centrist.

Here is yet another one.

I imagine when Harris unveils her platform at the convention, they will shift to more demands to move to the center. Whatever that is. Meanwhile, the Harris/Wahls team is doing quite well for themselves, even without kowtowing to a group of voters that may exist as a factor only in a centrist pundit’s mind.

The last word goes to Stealers Wheel, of course.