Vile

Bill Keller's very existence infuriates me in a way rabid reactionaries cannot. Right-wing punditry's mix of vulgar bourgeois economics and "culture war" dog-whistling is bad, of course, but it is an honest kind of villainy. The self-important centrism of the uber-journalist--who as Times editor played a not insignificant role in the run-up to the Iraq war, which he has since kind-of-sort-of apologized for--is in some hard-to-define way worse. Perhaps it is just that he professes to care about things the right wing will unashamedly disregard, or to be reasonable when "partisans" are doctrinaire, and so when he earnestly reproduces neoliberal commonsense as the height of wise statesmanship, it is more galling.

The middle is not the home of bland, split-the-difference politics, or a cult that worships bipartisan process for its own sake. Swing voters have views; they are just not views that all come from any one party’s menu. Researchers at Third Way, a Clintonian think tank, have assembled a pretty plausible composite profile of these up-for-grabs voters.

And in what respect is "Clintonian" distinct from the mainstream of the Democratic party?

¶Swing voters tend to be fiscal conservatives, meaning they are profoundly worried about deficits and debt.

In other words, they are stupid, but this is a stupidity shared by the entire political class, so it hardly serves to differentiate, does it?

¶They are mostly economic moderates, meaning they are free-marketers but expect government to help provide the physical and intellectual infrastructure that creates opportunity.

But they refuse to pay for it.

¶They are aspirational — that is, they have nothing against the rich — but they don’t oppose tax increases.

¶They want the country well protected, but not throwing its weight around in the world.

Combined translation: On important issues, they'll answer differently worded poll-questions differently, and so they can consistently vote for any candidate whatsoever.

¶They tend to be fairly progressive on social issues; they think, for example, that abortion should be discouraged but not prohibited.

Probably a bad example. Gay rights would be better. But yes, the one front of progress. Congratulations.

Bruce Gyory, who studies voting trends at the State University of New York at Albany, says the swing voters are predominantly white and suburban, have at least some college, and have decent incomes. In this time of precarious jobs, devalued homes and shriveled retirement savings, they are more anxious than angry, more interested in fixing the future than in affixing blame for the past.

In other words, they've got theirs. Oh, and why is the top third of education and income the group that gets to decide these things? What's going on with everyone else? Perhaps there is some factor, let's call it a "balance of social forces," that leads to the effective disengagement of nearly half of the electorate so that the outcome of individual elections follows the whims of ideologically incoherent, upper-middle-class voters, between two sides sufficiently similar to not unduly threaten either this demographic, or the other one that foots the bill for the whole charade?

Swing voters, I think, are looking not for a checklist of promises but for a type of leader — a problem-solver, a competent steward, someone who understands them and has a convincing optimism. We don’t know exactly how they identify that candidate, but it is some mix of past performance (especially for the incumbent), campaign messaging and chemistry.

Shit, paragraphs like this make me want to become a poststructuralist. So they want a leader who understands what they want, which is not particular policies but instead a leader who understands what they want, which is not . . . AAAHHHH!!!! DO THE SIGNIFIERS SIGNIFY ONLY OTHER SIGNIFIERS!!?!!?!

Both Mitt Romney and President Obama have some legitimate claim on these voters. They are analytical, pragmatic, upbeat men who won elections by promising to transcend dogma and get things working again. The middle is probably more ideologically attuned to Romney — at least the old Romney — but finds Obama more likable, especially after Romney’s primary-season impersonation of Lurch from “The Addams Family.”

Ok, briefly channeling Paul Krugman: in what respect have Obama's policies contradicted the ideological nonsense shopping list above?

In the Democratic Party, a battle for Obama’s teleprompter is now under way between the moderates and the more orthodox left. The president sometimes, as in his last two State of the Union addresses, plays the even-keel, presidential pragmatist, sounding themes of balance and opportunity. Then sometimes lately he sounds more as if he’s trying out for the role of Robin Hood.

The problem isn’t that the Buffett Rule is necessarily a bad idea. It isn’t that “social Darwinism” is a slander on Republicans. (Heck, it may be the only Darwinism Romney believes in.) The problem is that when Obama thrusts these populist themes to the center of his narrative, he sounds a little desperate. The candidate who ran on hope — promising to transcend bickering and get things done — is in danger of sounding like the candidate of partisan insurgency. Just as Romney was unconvincing as a right-wing scourge, Obama, a man lofty in his visions but realistic in his governance, feels inauthentic playing a plutocrat-bashing firebrand. The role the middle really wants him to play, I think, is president.

So is Obama trying to steal from the rich (or engaging in "plutocrat-bashing") or is the Buffet rule a not a bad idea? Is he the candidate of partisan insurgency or is he accurately describing the political positions of his opponent?

I propose a definition: Centrists are those who assuage a nagging sense that all is not right with the world with a belief that they aren't likely to do better than the political status quo, and thus who, out of fear of seeming unsophisticated, mask the fact that they are mostly indifferent to politics with vague expressions of displeasure with whoever happens to be in office. They are the perfect analogue to the musical philistine who, despite never listening particularly closely to the Mozart and Beethoven they go to hear, are offended when the conductor dares to sneak some Schoenberg onto the program. One suspects that the root of this reaction is that their manifest incomprehension of the modern works--or, for the centrists, of expressions of any actual political opinions--brings them to the edge of the terrifying realization that they don't even begin to understand the music--or the politics--they claim to approve of.