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You are here: Home / Politics / Politicans / David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute / Bicoastal

Bicoastal

by DougJ|  October 2, 201011:18 pm| 97 Comments

This post is in: David Brooks Giving A Seminar At The Aspen Institute

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I thought we’d probably have to wait til 2011 to hear pundits start talking about the need for a serious, fiscally responsible, patriotic third-party but Tom Friedman got an early start:

Barring a transformation of the Democratic and Republican Parties, there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her — one definitely big enough to impact the election’s outcome.

There is a revolution brewing in the country, and it is not just on the right wing but in the radical center. I know of at least two serious groups, one on the East Coast and one on the West Coast, developing “third parties” to challenge our stagnating two-party duopoly that has been presiding over our nation’s steady incremental decline.

It’s easy to make fun of the scare quotes around “third parties” and the fact that no one is willing to go on the record as being involved with these capers, but what strikes me is the idea that serious people on the coasts can up and form their own viable political party, like it was a theater troupe or a vegan co-op.

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97Comments

  1. 1.

    DonkeyKong

    October 2, 2010 at 11:23 pm

    I want to punch Friedman in the forehead with brassknuckles imprinted with “THERE IS NO FUCKING RADICAL CENTER!”

    But I hate standing in long lines.

  2. 2.

    Corner Stone

    October 2, 2010 at 11:25 pm

    You forgot the “radical center”. Never give short shrift to the “radical center”.

  3. 3.

    CJ

    October 2, 2010 at 11:26 pm

    We have to rip open this two-party duopoly and have it challenged by a serious third party that will talk about [. . .] financial reform, without worrying about losing donations from Wall Street

    Good luck with that, champ.

  4. 4.

    Linda Featheringill

    October 2, 2010 at 11:27 pm

    Anybody can form a political party. And you don’t have to live on the coast, either. Whether it is “viable” is another question.

  5. 5.

    something fabulous

    October 2, 2010 at 11:29 pm

    @DonkeyKong: Yeah, that kind of makes me want to puke as well. And I cannot be bothered to click over to The Moustaches, but it sounds like he is able to hold in his mind at once the idea that there is a movement so big, so serious and revolutionary that it will impact the presidential elections, and yet… it must remain nameless. FOR NOW. Bwah-ha-ha.

  6. 6.

    Rick Massimo

    October 2, 2010 at 11:30 pm

    … what strikes me is the idea that serious people on the coasts can up and form their own viable political party, like it was a theater troupe or a vegan co-op.

    What strikes me is that whenever one of these Very Serious People starts describing what this miracle third party would actually stand for, it sounds exactly like the Republicans.

  7. 7.

    Yutsano

    October 2, 2010 at 11:32 pm

    Friedman wants his Ross Perot and he wants it NOW DAMMIT!! At least that’s about the only coherent message I can grok from that column other than he lurves eating up his travel budget.

  8. 8.

    Mark S.

    October 2, 2010 at 11:33 pm

    Didn’t he write pretty much the same fucking thing last week?

    I can’t believe people were complaining today about Doug linking too much to Sully. I’ll take ten posts in a row about Sully over one from Mustache.

  9. 9.

    Suck It Up!

    October 2, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    Very. Serious.

  10. 10.

    Suffern ACE

    October 2, 2010 at 11:36 pm

    They came first for baby bear’s porridge, but I didn’t speak up because I liked my porridge hot.
    Then they came for baby bear’s chair, and I said nothing because I liked my chair hard.
    Then they came for baby bear’s bed, and I said nothing because I figured, what the heck…the bears will be home soon anyway and what do I care if the radical centrists get eaten right now.

    Perhaps if the “radical center” hadn’t spent so much time writing about the glories of being “just right” even as they were drummed out of the Republican party from the right, they wouldn’t be searching for a new home.

  11. 11.

    trollhattan

    October 2, 2010 at 11:36 pm

    Hey, look, it’s my John Anderson tshirt!

    I shall vote Bullmoose, and no other.

    + quite some

  12. 12.

    Dee Loralei

    October 2, 2010 at 11:37 pm

    Didn’t they try this in 2007 or 2008 with Dave Boren, Michael Bloomberg and Chuck Hagel? I vaguely remember a meeting held at OU with those three in attendence. And yea Rick Massimo, sounds like the Mustache of Understanding is pining for the Fords, if you will, in other words, the sane Republicans of 30+ years ago.

    And speaking of OU, Boomer Sooner!

    ETA : Yea, I smell a Ross Perot comeback. I’ve really missed those flip charts.

  13. 13.

    DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.

    October 2, 2010 at 11:39 pm

    @Mark S.:

    I know what you’re saying, but I think that early third-party talk is worthy of note.

  14. 14.

    suzanne

    October 2, 2010 at 11:41 pm

    Radical center = reeeeeeeeeeally gross roadkill.

    Friedman makes me want to do Jager shots at two in the morning, and all that that implies, so that I might get fucked up enough to forget that Friedman exists.

  15. 15.

    Corner Stone

    October 2, 2010 at 11:44 pm

    If we have a bicoastal third party, where will the fifth column fit in?

  16. 16.

    Davis X. Machina

    October 2, 2010 at 11:48 pm

    I think he means ‘I want a Republican party that doesn’t suck.’

    Me, I want water that isn’t wet.

    Let’s see who gets what they want first.

  17. 17.

    Toni

    October 2, 2010 at 11:51 pm

    How would a third party President govern? How are they going to get legislation through congress? This just seems ridiculously naive, sort of like invading Iraq without thinking through how things will work after toppling Saddam…..oh right

  18. 18.

    General Stuck

    October 2, 2010 at 11:52 pm

    With the United case, and the availability to spend freely bypassing the need to raise campaign cash without rules is rife for all sorts of third party shenanigans. Astroturfed parties springing from whatever shadowy cranny of American society would not have to be viable, just mischievous for engineering votes away from whomever you don’t want to win. Since now it is not even required that soft money document it’s source. And when the SCOTUS casts out the remaining strictures on individual candidates for accepting donations, then the sky is the limit, and our elections will become dark comedies way past what they are now.

  19. 19.

    Dennis SGMM

    October 2, 2010 at 11:53 pm

    The question is, has Friedman ever been right about anything?

  20. 20.

    Mark S.

    October 2, 2010 at 11:56 pm

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:

    Oh, I was just being grumpy. Who else but Friedman could write such sentences as:

    We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a superconsensus to do the superhard stuff we must do now.

    And while there are a lot of intriguing ideas for why the Roman Empire fell (inflation, soil depletion, lead), Friedman finds the historian with the dumbest one:

    What was plainly lacking, long before the barbarian invasions had done their work, long before economic dislocations became serious, was an inner go.

    Their get up and go must have got up and went.

  21. 21.

    parsimon

    October 2, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    @DougJ is the business and economics editor for Balloon Juice.:

    It’s worthy of note, but there’s little substance to what Friedman says. There’s a great deal of avoidance of the fundamental problems in current U.S. governance: the structural problems in the Senate; campaign finance; and financial globalization in general.

    I don’t see any way a third party is going to bulldoze its way through all of that, not without bypassing the rule of law.

  22. 22.

    walt

    October 2, 2010 at 11:59 pm

    Friedman used to get that the Republicans were The Stupid Party. But even that insight misses the core problem of the American right. They’re a cultural/racial identity movement with some Randian filler. They command close to half this country’s allegiance. They don’t do governance well because they’re not really interested in competent government. Democrats, however, are interested. So what does The Mustache of Understanding propose? Dividing the sane faction in half. It’s such a breathtaking idea I wouldn’t be surprised if Rupert Murdoch starts pushing it.

  23. 23.

    JWL

    October 3, 2010 at 12:00 am

    A “radical center”?

    I’m old, yet uncertain. Just what year was it that American political dialogue died?

  24. 24.

    BGinCHI

    October 3, 2010 at 12:02 am

    How many Friedman Units of Jager can Cole drink?

    OK, seriously, can someone tell me what the “radical center” is? It doesn’t even make sense.

    How does someone get back to the “roots” of the center?

    Even Colbert won’t find a way to make fun of that.

  25. 25.

    Dennis SGMM

    October 3, 2010 at 12:06 am

    @Mark S.:
    An “inner go,” eh? Well damn. I’ve spent decades studying Roman history as a hobby and along the way I’ve read everything from Gibbon, to J.P.V.D. Balston, to Jerome Carcopino and worked my way (Laboriously, because my German isn’t that good) through some great German-language papers. And to think that I could have saved myself all of that good time and trouble with the words “inner go.”

    Clearly it’s time to lever the cap off of another bottle of Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA.

  26. 26.

    priscianus jr

    October 3, 2010 at 12:08 am

    This is one of those times when I don’t get either the post or the comments. Guess I’m just not hip to the jive.

  27. 27.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 3, 2010 at 12:09 am

    @Mark S.:

    We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a superconsensus to do the superhard stuff we must do now.

    I don’t wanna read this, but just to take one actual issue that I know Friedman thinks he cares about: The environment. Obama and the majority of Democrats wanted a rather modest bill that would have been a modest–some said useless, I’m not sure– first step in addressing global warming. Republicans and ConservaDems blocked it. So Friedman’s theory is that some “radical center” could pass a more modest bill via “superconsensus” to do a little bit less wrt this “superhard” problem. What am I missing?

  28. 28.

    KCinDC

    October 3, 2010 at 12:11 am

    Presumably Friedman and the others dreaming of that magical Unity ’12 ticket are weeping bitterly at Michael Bloomberg saying he won’t run for president because he “can’t win”.

  29. 29.

    Sentient Puddle

    October 3, 2010 at 12:12 am

    Who wants to go digging through Friedman’s archives and find out how often he’s made calls for a third party over the years like this? I bet this is far from the first time.

  30. 30.

    Sly

    October 3, 2010 at 12:13 am

    Anyone who talks about the necessity of third parties without mentioning the fact that it is impossible under long-standing election laws in all fifty states, and attributes it solely to “special interests,” is usually either a fool or a demagogue. Friedman’s strength is that he can pull of both simultaneously.

    And I particularly liked the part where every problem directly caused by Republicans can be equally blamed on Democrats. He’s like a Renaissance Man of media suck.

  31. 31.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    October 3, 2010 at 12:14 am

    @KCinDC: Was it “Unity 08” that Sam Waterston (sp?) was pushing a couple years back?

  32. 32.

    Martin

    October 3, 2010 at 12:15 am

    I didn’t hear the CA-Gov debate today, but I think this one might sink her. It was hosted by Univision and was supposed to focus more on Latino issues, which the maid scandal appears to have been timed just properly for. This is the moment I think will kill her:

    “Jerry, you should be ashamed,” Whitman said. “You and your surrogates put her deportation at risk. You put her out there. You should be ashamed for sacrificing Nicky Diaz on the altar of your political ambitions.”

    Brown denied involvement and countered that Whitman has repeatedly called for employers to be held responsible for their hires. He said she was failing to take responsibility for her actions.

    “Don’t run for governor if you can’t stand up on your own two feet and say, ‘Hey, I made a mistake, I’m sorry, let’s go on from here,’ ” he said. “You have blamed her, blamed me, blamed the left, blamed the unions, but you don’t take accountability.”

    The primary audience of the debate was Latinos, who have been blamed for everything. If that attack by Brown sticks (and it should, it fits) then I expect that the solid lead among Latinos that he previously had will become a decisive one.

    The big unknown here are the details of the budget that is to be revealed next week. I don’t know how bad they’ll be (they won’t be good, we know that much) but someone will be punished in the polls. Who knows who it’ll be.

  33. 33.

    parsimon

    October 3, 2010 at 12:21 am

    @walt:

    This is the right take, I think. As the Republicans have let themselves be moved toward an utter inability to govern, and become representative of an increasingly diminishing portion of the country, the Democrats become a larger tent (to use a phrase that tends to make me cringe, but whatever).

    The Democratic party is bound to divide within, or amongst, itself. We could use a third party to that extent: to replace the Republican. Then we could have the center-Dems (these would be, say, the Blue Dogs) and the left-Dems. We’d have to replace the term “Democrat” of course.

    It’s going to be a while before we can see an actually progressive party. Sorry. But we really have some repair work to do since Clinton’s move to the center-right.

  34. 34.

    Restrung

    October 3, 2010 at 12:23 am

    lemme guess: it’s the conservative version of Barack Obama.

  35. 35.

    Restrung

    October 3, 2010 at 12:31 am

    if we all just move to the right and learn to love our billionaires, we’ll be so much happier. Then they’ll maybe trickle on us.

  36. 36.

    Whammer

    October 3, 2010 at 12:33 am

    OK, so I’ll bite on this a little bit, because I think there is a tendency here to shoot the messenger since it is Friedman.

    The message might still be stupid, I’ll grant, because the infrastructure supporting the existing 2-party system is pretty strong, as is its kung-fu. For example, @Toni’s point above is hard to refute.

    The general sentiment is libertarian to a large degree, I think. That is, let’s have a smaller government in many ways — lower spending (whatever the heck that really means), “live and let live” on things like gay marriage and drug laws, smaller military (yes, seriously), and, you guessed it, cracking down on “fraud and abuse”.

    In essence, though, the reason it is being talked about as a third party is the same reason that the Libertarians are a third party. Neither the Dems or the Repubs really meet these criteria.

    In practice, to me that means this mythical “third party” is a more moderate version of the Libertarian party. More moderate meaning that the party doesn’t think the magical free market and contract law will solve for stop signs and roads and stuff.

    It will fall apart, for starters, because nobody really wants a smaller military. Well, not nobody, but not enough people to make a difference. Yet.

    Any “coastal” third party that doesn’t significantly address military spending is completely FOS.

    All that being said, the most likely answer to this, is to yank the Democratic party away from the military industrial complex. The worst thing that happens is that we have a party supporting health care and nonsense like that, while opposing invading countries and bedrooms.

    OK’, y’all talked me into it, bad idea ;-)

  37. 37.

    parsimon

    October 3, 2010 at 12:36 am

    @parsimon:

    I’ve decided that I sound like an idiot in my own comment. I blame Friedman. Because, really, what are you going to say to a column like that? It operates so outside the bounds of sensible discourse that a person finds herself generating gibberish in order to accommodate it. And that’s just silly.

    I do not accept your framing, sir!

  38. 38.

    morzer

    October 3, 2010 at 12:37 am

    Tom Friedman has made one good call in his life: he married up. Other than that, he’s a waste of cognitive space.

  39. 39.

    M. Bouffant

    October 3, 2010 at 12:38 am

    like it was a theater troupe or a vegan co-op

    Considering that modern political parties are a hell of a lot like theater troupes (bad ones, too) I’m not sure this will be that hard.

  40. 40.

    mrslappy

    October 3, 2010 at 12:42 am

    I would bet Tommy F. a lifetime supply of mustache dye that a third party candidate won’t get more than 5% of the popular vote in 2012.

  41. 41.

    BombIranForChrist

    October 3, 2010 at 12:47 am

    To quote Samuel L. Jackson, when I hear the phrase “radical center”, my dick wants to laugh.

    Which is an especially resonant image when I think fondly of Friedman’s porno moustache.

  42. 42.

    parsimon

    October 3, 2010 at 12:56 am

    I’ll take all y’all’s word that Friedman is most of the time this bad — though I have been directed to an occasional good column of his — but here’s a question: does anybody, any other pundit, take him on? Or does he just blather, and people nod and go, “Yep, your view duly noted, Tom,” and move on?

    There’s just a slightly hysterical tone to this column, what with the remarks about seekrit knowledge of east and west coast (shh) movements; it’s more than just concern trolling.

    Sorry, I really don’t read Friedman more than every couple of months. This column is unusual, isn’t it?

  43. 43.

    Chris

    October 3, 2010 at 12:56 am

    Let me guess, Tom, a centerpiece of this third party’s agenda will be tax breaks for multimillionaire-marrying columnists.

    Thanks, but I think we’ve got a bipartisan consensus in favor of that already.

    (What’s the real message? “We can’t fucking stand Democrats, but we want non-insane Republicans”? Tough shit – those are your only choices. Suck. On. That.)

  44. 44.

    Jim C

    October 3, 2010 at 1:10 am

    I hope they do. I really do. Not because I support them, because I don’t know enough about their views to find them interesting (if only I could subscribe to their newsletter!), but because then one of these mythical “radical centrists” would finally decloak and take policy positions more substantial than “give me the power to decide.”

    Of course, I have full confidence that when these “radical centrists” do emerge, they’ll do so riding a f*cking unicorn that looks disturbingly like Tom Friedman.

  45. 45.

    Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

    October 3, 2010 at 1:17 am

    @Dee Loralei: Yes. Remember Unity ’08? You know why that imploded? They had an online poll of the candidates people wanted. You’ll never guess who finished # 1 and # 2. If you can believe it, Obama and Feingold. I am deadly serious.

  46. 46.

    Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle

    October 3, 2010 at 1:20 am

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes!!

  47. 47.

    asiangrrlMN

    October 3, 2010 at 1:28 am

    @parsimon: This is actually one of his better columns (at least this excerpt. I refuse to click on him), if you can believe him. He makes me want to say many many bad words, but I will heroically refrain.

  48. 48.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 1:29 am

    @DonkeyKong:

    I want to punch Friedman in the forehead with brassknuckles imprinted with “THERE IS NO FUCKING RADICAL CENTER!”

    If there is a radical center, it’s in the Democratic Party.

    @Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle:

    case in point

  49. 49.

    mclaren

    October 3, 2010 at 1:30 am

    Friedman flails and thrashes because he realizes every bogus scam he’s been hawking for the last 20 years has blown up in his face and now the whole status quo establishment has been totally discredited.

    Remember The Lexus and the Olive Tree? That’s a really good metaphor, because global warming is killing the Olive Tree with drought and that Lexus has wound up abandoned by the side of the road and it’s rusting because the owner can’t afford the lease payments and the high gas prices anymore.

    Remember Friedman running through the streets hysterically screaming “Does my country really understand that this is World War III?”

    Yeah, well, it wasn’t World War III, asshole, it was two jet planes crashing into two skyscrapers. So how’d that World War III work out for ya, champ? Right. You screwed the pooch, you stupid ignorant dipshit.

    Friedman told us globalization would bring amazing wonderful prosperity to all those countries which accepted the “golden straitjacket.” Well, America fitted up that golden straitjacket for itself, and now it rolls around in a pool of its own puke gibbering and drooling with a Glenn Beck-Sarah Palin-Michele O’Donnell howl of incoherent word salad, broke and insane and unable even to form a coherent sentence.

    The invisible hand has given America the finger. The invisible hand bitch-slaps us with 9.5% unemployement, soon to rise above 10% and stay there for the next 10 years or so, while health insurance premiums skyrocket at 50% per year and the Pentagon budget zooms to the stars at 8% per year and tax revenues plummet because we’re shipping all over jobs overseas. So how’d all that great advice work out there, champ?

    Friedman’s got nothing. Every agenda he’s been flogging for the past 20 years has blown up and now we’re stranded, destitute, our pitiful helpless armies defeated by teenage boys with AK-47s and our population living out of their cars, and even Friedman’s formerly rich wife has lost 99% of her net worth. So now Friedman’s pissed, and he’s not gonna take it anymore! And he’s decided…

    …(Wait for it…)…

    …That it’s all the REPUBLICANS’ AND DEMOCRATS’ FAULT!

    Yeah, Friedman is pointing both fingers in all directions but the remaining 8 fingers of both his hands are pointing straight back at him. This asshole bought into every bribe-the-rich Ponzi scheme his corporate masters dangled before his nose, and now that he’s broke and clueless and left by the side of the road to watch his Lexus burning down that olive tree it crashed into, he still doesn’t have the honesty to admit that it was assholes like him who are responsible for this mess.

    Friedman cheerled the Iraq war that cost 3 trillion bucks. Friedman clapped his palms raw for the globalization that blew up the world economy and melted down everyone’s life savings into little puddles of piss. Friedman waved a big foam finger for that golden fucking straitjacket and the brave new world of international free trade that turns out to be a fancy way of saying “We’re going to ship all the American jobs overseas until we hollow out our economy and our tax base collapses.”

    So now Friedman stares around at an America without engineers or scientists because what American would be stupid enough to go into those fields when our corporations can hire Chinese and Indian PhDs for $5 an hour, and Friedman wonders what went wrong. Here’s what went wrong: Tom Friedman.

    Tom Friedman and his rich asshole billionaire wife, writing about the alleged glories of the free market from the comfort of his 12,000 square foot mansion in Maryland. Tom Friedman and his proclamatations about how “America cannot afford to lose the war in Iraq” when the closest his ass ever got to being in danger was when one of his servants brought him a coffee that was too cold.

    This rich out-of-touch fuck needs to be stripped naked and dragged through the streets behind a car full of crippled mutilated Iraq war vets while the population he’s brutalized and impoverished throw garbage at him.

  50. 50.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 1:36 am

    @parsimon:

    We could use a third party to that extent: to replace the Republican.

    Well, first, we have to stop just under half the country from voting Republican, otherwise we’re doomed to 47-30-23 crazy people victories.

  51. 51.

    Xenos

    October 3, 2010 at 1:40 am

    @trollhattan:

    Hey, look, it’s my John Anderson tshirt!

    I actually still have my John Anderson t-shirt, which I bought at a James Taylor benefit concert in Hartford back in… 1979? I can’t remember when the primary season was back then.

    I was just 14, and I was sure that if Reagan was elected it would be the utter doom of the country. Took a bit longer than I expected, but there you go.

    As for the structural problems of a third party operating the Senate, per Toni above, you would think that would be obvious. Political scientists have a term for it, and you would think it would be obvious by now – the structure of Congress, and in particular the Senate, makes third parties an impossibility. You can have, for example, the Republican Party taking over or replacing the Whig party, but such a party can not last as a third party because it can not function while trying to build support.

  52. 52.

    maus

    October 3, 2010 at 1:42 am

    Ungh, don’t link directly to Friedman. I don’t want to accidentally increase the dirty stache’s pageviews.

  53. 53.

    celticdragonchick

    October 3, 2010 at 2:17 am

    But there is another angle on the last two years: a president who won a sweeping political mandate, propelled by an energized youth movement and with control of both the House and the Senate — about as much power as any president could ever hope to muster in peacetime — was only able to pass an expansion of health care that is a suboptimal amalgam of tortured compromises that no one is certain will work or that we can afford (and doesn’t deal with the cost or quality problems), a limited stimulus that has not relieved unemployment or fixed our infrastructure, and a financial regulation bill that still needs to be interpreted by regulators because no one could agree on crucial provisions.

    I think he has a valid point here.

    Sorry, but I do.

    Obama probably did the best he could do, and that’s the point. The best our current two parties can produce today — in the wake of the worst existential crisis in our economy and environment in a century — is suboptimal, even when one party had a huge majority. Suboptimal is O.K. for ordinary times, but these are not ordinary times. We need to stop waiting for Superman and start building a superconsensus to do the superhard stuff we must do now. Pretty good is not even close to good enough today.

    Well we are not going to get that super-consensus…but we damned sure need out political system to work. I think we can all agree that our system is badly broken at this point. When that happens in other places, the consequences can be…unfortunate.

    I see no reason why we should expect to get off lightly, but the appeal of big green foam fingers and shouting “We’re numba one!” seems to be the answer we keep getting from the other half of the political spectrum without any acknowledgment there are problems to begin with.

    Good times.

  54. 54.

    techno

    October 3, 2010 at 2:49 am

    @mclaren:

    Damn! You’re good. Thanks for writing that.

    I have detested Friedman ever since “Lexus and the Olive Tree.” Here is a guy who probably can just barely drive a car trying to explain how the Japanese could build something better than an S-class Mercedes. Since that clown wouldn’t know the difference between a muffler and an oil pump, he naturally claimed that it was all brought to the little Nippers by the magic of free trade.

    One of the many joys of actually driving an LS Lexus is that every time I fire it up, I am reminded of what an utter fool Tom Friedman is.

  55. 55.

    eric k

    October 3, 2010 at 3:01 am

    #53,

    Friedman is right about that, but he and his Unity ’08 friends are delusional if they think a 3rd party president is the answer.

    They seriously think republican Senators are going to support policies if they come from an independent president?

    The reason we can’t do anything is the Senate, as long as 41 Senators who represent maybe 35% of the country can block popular bills we’re fucked.

  56. 56.

    piratedan

    October 3, 2010 at 3:04 am

    so this “radical center” would be comprised of American politicians of a “centrist” bent who haven’t been compromised by being firmly attached to the corporate tit? You might as well make the party mascot a Unicorn, because as I understand it, that animal doesn’t exist.

  57. 57.

    Jennifer

    October 3, 2010 at 3:20 am

    Color me overly optimistic, but I think a third party organized around the idea that labor is as important to the creation of wealth (if not moreso) than capital is could find a sizable and diverse following. For the reasons others have pointed out, it wouldn’t survive long term to supplant either of the existing parties, but it might be swallowed up after a successful cycle or two and help pull Democrats back closer to their roots.

    There would certainly be plenty of value in a party organized on this principal, if for no other reason than to get people thinking about the central issue of why they can no longer make a reasonable living.

  58. 58.

    Xenos

    October 3, 2010 at 3:24 am

    @piratedan: Corporations are the center of the country. The corporate-sponsored politicians are the conservative Democrats and the less-crazy Republicans. All the Broderian and Freidmanian centrism is just elitism dressed up an a patronizing aw-shucks celebration of what they imagine to be Main Street America.

  59. 59.

    Viva BrisVegas

    October 3, 2010 at 4:18 am

    There already is a radical right. Presumably the radical left can reassemble itself.

    Now with both a West Coast and an East Coast radical center, that makes four third parties.

    With the tattered remnants of the Republican and Democratic parties, that makes it a total of six third parties.

    According to my arithmetic, six thirds makes two.

    So even after all that effort we are back to a two party system.

  60. 60.

    Uloborus

    October 3, 2010 at 6:40 am

    There’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell of this happening, but it delights me and I say more power to him. Democratic moderates think Obama is the bee’s knees. Friedman’s message resonates solely with conservatives who want to claim they’re being reasonable when they’re not. Let him pull votes away from the Republicans. The real fun would start when they got infested by the screaming tea party types who make up the so-called ‘independent’ voter block because, like Friedman, it makes them feel Awesome.

  61. 61.

    John Bird

    October 3, 2010 at 7:06 am

    Oh yeah, the centrist third party for the sane normal centrist moderate centrists. It’ll totally happen outside a bunch of lame old people’s imaginations this time.

  62. 62.

    cmorenc

    October 3, 2010 at 7:46 am

    Friedman sorta makes me feel nostalgic about Ross Perot. If only Ross Perot hadn’t turned out to be a screws-loose wacko “under the hood”.

  63. 63.

    Sm*t Cl*de

    October 3, 2010 at 7:48 am

    there is going to be a serious third party candidate in 2012, with a serious political movement behind him or her

    No way would Friedman make such a prediction without concrete evidence to back it up, knowing that he will lose all credibility and all outlets for his opinions if events prove him to be wrong.

  64. 64.

    PaulW

    October 3, 2010 at 8:11 am

    Considering that every attempt to form a viable third party really ends up helping whichever political party doesn’t hold the Presidency at the time of election (I’m sure Bush the Elder would love to face-punch Perot, and Gore would love to nut-kick Nader), these “I wish for a Third Party candidate who won’t suck” self-love columns from these Beltway Insiders get old real damn fast.

    Also: I thought the whole point of Centrists is that they’re NOT radical extremists. So who the F-CK are the Radical Centers? (My explanation: Friedman’s attempt to re-draw the Tea-Baggers as “true Centrists” when in fact said Tea-Baggers are so far the Radical Right they make Moderate Republicans look like Socialists (who are then accused of being Socialists anyway, re-enforcing my point so there).)

    Also Wik: Just *who* does Friedman see as the unifying personality that can draw the “Radical Center” into a cohesive third party? Odds are, it’s whomever Friedman views as a proxy of himself (i.e. whichever celebrity politician will give him the best ego-hummer). Never mind that every other ego-driven “third party” candidate proves to be so unelectable that it begs the question “who the hell liked that guy in the first place?”

    When the hell can we fire Friedman for gross incompetence?

  65. 65.

    Omnes Omnibus

    October 3, 2010 at 8:51 am

    @Viva BrisVegas: Clever.

  66. 66.

    hal

    October 3, 2010 at 9:23 am

    Wouldn’t a third party candidate most likely be a wealthy individual who could afford to finance their own campaign? If so, that kind of takes some of the populist wind out of their sales.

  67. 67.

    Some Guy

    October 3, 2010 at 9:34 am

    @JWL: The “radical center” is violently meaningless bit of nonsense, concocted by Friedman from the smell of his own farts.

    He has been talking about the “radical center” for years and it is a perfect example of the contrarian arrogance of contemporary pundit norms. State something that is contradictory, preferably internally contradictory, and because it is against what is conventionally assumed true, it must also be valid since it depends on other possible things. Voila, the magic of a reverse babble-fish. So there is a “center” (itself a wonderful bit of spatial fiction fabricated from survey data of conflicting sorts) out there ready to take its inbetweenness to the streets. Horse . . . shit.

    What it really means is middle of the road politicos and would-be candidates want to pitch policies that don’t offend many people and can get them elected. The presumption is those policies, whatever they are, would have to lead to better governance because, you know, the center is a magic faerie land of niceness and effective law. That is hardly a sure thing. Sounds more a like a recipe for continued corporate domination of policy, which we seem to have no matter who is elected.

    Then again, Friedman loves him some neoliberalism.

    Don’t get me wrong, I am not sandbagging for extremism, I simply mean that the idea of a spatial metaphor determining a) an actual political movement, or b) a set of good policies to boot, is fanciful crap.

  68. 68.

    keestadoll

    October 3, 2010 at 9:35 am

    “the idea that serious people on the coasts can up and form their own viable political party, like it was a theater troupe or a vegan co-op.”

    Loved this. Cannot add anything significant. Bravo!

  69. 69.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 9:42 am

    @celticdragonchick:

    But there is another angle on the last two years: a president who won a sweeping political mandate, propelled by an energized youth movement and with control of both the House and the Senate — about as much power as any president could ever hope to muster in peacetime —

    I am somewhat surprised that nobody has caught the enormous error in The Moustache’s(tm) sentence there. We are *not in peacetime* you fucking moron!

    This is akin to David Frum’s bullshit a while back when he talked about Obama as governing while we are at peace on “Marketplace.”

    I’d cut The Moustache some slack if he’d said “about as much power as any president could ever hope to muster, even if we were at peace – or something. But he just breezes by that glaring factual error in his sentence like it’s nothing.

    Also, re: factual errors: @mclaren:

    Yeah, well, it wasn’t World War III, asshole, it was two jet planes crashing into two skyscrapers. So how’d that World War III work out for ya, champ? Right. You screwed the pooch, you stupid ignorant dipshit.

    Actually, it was two planes, two skyscrapers; one plane, one Pentagon; and one plane, one Pennsylvania field.

  70. 70.

    DJMurphy

    October 3, 2010 at 9:45 am

    I’m thinking that since Tom Friedman said it, it’s not going to happen.

  71. 71.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 9:47 am

    Does this “radical center” third-party whositwhatsit qualify Friedman for priesthood in the Church of High Broderism?

  72. 72.

    Jennifer

    October 3, 2010 at 9:50 am

    I keep wondering why Friedman doesn’t have his own page on Dickipedia.

  73. 73.

    Mike in NC

    October 3, 2010 at 10:27 am

    This radical new political party will definitely need a tough leader with a big mustache. Tom, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you!

  74. 74.

    KCinDC

    October 3, 2010 at 10:50 am

    @celticdragonchick, I think most of us agree that the political system (particularly the Senate) is dysfunctional. Friedman’s idiocy is the idea that a third party would somehow solve this.

    @Jennifer, the problem is that a “successful cycle or two” for such a third party would mean complete dominance of our government by the most insane Republicans—something I’m not at all convinced that the country would survive. The way our voting works, a third party will always damage whichever of the two major parties agrees with it the most, and help whichever one is most inimical to its values. That means unless the third party is on the right, it’s going to make it harder for Democrats to win.

  75. 75.

    b-psycho

    October 3, 2010 at 10:54 am

    There is no center. Everyone serious about politics has SOME issue on which they are considered fringe.

  76. 76.

    BC

    October 3, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Well, if there’s going to be a “radical center” uprising leading to a 3rd party presidential candidate in 2012, they’d better get cracking right now and get them petitions started in the 50 states so by the time November 2012 rolls around they’ll actually have a candidate on the ballot. If you don’t see people with clipboards at the grocery store and other public places asking you to sign a petition for a 3rd party to be on the ballot in your state right now, then it ain’t gonna happen – no matter how many columns the Grand Moustache of Misunderstanding writes. It takes time, money, and boots on the ground to get a 3rd party started and on the ballot. When I see Mr. Tom Friedman out at my local Safeway asking me to sign his petition, I’ll believe. Until then, it’s just his pie in the sky. The Republican right has their little horror fantasy running through their heads so they can be frightened all the time; Tom Friedman and other centrists have this little unity fantasy running through their heads so they don’t have to deal with a crazy right and a sane left. Both have the same relationship to reality.

  77. 77.

    El Cid

    October 3, 2010 at 11:02 am

    Is our new savior radical center candidate still Colin Powell? Too outdated? Will General SURGE Petraeus save us all? Will it be Michael Bloomberg? Some chairman of a corporation Friedman currently fetishizes?

  78. 78.

    The Raven

    October 3, 2010 at 11:06 am

    “…radical center…” Talk about a tin ear for language!

    But then, he also seems to have a tin ear for politics. Oh, probably he’s right a new party is coming; the GOP is sinking into irrelevance, so there will be room for a new major party. But a new party fielding a Presidential candidate by 2012? Who could possibly be credible? 2020, guys. Look towards 2020.

    Croak!

  79. 79.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 11:10 am

    I won’t believe in the Radical Center until I see me a logo. What animal will they choose?

  80. 80.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 11:55 am

    @arguingwithsignposts:
    Here’s my proposal for the Radical Center Party mascot.

  81. 81.

    Bill Murray

    October 3, 2010 at 12:28 pm

    @arguingwithsignposts: on the other hand we aren’t at war either. Or if we are we have been at war since Nixon declared the war on drugs in 1971

  82. 82.

    arguingwithsignposts

    October 3, 2010 at 12:31 pm

    @Bill Murray:
    Back it up a little. Didn’t LBJ declare war on poverty?

  83. 83.

    Comrade Luke

    October 3, 2010 at 2:03 pm

    You might as well shut down the comments here after McLaren’s post.

    Perfect execution, nice release, stuck the landing. NAILED IT!

  84. 84.

    Belvoir

    October 3, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    @Mclaren: That was superb.

  85. 85.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 2:42 pm

    @celticdragonchick:

    I think he has a valid point here.

    He DOES have a valid point, that the system is created to prevent anyone from really getting done much more than Obama has. Which has always been my Obot point. Obama isn’t to blame for his accomplishment not being sweeping, the SYSYEM is. Obama should be applauded for actually pushing the system as far as it could go.

    But he ruins it by saying we need a coalition of people who just want to coast. The “radical center” is part of the problem.

  86. 86.

    Bob L

    October 3, 2010 at 2:56 pm

    So who wants to be the next Ralph Nader? Nader really showed Washington in 2000.

  87. 87.

    TaosJohn

    October 3, 2010 at 2:59 pm

    Obama killed it for everyone. By advocating this and promising that, quite explicitly and repeatedly, and then running in the opposite direction and giving away the store to Wall Street, he made it impossible for anyone else to be believed. In that sense, he really is the Democratic anti-christ, standing for but destroying all things traditionally held dear.

    So the Dems are finished.

    The Repubs are ignorant brutes.

    There isn’t anything else, i.e. the “system” is busted for good.

    At this point I think we NEED a takeover by Bible-beating thugs. After a few teenage girls are stoned to death for having sex, maybe we’d see a response with teeth.

  88. 88.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 3:05 pm

    @TaosJohn:

    After a few teenage girls are stoned to death for having sex, maybe we’d see a response with teeth.

    or maybe we’ll see an American public “you know, I wonder why we never thought of this oppressive Christianist state before? This is heaven!” Or do you not understand why people like Mussolini were elected and their brutal regimes tolerated for many years?

    You know, I’m seeing this a lot lately, not because “Obama gave away the store” or whatever Jane Hamsheresque nonsense, but because liberals are so angry that Americans keep teasing them with wins and turning on them, they just want to see them suffer.

  89. 89.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 3:06 pm

    @Bob L:

    So who wants to be the next Ralph Nader? Nader really showed Washington in 2000.

    Friedman isn’t promoting Nader, he’s promoting Bloomberg. Basically, his argument is we need a Max Baucus/Joe Lieberman party to run things.

  90. 90.

    ksmiami

    October 3, 2010 at 3:54 pm

    @mclaren:

    Even worse, the wealth Friedman’s wife inherited and the thousands of shareholders in GGP were totally and completely wasted on bad deals. I hate these people and wish most Americans could wake up and stop believing the propaganda they are fed on a daily basis from their corporate overlords. At the height of the USSR, at least the citizenry knew that Pravda was all lies. Here, people eat up the crap the networks feed them without any questioning at all. When did the USA become a nation if idiot-zombies?

  91. 91.

    The Raven

    October 3, 2010 at 5:16 pm

    @TaosJohn:Thing is, despair doesn’t last, either. Sooner or later people get disgusted and want things fixed. I judge that the Dems are on the way to being a conservative party and a new, as yet nascent, fairly radical left party will emerge over the next decade from, I judge, a coalition of people now under 30, women, and Southerners(!) (Katrina and the Gulf oil spill are likely to radicalize the next generation of Southerners.)

    But it’s not going to happen overnight, and something entirely different might happen instead.

  92. 92.

    Nick

    October 3, 2010 at 5:58 pm

    @The Raven:

    (Katrina and the Gulf oil spill are likely to radicalize the next generation of Southerners.)

    Hello? If you expect those issues to bring up a left wing movement in the South, you need to go down there.

  93. 93.

    John Bird

    October 3, 2010 at 6:49 pm

    @Nick:

    There’s already a left-wing movement in the South. It’s not everywhere, but if you live here, it’s obvious that it’s growing, and it’s certainly based largely in people under 30.

  94. 94.

    The Raven

    October 3, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    AOL. There has been a left in the South for a very long time; oppressive social orders invariably produce opposition movements. It is also a very marginalized movement. But the combination of the failure of response to Katrina, the Gulf oil spill, the Upper Big Branch Coal Mine, the Florida mortgage disaster, and further events I can’t yet predict is, I think, likely to radicalize younger Southerners.

    John, Nick–where are your samples coming from?

  95. 95.

    mtraven

    October 3, 2010 at 6:55 pm

    Gentlemen: I give you the radical middle (circa 1962).

  96. 96.

    Scott P.

    October 4, 2010 at 11:13 am

    At this point I think we NEED a takeover by Bible-beating thugs.

    We had that for eight years, remember?

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. Arguing With Signposts » Really? The Radical Center Party? says:
    October 3, 2010 at 11:55 am

    […] at Balloon Juice points out this latest absurdity from The Moustache of Understanding ™ about the prospects for a “Radical Center” […]

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