Maybe I am a Centrist After All

I used to consider myself pretty centrist. I mean, alright, I was a member of the Progressive Student Union in college, but probably its most conservative member. But I believed enough of the same things they did that we could work together for things that seemed doable and important on campus. I considered myself centrist at the turn of the millennium, when Clinton –Bill Clinton, the one that was actually President — had survived impeachment, and when Dubya was a Governor with Presidential aspirations, back when air travel didn’t mean slip-on shoes.

Then, somewhere along the line, the Center apparently took a turn to the right, and I found myself out in the cornfield among lefties, liberals, activists, and other progressives.

Or at least, that’s what I thought.

To listen to the rhetoric, “everybody” agrees we must support our troops and that means nobody can say anything bad about the Bush Administration. Because, well I don’t know, maybe the insurgents are quoting Randi Rhodes at our troops instead of trying to kill them. Well, you know my stance on that. I do support the troops: I pray for peace.

But then, yesterday, out of the blue, I read this item by Molly Ivins, who I had considered to be just a tetch to the left of me. And I realized that the center had not moved after all! The highway signs had just been changed. To quote:

The majority of the American people (55 percent) think the war in Iraq is a mistake and that we should get out. The majority (65 percent) of the American people want single-payer health care and are willing to pay more taxes to get it. The majority (86 percent) of the American people favor raising the minimum wage. The majority of the American people (60 percent) favor repealing Bush’s tax cuts, or at least those that go only to the rich. The majority (66 percent) wants to reduce the deficit not by cutting domestic spending, but by reducing Pentagon spending or raising taxes.

The majority (77 percent) thinks we should do “whatever it takes” to protect the environment. The majority (87 percent) thinks big oil companies are gouging consumers and would support a windfall profits tax. That is the center, you fools. WHO ARE YOU AFRAID OF?

So let me get this straight. Most Americans want to bring the troops home, have health insurance, get a living wage, have the rich pay higher taxes, cut the deficit,* and protect the environment; yet somehow that’s a crazy liberal idea? And more to the point, why can’t our elected officials who claim to be so mindful of public opinion manage to do what it turns out the sometimes overwhelming majority of us want?

I hope Howard Dean has these figures, because it seems to me the Democratic Party doesn’t need an angle so much as they need to play to Peoria, the real Peoria, not K Street. Corporations do not vote; people do.

*As an aside, I’d like to point out that if more Americans earned a living wage, they would pay taxes on that money. And if we got rid of nutty tax breaks, that would be more taxes paid too. Now, you don’t suppose that could help reduce the deficit, do you?