Salon: Opinion: Joshua Sager: GOP’s 30-Year Spin Job is Over: We Are Not a Center-Right Nation

This post was originally posted at The New Democrat on Blogger

First of all just to comment on Joshua Sager’s column in the Salon which is hardly a center-left publication, but still worth reading similar to The Nation. Which should give you an idea of where I’m coming from. Joshua’s Sager’s idea of a center-left America looks like, well Sweden. A country of roughly nine-million people which doesn’t have nearly the amount of diversity across the board that a huge country like America has. That is essentially a country of Social Democrats and other Socialists. Where their center-right party looks like Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson, not Barry Goldwater ideologically.

What is center-left in one country is not necessarily center-left in another country. Especially when you are comparing a small country with a huge country. The amount of what could be called Scandinavian Social Democrats in America including Salon, The Nation, AlterNet and other far-left publications in America might add up to 30-40 million Americans in a country of roughly three-hundred and fifteen-,million people. In Sweden and their population of nine-million people or Scandinavia as a whole of twenty-five million people or so the number of Social Democrats in that entire region might be the entire region. Sweden is sort of divided between Marxist Socialists and Bernie Sanders Social Democrats.

But where I agree with Josh Sager is that America is a center-left country and the idea that we are center-right and that depends on how you define center-right as well, has been proven false over the last 5-10 years. Americans like economic freedom and personal freedom as well. They believe in things like public education and economic opportunity for people who are disadvantage economically. And believe that government has a role to play in seeing that Americans who need it get a hand up so they can make it in America. They believe in things like public infrastructure investment, public education, regulating business, protecting workers and consumers.

And if you look at the issues and a big reason why the Republican Party is in so much trouble today and can’t find enough candidates to win Republican leaning Senate seats to win back the Senate and win back the White House is because the country has moved left as the Republican Party has moved right.But we haven’t gone from a Barry Goldwater center-right country to a Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein social democratic far-left country. Right now we are in the land of Clinton politically this center-left New Democratic era. That says “government isn’t the problem or the solution. But when used effectively in a limited way can play a positive role in most Americans lives”.