Extreme Politics

Earlier today, I talked about how the Presidential candidates, for the most part, are moving to the extremes of their parties. Interestingly though, part of the movement is being driven by people like me, bloggers. Joe Klein talks about the issue:

First, let me say that I really enjoy blogging. It's a brilliant format for keeping readers up to date on the things I care about—and for exchanging information with them. I recently asked Swampland readers with military experience to comment on whether it was General David Petraeus' "duty" to tell the unvarnished truth about Iraq when he testifies on Capitol Hill in September. About a dozen readers responded with links to treatises about "duty" in various military journals. Furthermore, I've found that some great reporting takes place in the blogosphere: Juan Cole's Iraq updates are invaluable, Joshua Micah Marshall's Talking Points Memo did serious muckraking about the U.S. attorneys scandal, and Ezra Klein (no relation) is excellent on health care. I love linking to smart work by others, something you just can't do in a print column.

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn't move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable. Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

And that is precisely the danger here. Fury begets fury. Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party's bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end. Limbaugh's show—where Dick Cheney frequently expatiates—has become the voice of the Republican establishment. The same could happen to the Democrats. The spitballs aimed at me don't matter much. The spitballs aimed at Harman, Clinton and Obama are another story. Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded. (Obama even said so in his statement explaining his vote.) Each knows, as Senator Jim Webb has said repeatedly, that we must be more careful getting out of Iraq than we were getting in. But they allowed themselves to be bullied into a more simplistic, more extreme position. Why? Partly because they fear the power of the bloggers to set the debate and raise money against them. They may be right—in the short (primary election) term; Harman faced a challenge from the left in 2006. In the long term, however, kowtowing to extremists is exactly the opposite of what this country is looking for after the lethal radicalism of the Bush Administration.

I have routinely advocated that the political parties would do well by not treating voters like idiots or small children. Most voters are pretty savvy and can make some pretty insightful choices.

However, in the primaries, most voters are not involved and that is what is presenting a problem. The fury spewed forth by both sides of the political aisle turns off the guy in the middle, who for the most part don't pay attention to the extremes of the blogosphere. The voter in the middle sees the candidates playing to the extremes of their party and can't identify. Such moves by the candidates makes it hard for the average, middle of the road voter to indentify with a candidate.

As a consequence, the bile of bloggers makes candidates move too far one way only to have to snap back to the middle when it comes to the general election. These moves treat voters like they are stupid because the voter does not know what to believe. The voter sees complicated issues like immigration and the war on terror as exceeding complex issues and while they may not be able to grasp all the little subtleties, the average voter knows that we simply can't proceed as we have nor can we necessarily substitute one simple position for another. But movement to the wings of the party demands a clear statement of black and white when the average voter knows in their heart that the issue is neither black nor white, but an awful lot of grey.