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Moderate On Whose Side? [1]

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Date: 2022-07-28

I am listening with interest to people with good but misguided intentions announcing the forming of a new political party. A Yahoo news story quoting the Hill sports the headline, “Yang’s Forward party merges with groups led by former GOP officials.” Yahoo also reports that: “Not Left. Not Right. Forward,” is the slogan on the party’s website. Indeed, David Jolly is touting the Forward Party as a centrist or moderate party. Why a centrist or moderate party? My guess is they are saying “moderate” because “conservative” has been polluted and perverted by the far right and “liberal” has racial connotations because of Reagan's descriptions of “welfare queens” and other reactionary responses to Johnson's Great Society.

Unfortunately this is the wrong time for a moderate party. As someone who has studied mass movements and revolutions, I can tell you that centrists and moderates are used, abused, and run over by revolutionaries and reactionaries whenever the discontent of the citizenry reaches a high enough level. The discontent in this country has reached that level, which is why we are engaged in an all out war between democracy and autocracy. There cannot be any middle ground in this war for the same reason that there could not be any middle ground in the French or Russian Revolutions. The R-fascist party must be thoroughly defeated and discredited before a moderate party has any chance to survive. Like it or not, conservatives and liberals who believe in democracy have to rally around the strongest opposition to the R-fascists, and the Democratic Party is the only party that has the organization and power to defeat the fascists.

I know it is difficult for real conservatives to swallow, but the Democratic Party must succeed in achieving its progressive objectives in order to rally its base in defense of our system of government. Young people are disenchanted with Joe Biden because they do not see him as another Roosevelt — FDR or Teddy. Young people quite understandably feel as though they are being ignored and left behind. They, the younger voters, want their own Roosevelt. They want a national leader who will shake up the entire system, advance the interests of the younger generations, and build a better future. When they hear moderate they sarcastically ask, “moderate on whose side?” To them a centrist or moderate is someone who supports meaningless or inadequate changes that preserve the corrupt agendas of the special interests -- much to the detriment of everyone else! If democracy survives, the future will be to the left of moderate or what the pundits mistakenly call centrists today!

As for the conservatives who believe in democracy, they can always fight with us about our agenda after the threat of the fascists has been removed!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/28/2113172/-Moderate-On-Who-s-Side

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