The Center Holds [UPDATED]

Bull Moose, a big Lieberman booster, "gloats and kvells," asserting that last night was a victory for "the vital center":

There is great joy in Mooseland. The nutroots have struck out. Joe Lieberman has prevailed. The vital center is victorious! [ ... ]

Despite the fevered efforts of the McGovenites with Modems, the sensible voters of Connecticut rejected polarization and partisanship.

Don't believe the pathetic nutroots spin. In August, they engaged in premature triumphalism believing that they vanquished the vital center. [ ... ]

Now, these tough blogosphere operatives kvetch, moan and cry. [ ... ] They cannot handle the truth. Polarization is passe.

The central reason that the Democrats have achieved their major triumph is that they captured the center that was abandoned by the GOP. The Moose welcomes the new group of Blue Dogs.

Polarization has its limits. And Joe Lieberman will return to the Senate as the leader of the vital center.

Amazing how fast this thing turned around, isn't it? Remember this crisis of centrist faith? That was all of 6 weeks ago! Karl Rove was the Ace of Base, bipartisanship was dead and buried, ideology was hip and passionate. Centrists by the dozens had crises of confidence, examining whether they (we) weren't really bland and irrelevant, merely reacting and splitting the difference rather than driving the debate.

Suddenly, we're cool. And in an even weirder co-resurrection, it's the Democratic party, not long ago terminally irrelevant, that may turn out to have the pragmatic smarts to embrace us. Who's reacting now? Even George W. Bush wants to dig his dusty bipartisan duds out of his Texas guv'nor's trunk.

It flipped so fast, it's like that moment when you go from seeing two faces to a vase. Make one red in the face and one blue in the face, and this is actually a perfect diagram of the political perceptual shift:

I don't know about you, but my head is spinning! Perfectly balanced, like a top!

UPDATE: Barry Casselman in The Washington Times tallies up the hard evidence that the Dems won by claiming the center.

Comments

[Pastor_Jeff]

If Nancy Pelosi really governs with cvility, openness, and bipartisanship, why ... I'll take back most of the bad things I've thought about her :-)

[Pastor_Jeff]

And double bonus points if she and Reid can avoid the ego and hubris of Lott and Gingrich.

Some time in the wilderness will be good for the Repubs, and I'm hopeful to see a more centrist governing consensus arising.

[Tully]

I think Moose is dead on. The Blue Dog/DLC faction cleaned up. They beat a lotta Republicans by running conservatives against them! Cool.

If it drags 'em both back towards the bargaining table for some actual work on issues, how can you help but cheer? Hope it works that way.

[meade]

"...my head is spinning! Perfectly balanced, like a top!"

I'd put that on my blog masthead (if only I had a blog masthead).

[Icepick]

I wouldn't get too excited yet. Leiberman will be in charge of nothing. The blue dogs in the house will be in charge of nothing. Pelosi will be in charge, as will Reid. Rangle, Conyers, Waxman, Leahy and Kennedy will be the names that come up most frequently in news reports. Gates will not be confirmed, he will be given a recess appointment. (Gates has already gone through the appointment process before. Tom Harkin pointed out then that Gates had the exact same set of character flaws that Rumsfeld has.) And a year from now we'll be pulling out of Iraq and Afghanistan, because that will be the easiest way to "solve the problem". After all, we're not really fighting a war, so what the hell is our military doing over there anyway?

[karen]

Icepick- big frosty hug for ya!!

Leahy comes from my state(sorry, sorry- so sorry). Now we have Bernie Sanders to join him(again w/the sorry).

What really freaks me out is that 25 yrs ago Sanders won Mayor of Burlington as a Progressive and ran the Dems outta the city- as i heard it.

This election, he ran as an Independent/Dem and party(for the very 1st time) w/the Dems- huggin', kissin' and all.

Am i the only one that was so imprinted by ~Animal Farm~????