Both “A” and “B” — The Phantom Center

So, what falls in the “center” for Obama’s legacy? What did Obama do that was successfully bipartisan — both conservative enough to win Republican votes and liberal enough to appease progressives?

This section of the Venn Diagram is going to be the shortest of the four, because the answer to this question takes up just one word: nothing. Go down the list of Obama’s policies, and none of them fill in the center of the Venn Diagram. It’s a phantom center, a myth.

The Republican Party is so far off their rockers that they’ll accept nothing that isn’t purely conservative and theocratic. Even the House GOP’s original proposal for axing Medicaid as a huge tax cut for the rich wasn’t conservative enough for some Republicans.

This is why the “Neither ‘A’ nor ‘B’” column above was so extensive: even some of Obama’s most conservative measures as president were insufficiently far right for the likes of Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell. This is why “compromises” like a $12 minimum wage that “appeal to Republicans” are almost entirely delusional; the Republican Party simply won’t accept anything north of $7.25. In fact, Republicans are currently lowering the minimum wage in several states.

The failure of the Republican Party to support anything with even a tinge of progressivism attests to one conclusion: bending over backwards for bipartisanship with the GOP is a lost cause for the Democrats.

But fortunately, there is a solution. There is an actual way to achieve progressive policies, even in such a divided, right-leaning country.

The Solution

The Democratic Party has two options. It can run to the left, or it can run to the right.

As can be seen above, when the Democrats run to the right with candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the geographical center between Democrats and Republicans (the purple dot) is promptly skewed towards the authoritarian right.

However, when we run true progressives like Berniecrats or Justice Democrat candidates, the middle-ground between Republicans and Democrats — the purple dot — is pushed towards the libertarian left.

This is compromise 101. If you get an offer of $50 for a painting and you ask for $60 instead, you may come away with a solid $55. If you go the “moderate” route and raise to $51 instead, you’re missing out on a potential four dollars.

Kyle Kulinski of Secular Talk takes it even one step further: “In the U.S., it makes sense to support candidates who are more liberal than you, because that person is not gonna get everything that they want and everything that they ask for…If the person is to the left of you and a fighter, well then the middleground where we get the compromise, where we get the legislation, might be actually be just standard progressive stuff that we like.”

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

This isn’t rocket science: a further left starting point yields further left policies, even under the conditions of compromise (note the movement of the purple dot above). This is a main reason that Europe leans further to the left than the United States: it has more progressive voices in the room.

This seems like a no brainer, but a main argument of Hillary Clinton and many of her supporters is that running to the right is the true way to “get things done.” If she means conservative things, then surely yes. But in the long run, running to the left yields more progressive results. (Surely, not every proposal from FDR came to pass, but his presidency was undoubtedly miles more progressive than that of Bill Clinton).

The rebuttal that corporate Democrats will make to this is that, even though center-right Democrats may be less liberal than actual progressives in Congress, at least they’ll actually get into Congress (in other words, running to the right helps you win). But any objective analysis of recent elections will clearly indicate otherwise.

Jeremy Corbyn’s progressive Labour Party is currently polling well ahead of the Tories, and Bernie Sanders is still the most popular politician in America. Meanwhile, this April, a Kansas Berniecrat came within seven points of winning a deep-red district that regularly went to Republicans by over 30 points. In stark contrast, Hillary Clinton lost the election to one of the most beatable candidates in electoral history, center-right Democrat Jon Ossoff lost big in a winnable Georgia district, and miraculously, the Democratic Party has a lower approval rating than Donald Trump. It’s not our opinion that running to the right is a terrible strategy for the Democrats. It’s the statistical consensus.

In short, the bipartisan Democratic approach tends to result in less progressive policies and a lower chance of winning elections. If you are a liberal in any sense, it should be as plain as the nose on your face that effective progressive bipartisanship is a myth in today’s political system.

The path forward for the Democratic Party is not to run to the right. The solution is to fight unabashedly for truly progressive values, for the sake of future victories and for the sake of humanity.