The Rising Radical Center

E.J. Dione has a hopeful piece in the Washington Post about the great Democratic hope of reclaiming centrist voters from the Republicans. There is, indeed, a notable group of moderate, even moderate-conservative Democratic candidates – most importantly, Bob Casey, Jr. in Pennsylvania. I have already written about the Fighting Democrats, the 50-plus veterans running for the House and Senate. This is good all around.

My only quibble with Dione's argument is that the center needs to be radical to rise. More exactly, centrists don't have to be mad to vote as a group. The moderate center is always here. It votes regularly for someone. I think the main feature of the "centrist voting bloc" is that we want to vote for centrists.