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| Re: GMO Labeling Bill Passes VT Legislature (1182530) | |||
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Re: GMO Labeling Bill Passes VT Legislature |
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Posted by Nilet on Sat May 10 19:25:21 2014, in response to Re: GMO Labeling Bill Passes VT Legislature, posted by AlM on Sat May 10 09:58:49 2014. The center used to be fairly easy to pin down, but now we have "the center" as defined by the policies people support and "the center" as determined by the policies the oligarchs support and enact. Thanks to voter suppression, redistricting, Citizens United, and the two parties' rightward shift* it's now the case that the government is considerably further right than the people.*In previous times, both parties were forced to remain fairly close to the center lest they lose votes to the less extremist party. In recent decades, the Republicans began shifting to the right which would normally cost them elections to the centrist Democrats, except that the Democrats exploited the Republicans' rightward shift by moving right themselves— with only two parties, the Democrats have every incentive to move right because as long as they're less extreme than the Republicans, they're still closer to more people than the Republicans while closing the gap opens more votes. That is, if 0 was furthest-right and 100 was furthest left, and the Republicans strayed as far as 10, then if the Democrats moved to 20, they would "own" the votes of anyone whose opinions fell between 15 and 100. If they stayed at 60, they would only be closer to those whose opinions fell between 35 and 100. That their move rightward might alienate the left and convince them to vote third-party or not at all doesn't seem to have occurred to them, even though they routinely lose elections to the more extremist Republicans in spite of their plans. |
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