By Frank F Islam & Ed Crego, October 10, 2024 (Image credits: Tom de Boor, DALL-E 3, et al)

Over the past decade, MAGA conservatives have pushed the Republican party into the outer right lane and the ultra-progressives have pushed the Democratic party into the outer left lane.

The future of our American democracy will be determined by whether the American voters in this presidential election year can enable this nation to rediscover the center lane.

Perspectives on the Center’s Potential

The importance of the center lane is stressed in a recent book, The Center Must Hold, edited by Yair Zivan, and in the landslide victory of the Labor Party in Great Britain’s national elections held on July 4.

Yair Zivan was a foreign policy advisor to the Prime Minister of Israel. In an Atlantic article based upon his chapter in the book, he declares:

At a time when politics too often feels like a negative force, when politicians are more divisive and divided than the public they seek to represent, and when intransigence feels unavoidable, centrism can offer a dramatic break from the trajectory of politics across the world. It is the antidote to populism; it is the politics of hope.

Zivan clarifies that the center is not simply about being in the middle, writing:

Centrism has a set of core values, a set of beliefs that underpin the entire political approach: a focus on moderation and pragmatism; an embrace of complexity; a deep and unwavering commitment to liberal democracy, including the essential institutions that uphold it; an understanding of the value of compromise; a belief in equality of a positive liberal patriotism; and a trust that through balancing the tensions that exist in every nation, we can make people’s lives better.

Under the leadership of Keir Starmer, the Labor Party in Great Britain translated the centrism concept of a moderate platform and agenda into concrete results, winning 412 seats out of the 650 seats in the British Parliament. In his first public speech delivered outside 10 Downing Street in London, after he became Prime Minister, Starmer stated:

But now our country has voted decisively for change, for national renewal and a return of politics to public service.

When the gap between the sacrifices made by people and the service they receive from politicians grows this big, it leads to a weariness in the heart of a nation, a draining away of the hope, the spirit, the belief in a better future — that we need to move forward together. Now this wound, this lack of trust, can only be healed by actions, not words.

In his remarks, Starmer also observed:

Yet, if I am honest, service is merely a precondition of hope, and it is surely clear to everyone that our country needs a bigger reset, a rediscovery of who we are. Because no matter how fierce the storms of history, one of the great strengths of this nation has always been our ability to navigate away to calmer waters.

And yet this depends upon politicians, particularly those who stand for stability and moderation — as I do recognizing when we must change course. For too long now, we turned a blind eye as millions slid into greater insecurity.

Nurses, builders, drivers, carers, people doing the right thing, working harder every day, recognized at moments like this before, yet, as soon as the cameras stop rolling, their lives are ignored. I want to say very clearly to those people — not this time. Changing a country is not like flicking a switch. The world is now a more volatile place. This will take a while.

In spite of Starmer’s overwhelming victory in Great Britain, it should be noted that there is not a trend toward the center around the world today. For example, even though the center still holds in Europe, the far right’s presence has grown across the European Union in countries such as France, the Netherlands, and Germany.

The U.S. Tugged to the Right and the Left

Pulling to the Right

In the U.S., Donald Trump and his MAGA supporters have migrated the Republican Party from a moderate and conservative group to a right or extreme-right leaning organization.

We described the current status of the Republican Party in our blog “The Republican Devolutionary War,” stating:

The Republican Party exists now in name only. It is now the Party of Trump, which includes, among others: MAGA loyalists, conservative right-wing extremists, those who feel they are outsiders or victims, evangelical Christians, traditional Republicans who have not left the Republican Party because of Trump, and would hold their nose and vote for him rather than for Joe Biden or any Democratic candidate for president.

In that blog we also noted that if Trump were re-elected, the Project 2025 plan developed through the leadership of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation could provide the framework for moving the party and the government further to the right, writing:

Some people might not care if Donald Trump has captured, the mind, body, and soul of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, that is only the starting point for attempting to take over the mind, body, and soul of the United States of America and to convert it to the Country of Trump.

The plan for doing this at the federal level — and from the top down — is laid out in detail in the Project 2025/Presidential Transition Project. The goal of Project 2025, as stated on its website, is as follows:

It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.

As we move toward the election, Trump has repeatedly tried to distance himself from Project 2025. He first did this in a statement he posted in July on Truth Social that he had no connection to Project 2025.

Patrick Svitek of the Washington Post reported at that time:

… Trump said on his Truth Social platform that he knows “nothing about Project 2025.”

“I have no idea who is behind it,” he wrote Friday. “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Even though this statement was posted on Truth Social, that does not make it true. In fact, given that it was posted by Donald Trump, it probably has a better chance of being false than being true.

Evidence for that assessment comes from Trump himself who, after asserting he knows “nothing about Project 2025,” goes on to state, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they are saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.”

Trump knows nothing but he knows some things. Case closed!

Pulling to the Left

The case against those pulling to the left comes in three articles from the New York Times written by Nicholas Kristof, Sarah Isgur, and Pamela Paul.

Kristof begins his opinion column, titled “What Have We Liberals Done to the West Coast,” by writing:

As Democrats make their case to voters around the country this fall, one challenge is that some of the bluest parts of the country — cities on the West Coast — are a mess.

Centrist voters can reasonably ask: Why put liberals in charge nationally when the places where they have greatest control are plagued by homelessness, crime, and dysfunction?

In the article, he points out the problem in these areas, from San Diego to San Francisco to Seattle, but also points out those problems are unique to the west coast and that “overall, liberal places have enjoyed faster economic growth and higher living standards than conservative places.”

Based upon his analysis, Kristoff concludes “…my take is that the West Coast’s central problem is not so much that it’s unserious as that it’s infected with an ideological purity that is focused more on intentions than on oversight and outcomes.”

Sarah Isgur takes her critique beyond the West Coast progressives to a national level, in her guest essay “Why Activists Keep Failing the Causes That Fire Them Up.”

Isgur says that activists should not be satisfied with executive actions by the President to get things done, because they can be easily reversed by the next president with a different agenda. She recommends instead working diligently at the congressional level to get bipartisan legislation passed on issues that matter.

In her piece, Isgur observes:

Left-wing activists seem giddy about President Biden’s new policy granting legal protections to hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants married to U.S. citizens. Without irony, one immigration activist said, “This is the biggest thing since DACA.” The lawyers ready to challenge the executive action are already warming up in the bullpen.

In her concluding paragraph, she states:

The fact that many activists are content with fleeting executive actions is unforgivable. These actions are often worse than getting nothing at all… They let Congress off the hook. They give the president credit where none is due. And they fail at their most important job, which is to force lasting change for the people who need it most.

Pamela Paul comes at the left-wing activists from a different angle in her opinion column, “Who You Calling a Conservative?”, which she opens by stating, “You know you’ve touched a nerve with progressive activists when they tell you not just that you’re wrong but that you’re on the other side.”

Paul proceeds to describe how she and other journalists have been attacked or questioned because of delivering opinions or positions different than those being advanced by the left-wing/progressive activists. Then she notes:

In the run-up to a tight election with a weak Democratic candidate and a terrifying Republican opponent, pushing liberals and centrists out of the conversation not only exacerbates polarization, it’s also spectacularly counterproductive.

Take President Biden’s recent executive order severely limiting asylum. The Congressional Progressive Caucus chair Pramila Jayapal accused him of trying to “out-Republican the Republicans.” Mother Jones called the action “Trump-like.”

She provides other examples of left-wing “extremism” and concludes her piece as follows:

Those on the Democratic side of the spectrum have traditionally been far better at nuance, complexity, and compromise than Republicans. It would be to our detriment if policies on which a broad swath of Americans agree are deliberately tanked by a left wing that has moved as far to the left as Republicans have moved to the right. Those who denounce militant fealty within the Republican Party shouldn’t enforce similar purity tests in their own ranks.

Paul, Isgur, and Kristoff are all correct. The answer is not to do nothing, to advocate for extreme points of view, or to criticize those who disagree with you, but to do the hard work necessary to build the broad-based coalition that is necessary to effect positive change that is beneficial to the citizens of the United States and the future of our democracy.

Rediscovering the Center Lane

As we stated at the beginning of this blog, “The future of this Democracy will be determined by whether the American voters can enable this nation to rediscover the center lane.”

It will be the responsibility of the concerned citizens of this country to organize and join together to facilitate rediscovery of that center lane. Each concerned citizen will have to develop a personal plan for how she or he can best become civically engaged in the political process to reach out to those in the center whether they are Republicans, Democrats, or independents.

No two individual plans will be identical, but they should all follow this advice provided by Yair Zivan in The Center Must Hold:

Centrists will need to avoid two temptations in their attempt to win over voters: giving ground to the extremes on either side and mimicking their tactics, resorting to conspiracy, fear, or immoral campaign tactics. Both are bound to fail. Voters will never buy a cheap imitation when they can buy the real thing, and no moderate voter will reward the behavior they abhor in others.

We would add to that advice: don’t support someone for president who would never walk or work in the center lane.

That said, let us say unequivocally that there will be no center lane if Donald Trump wins the election and returns to the White House. The far-right lane will grow wider and wider, and democracy as we have known it will disappear.

Trump’s team of advisors wanted to reduce the general public’s understanding of this perilous situation by distancing him from the Project 2025 Transition Plan, and by producing a Republican Platform that took any radical position on issues such as abortion off the table.

The Trump team was successful in ensuring the Republican party platform was anodyne on controversial issues. In their article, Michael Scherer and Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post report,

Republican delegates adopted presumptive nominee Donald Trump’s proposed convention platform at a meeting in Milwaukee on Monday, abandoning long-held positions on abortion and same-sex marriage while embracing new plans for mass deportation and a new opposition to changing the retirement age for Social Security.

The first three days of the convention were fairly sanguine with few controversial comments. Then on the fourth and final day, The Trump Effect on what was formerly the Republican Party revealed itself in full bloom.

Male machismo took the stage with Kid Rock singing “American Bad Ass,” professional wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping open his t-shirt, and Dana White, CEO of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, stating that Trump was the “toughest, most resilient guy he’d ever met in his life.” Trump himself entered the convention arena to give his acceptance speech to James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World.”

In the beginning of his over 90-minute remarks, Trump was somewhat restrained and subdued. About 15 minutes into his commentary, he became the Trump we have come to know, meandering, boasting, blaming, attacking, and telling lie after lie.

That sealed the deal. Even though the extreme positions are off the table in the platform and the Republicans have and will continue to try to distance themselves from the radical proposals in Project 2025, rest assured they are still on the back burner and will be taken off and popped into the oven immediately if Trump is elected.

Trump added fuel to his own self-destructive machismo fire during his dismal debate performance against Vice President Harris, during which he expressed admiration for Victor Orban, the “strongman” autocratic leader of Hungary. He then continued to declare that Orban had said “the most respected, the most feared person is Donald Trump. We had no problems when Trump was president.”

We state this not to instill fear, but in the recognition of the reality that on November 5, 2024, democracy is on the ballot and we American voters will decide whether our democracy will be protected or decimated.

In all fairness, we must acknowledge that Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate Governor Tim Walz have been accused by Trump, Vance, and some Republicans as “dangerously” or “ultra” liberal. They are definitely liberals, Democrats who could be characterized as center-left. No objective observer, however, would put them in the extreme left lane.

This perspective is reinforced by Elaine Kamarck and William Galston of the Brookings Institution. They concluded their commentary, written based upon their review of Vice President Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention, by stating:

Taken as a whole, Harrisʼs acceptance speech positioned her as a center-left Democrat in the mold of Joe Biden rather than Bernie Sanders. It embraced what she termed the pride and privilege of being an American. And as if to show that Republicans have not cornered the market on patriotism and American exceptionalism, she told her audience that together, they had the opportunity to write the next chapter of the most extraordinary story ever told.

In closing, we have written this piece with the firm belief that the center lane is the lane which will instill the politics and policies of hope and public service for the United States of America and the American people.

We are confident that Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz will drive in the center lane. We know this because they have demonstrated their commitment to public service and hope in their personal and professional lives.

In his inaugural address on January 20, 1961, John F. Kennedy famously said, “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.” In this election year, our answer must be:

We can take the center lane. We can elect Kamala Harris President and her

running mate Tim Walz as Vice President. We can ensure that our country

recommits itself to the politics and policies of hope and public service for all.