You know, Lis....I could mebbe get behind this Sentrist Party.  I am not a registered Democrat...I'm 'undeclared'... but I volunteer to work with my county Dems.   All dozen of 'em....a great bunch of dedicated, hard-workers.  But, the apathy that we continually ran into was a heart-breaker.  The Dems seem old and tired and on some level are as uninspired as the Republicans.

It is a new century, after all.  Mebbe a new party would do some good.  But, not a Tea Party.  I don't want to take my country back.  I want to take it forward.  And, I like sensible.  I like efficiency, too.  And, I'm not as interested in making a quick financial recovery as I am in making one built on a good foundation so that when we get hit by an economic storm again, and we will, it doesn't hurt so goddam much or for so long.

Our county Dem did get elected, but nearly everything else fell into the R column.   That means that environmentally, my state is f*cked.  There will be more deregulation of the already gutted DNRE which means the acid mining will go ahead and kill my rivers and the oil industry will get the go ahead to drill in the Great Lakes....my beautiful lakes, and the shelved coal burning plants will get dusted off and everybody, well, not everybody, just the already wealthy, gets to live off the fast buck made for the next few years and after that, well, who gives a shit.  And that gravatar thing won't let me upload my pitchfork.  So, yeah.  I'll be a Sentrist.  Or an anarchist.  At this point, it's all the same to me. 

I'll give you a half-hearted amen, just for the earth and the anti-war sentiment and the fact that I like you and your writings. But I'm not real excited about your call for watering down again what we've already watered down just because we've been told that America is a "Center-Right" nation.  That notion is mere public relations shouted through the gigantic megaphones of the right wing disinformation and indoctrination machine. It's repeated often because it's what they want you to believe and it's not true, or if it is, it's true by re-definition.  Remember when we used to talk about asking people about issues without political labels? When people are asked if they want Social Security they do. When you ask them about civil rights, they're for it. When you ask them about Medicare, they want it. On and on and on. They believe in Liberal ideas, but are being led down the path of Fascism and Neo-Conservatism because of the 24/7/365 indoctrination techniques being showered upon them non-stop and in lockstep from the far right media. 

My feeling is that IF we're a center-right nation, it's because the chartmakers had to make an adjustment and center-right now means left.  The extreme right has skewed the polling so much, it's moved the line of what defines people further to the right. 

Look what happened to all the Republican moderates.  They got pushed out unless they joined the neo-cons and moved to the right. Wanting to become a Sentrist seems akin to pushing Liberals to an ideological Center just to get people to like us. What's the point?  To make us more amenable? Being sensible already on issues isn't enough? Making us more palatable to the so-called Independents is not worth the effort in my opinion snd will only leave us with few real friends.  Besides, when we water down how we feel just to be more popular, what guarantee do we have that the Center will like us? We would have only watered down ideas to offer, after all.  So, my question to you dear Lisb, is what ideas were ever devised, espoused and enacted by the watered-down middle?

Besides, if you re-brand Liberals as Sensible Centrists, blink your eyes and Sensible Sentrists will be re-defined as the New Wild-Eyed Socialists by Faux News.

We're in a war of ideas and if we keep changing our uniforms, the people hiding in Switzerland will never know which army has come to rescue them.