And where is that place, mentally?
There is a tiny sliver of space separating the political left and right in this country. Most of the population seem to exist in between the two on that tiny sliver.
Try some evidence based thinking, and leave your preconceived opinions behind. Gallup's not my favorite, but you can see a similar result ~1yr ago from Pew.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx
This one makes out 27% of the population as Reps and 33% as Dems.
The 38% as Independent is not a "tiny sliver". I think the Pew poll had 14% as Libertarian leaning and another similar percentage as "neoModern", Daly show watchers, and a lot of minor components.
Of course no new political party can hope to take in all 38%, nor even close, but there is clearly a LOT of room for a new significant party to arise. *IF* it can find a way to appeal to the disenfranchised.
Now you have two groups finding common ground to use your words "far beyond Left & Right".
OK, fine but where are they?
I never suggested that I could predict the loci of a new party movement. I would GUESS that anti-war sentiment, monetary policy, and some form of fiscal restraint would be part of the agenda - but I could be wrong. It's easy to know that hot wet weather presage mosquitoes; I am not claiming to know precisely which puddles will spawn them.
The Tea Party is derided by all of the left and some of the right as loons, crackpots playing dress up, crazies wanting a revolution, etc. MoveOn.org is looked at the same (except the dress up part) by all of the right and some of the left.
Using casebro's political circle model, that would put the place these people are coming together on the extreme far side of the circle where they are all by themselves, unloved and unwanted. Small wonder they will make friends with whatever other loons wander into their la la land.
Neither move-on nor TP are nuts, that characterization is an attempt by parties to marginalize dissenters and often orchestrated by political spinners working for parties. Don't take that bait till you read some competent polls.
Casebro's analysis is overly simplistic. Politics is a multidimensional space. To describe this as a closed circle ignores all the various dimensions and is attracted only to the idea that the left-fringe and right-fringe often have
somethings in common (they are close on some dimensions). It's very easy to see, for example, that the anti-War DenisKucinich-ites and the anti-War/anti-Interventionist libertarian-leaners have a "less military" dimension in common. They may well share 'abortion on demand' and other personal liberties dimension. They are unlikely to share a common view on spending for redistributionist social programs. If you imagine that the Dem or the Rep party don't hold together groups that oppose each other in certain dimensions - you are kidding yourself. That is exactly what they do.
I think you might want to study the political dimensions where Reps and Dems parties actually disagree with each other in practice before attempting an analysis.
Yeah, going back to Kucinich and Paul there was "common ground", but that only exists when no one brings up anti-discrimination laws, what they want education to actually be, healthcare, etc.
I think you are quite wrong about anti-discrimination (you are overgeneralizing a comment by Rand Paul abt the authority of the FedGov). Yes, there are many dimensions where these groups dissent. So what ? You ignore that Reps and Dems internally dissent a lot too.
YellowDog Dems vs Progressive vs Socialist Dems oppose each other in many ways.
NeoCon Reps and Religious-Right Reps Libertarian-leaning Reps oppose each other too.
"Big Tent" party necessarily means that some dimensions of dissent are being purposely ignored.
To imagine that slapping a party label on a group of individuals makes difference evaporate is silly.
It's easy to get both sides to agree that something is "broken", but that doesn't mean they are on "common ground".
Yes, that's quite correct, and I never suggested otherwise. Try to understand these as dimensions, where each individual assigns a certain weight or importance to the dimension itself, as well as have a preferred position on that dimension.
So for example the abortion issue is a dimension, and some ppl assign a great importance to this, and others have less concern. Some believe abortion is murder of a human and rationally conclude it should never be permitted, others that it's an awful thing that should only be permitted in extremis, others believe to varying extents that it's a personal right of the pregnant woman to control her own body with less or no regard for the fetus. One dimension, many positions, many different assignments of importance.
You only need ~27 critical polar dimensions to create an opposing party for each of ~110Mill individual potential US voters. Finding people who completely agree is not how a party is maintained. It's about finding a general loci on 2 or 3 or 4 dimensions of high importance where the differences on these dimensions are modest, and then agreeing to disagree about the rest.
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It seems quite likely that the in very near future that another financial crisis will lead people to choose monetary & fiscal policy as the most critical dimensions in political space. Of course it's entirely possible that some political demagoguery will mislead people into scapegoating the economic issue for some other issue. If fiscal sense rules, then some sort of a return to a conservative fiscal policy and a more careful monetary policy should take place. That may not help the Rep party given it's recent history, but it hard to see how it can't seriously damage Dem party given their recent fiscal intransigence. I am not predicting, but financial chaos does seem to correlate with all sorts of demagoguery for political ends a well as wars.
