Quote of the Day

"'Centrism' as defined in the political dialogue today means 'being in the middle of elite opinion in Washington, D.C.' But if you plot this 'center' on the continuum that is American public opinion, you will find that it is nowhere near the actual center of the country at large.

The center of elite Washington opinion is ardently free trade, against national health care, opposed to market regulation, for continuing the Iraq War, and supportive of the flattest tax structure we've had in contemporary American history. That center is on the extreme fringe of the center of American public opinion, which is ardently skeptical of free trade, for universal health care, supportive of strong market regulations, insistent that the war end soon, and in favor of making the tax system more progressive.

This is not some conspiracy theory I'm putting forward here - it's all out in the open, proved by public opinion data readily available to anyone who looks for it."

--David Sirota, trying to figure out what pundits mean by the 'center'.