This is the last installment in our You Know You Might Be a (Fill in the Blank) If series. If you missed Parts 1 and 2, don’t forget to read:

• You Know You Might Be a Tea Partier If…
• You Know You Might Be a Liberal If…

You know you might be a moderate if you:

• Are part of the undecided vote in every poll.
• Wish you could vote by remote control so you wouldn’t have to miss a minute of Real Housewives of Cincinnati.
• Only vote every third election, regardless of what kind of election it is or what kinds of initiatives are on the ballot.
• Know so little about candidates that you vote for whoever appears at the top of the ballot.
• Still vote for Pat Paulson just to piss off the real politicians.
• You think the three branches of government are dumb, dumber, and dumbest.
• You think Supreme Court decisions are based on rationality or fairness rather than the Constitution.
• You think Congress sucks, but every time you see something screwed up you say, “There oughta be a law…”
• You think that voters can vote on the constitutionality of laws.
• Vote the way the last campaign worker outside the polls told you to.
• Will only cast your vote if it doesn’t “cancel out” your spouse’s.
• Find punch card ballots advanced technology.
• Think all out war is justifiable until you find out how many people get killed and how much it costs.
• You watch Katie Couric, Brian Williams, or Jay Leno for all your news.
• Don’t watch the Daily Show because you don’t get the jokes.
• Don’t realize the Daily Show is a comedy show.
• Can’t drive a stick shift.
• Love the in-depth articles in USA Today.
• Are for something before you are against something, right after you were for it and against it simultaneously.
• Are annoyed that ballots aren’t in multiple choice format.
• Don’t know who Sarah Palin is.
• When you find out who she is, you think you could vote for her because she has an honest face.
• Think taxes are too high while voting for high-ticket ballot initiatives.
• Don’t understand why they haven’t been able to find that Osama Bin Laden fella after all these years.
• Don’t recognize the names Mitch McConnell, Harry Reid, or Nancy Pelosi, but can name all the judges and contestants to ever appear on So You Think You Can Dance.
• Were going to vote, but hadn’t heard about it being election day.
• Complain vociferously about policies and elected officials while ignoring the fact you didn’t vote.
• Believe in term limits so you won’t have to vote as often.
• Hate it when a Presidential address comes on and “ruins my shows”.
• You carry more than $25,000 on your credit card and don’t understand how long it will take to pay it off in minimum payments.
• You think the answer to paying off the debt on one credit card can be reduced by transferring it all to a new credit card with a 0.1% lower APR.
• Can’t balance a checkbook (although this could also be equally true for liberals and conservatives).
• Think war is imminent when a story appears saying the Pentagon has a war plan for invading North Korea without realizing they have constantly updated plans for every country on Earth…including Canada.
• Think the mainstream media is too liberal.
• Think the mainstream media is too conservative.
• Think the mainstream media is both too conservative and too liberal at the same time.
• Don’t know what the terms liberal and conservative mean.
• Never read newspapers, magazines, or watch the news.
• Complain Congress is made up of fat cats while voting for CEOs whose previous experience was turning their former companies into smoking holes in the ground while collecting a severance package greater than the GDP of Guatemala.
• Complain about unions while taking time off from your 40-hour a week job to get company-supplied medical treatment for the black lung and crushed leg you got in a non-union coal mine.
• Complain about executive compensation, but follow the company’s voting recommendation when the proxy statement for your 3 shares of AT&T shows up.
• Thought Ted Stevens gave an enlightening explanation of the tubes and trucks that make up the Internet.
• Spend a lot of time playing war-based video games while being undecided about Iraq and Afghanistan.
• Couldn’t form an opinion if your life depended on it.
• Don’t remember to mail in your absentee ballot until 3 months after the election after finding it in the junk drawer in your kitchen.
• Appreciate the points from both right and left, but can’t vote because the positions seem so similar.
• Think all Congressional votes are based on a simple majority.

I was going to post this topic under a specific state as there is a race catching a lot of attention, but I am going to broaden this question and talk about Democratic strategy versus core Democratic values.

That actually brings up a larger question about Democratic values and what are they... really?

There is a growing movement since 2004 of evangelical leaders embracing the Democratic Party. Many feel that Bush used this base to get him elected, then turned on them.

The question I have for the readers of this post today, is:

Is a growing Christian base of leaders and voters good for the party?

There's more...

I love Israel.  I'm not ashamed to admit that, and I don't moderate that view depending on where I am.

But there are times when even someone like me has to step back and say - LOUDLY - that something is wrong.

No, this isn't about Gaza.

This is about a decision that was recently made that, in my opinion, crosses any threshold of what is acceptable or decent.  Israel's Central Election Committee just banned Arab-only parties (there are two parties who are mixed and have Arab-members) from running in the upcoming Knesset elections.  Say what you will about Israel, but I have always held that as long as Israel conducted itself as a democracy - however flawed - it deserved the same level of respect as any democratic country.

But I draw the line here.  It is a sad day for me that I have to say that I am SEVERLY disappointed in Israel.  Regardless of what happens, the fact that this has even happened is devastating to me.

There's more...

Both Barack Obama and John McCain came to national prominence as centrists. Obama seized the lyrical center - Reagan style with a multicultural twist - thanks to his 2004 Democratic National Convention Speech, and McCain won the Republican nomination because he was the Republican candidate most independent of his party leader, George W. Bush. Nevertheless, partisans from both extremes are insisting that their respective candidates run away from the center. Many liberals, especially in the blogosphere, claim that Obama's defeat of Hillary Clinton repudiated Democratic centrism; conservatives keep warning McCain to shore up his base. Amid this struggle, where are the passionate moderates, the people who believe in a principled center, both as the shrewd place to be - and the right place to be?

Unfortunately, the gravitational physics of American politics, especially during election time, tends to polarize. Our culture and our politics reward the loudmouths, the partisans, the controversy-generators, rather than the bridge-builders, the centrists, the peacemakers. And, in fairness, moderates are frequently too reasonable, too passive. It is easy to see the forces pulling the candidates to particular extremes; where are the forces pushing toward the center?

As I argue in my latest book, "Leading From the Center: Why Moderates Make the Best Presidents," (http://www.leadingfromthecenter.com), America's greatest presidents were maestros of moderation, who understood that the trick to effective leadership in a democracy is finding the middle, or creating a new middle. George Washington viewed his role as more of a referee than a crusader. He preached repeatedly to his squabbling subordinates, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, about finding common ground. Abraham Lincoln spent most of his time in office, negotiating, compromising, cajoling, and conniving to keep the badly divided North united against the South. That is why he emphasized fighting to keep the Union together rather than liberating the slaves, despite his personal dislike of slavery. Theodore Roosevelt, although temperamentally immoderate, proved to be an adept arbitrator, ending the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, and even earning a Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic skills in resolving the Russo-Japanese war. Franklin Roosevelt, though often denounced as a radical, in fact tacked carefully between the extremes of the radical left and the complacent right, inching America toward a modified welfare state.

Americans have a tradition of muscular moderation, and if we don't figure out how to push our candidates towards the centre, rather than to the poles, we are going to deeply regret it.

-gt

There's more...

In his post announcing the retirement of Republican congressman Ray LaHood of Illinois, Cliff Schecter links to this Chicago Tribune article written by "AP Staff Writer" Jan Dennis. The article essentially serves as a political eulogy for LaHood, painting him as possessing that elusive trait reserved only for so-called moderate Republicans (and Joe Lieberman) that populate the virtuous middle of the media's imagination: he brings those partisan bickerers in Washington together.

Peoria Mayor Jim Ardis says retiring U.S. Rep. Ray LaHood will be remembered for trying to bring Democrats and Republicans together in an era where partisan politics often gets in the way of the common good.

And what does Dennis cite as an example of his bringing the two sides together?

"I'm looking forward to retiring from public life, but not life," said LaHood, who got high marks for keeping the U.S. House on an even keel when he presided over impeachment hearings against then-President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Hmm, doesn't mention that LaHood voted Yes on all 4 articles of that partisan witchhunt. What a uniter.

But worst of all, look at how Dennis frames Democrats' impending pursuit of LaHood's open seat:

But observers say the Peoria Republican's surprise decision to step down after his seventh term likely will touch off new waves of political bickering as Democrats try to grab a central Illinois congressional seat controlled by Republicans for nearly 90 years.

The nerve of the evil Democrats to presume to even try to win that seat! An election between the two parties? Actually giving the voters a stark choice between candidates? How dare they!

What other choice does the right wing have, I suppose, than to advance this idea that the pursuit of Republican seats by Democrats (aka, you know, democracy) is a form of the partisan bickering commonly blamed these days for no progress in Washington. No mention, of course, that the public actually agrees with the Democrats on virtually every issue, so those who are "getting in the way of the common good" are Republicans themselves. Nor is there a similar critique of the Republicans' attempts to retake seats won by Democrats in swing districts last year. As Schecter notes, we will likely see several more retirement announcements among so-called moderate Republicans in blue states because after years of securing their own power by enabling the extremist Bush agenda, voters are onto the hollowness of their "moderation."

An interesting side note: the wire version of this article has been stripped of the anti-Democratic spin contained within the Chic/Tribune version, an apparent admission that Dennis's unedited piece might as well have been an RNC pres release.

There's more...