{"id":186985,"date":"2013-07-30T20:07:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-31T01:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/07\/30\/what-ezra-klein-said\/"},"modified":"2013-07-30T20:07:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T01:07:00","slug":"what-ezra-klein-said","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2013\/07\/30\/what-ezra-klein-said\/","title":{"rendered":"What Ezra Klein Said"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>He notes that when pundits talk about &#8220;the center&#8221;, they are <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/blogs\/wonkblog\/wp\/2013\/07\/25\/theres-no-such-thing-as-the-center\/\">endorsing a radical agenda that is overwhelmingly opposed outside the beltway<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Martin\u2019s article doesn\u2019t define \u201cthe center.\u201d But it\u2019s not the center of public opinion. It\u2019s more a reference to an amorphous Washington consensus. Insofar as that concept ever made sense, the idea was that it\u2019s the legislative center, the zone of compromise where things can actually get done. But even that concept has begun to break down in recent years, as that Washington center \u2014 what you might call the \u201cSimpson-Bowles center\u201d \u2014 no longer holds any weight in Congress.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"color: blue;\"><br \/><\/span><span style=\"color: blue;\">When you\u2019re judging policy, \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cbad\u201d are descriptions that make sense. So are \u201cpopular\u201d and \u201cunpopular,\u201d and \u201clikely to pass\u201d and \u201cno chance.\u201d But \u201cthe center\u201d? It\u2019s time to retire that one, or at least come up with a more rigorous definition of what we mean when we use it.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"color: blue;\">Word.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>He notes that when pundits talk about &#8220;the center&#8221;, they are endorsing a radical agenda that is overwhelmingly opposed outside the beltway: Martin\u2019s article doesn\u2019t define \u201cthe center.\u201d But it\u2019s not the center of public opinion. It\u2019s more a reference to an amorphous Washington consensus. Insofar as that concept ever made sense, the idea was &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1002,1003,978],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-186985","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-good-writing","category-philosophy","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186985"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186985\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}