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Full Article: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/06/02/bill-clinton-tony-blair-warning-for-progressives-00036616

Recently Bill Clinton and Tony Blair were on a podcast together, where they urged progressives to "rebuild atrophied muscles of persuasion and self-discipline". They apparently feel that progressives at this point in time care more about feeling good about themselves and moralizing than to win power or to govern, and in the process losing the political center.

"Unless progressives commit to reclaiming the center in culture wars," Blair added, they'll remain vulnerable to "some loose remark from someone" being exploited by the right and will be "hammered day in, day out. That's jut not competent politics."

The article then goes into why anyone should care that two politicians that have been put to pasture think, along with a history of how their brand of left-center politics seemed ascendant in the late 90s only to be dashed by the events of the 2000s (9/11, war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the 2008 financial crisis, etc.). It then goes on to mention that the phrase "The Vital Center" comes from a 1949 book that referred to Western democracy as an alternative to fascist and communist totalitarianism, and then explicitly compares those to the visions of the future offered by Russia and China.

The articles conclusion: Blair and Clinton may be damaged messengers, but that message is still valuable. The alternative to the vital center is the dead center — and an increasingly ugly future.

What say you? I imagine there are some people who aren't going to agree.