Ann Althouse positions herself in the "moderate" middle between two extremes (warning: impending blogospheric personality spat, about which I care little):

"Wouldn't it be *awesome* if Obama were as radical as the Rights thinks he is?" Tweets Ana Marie Cox about an article that I didn't click to when I originally read it yesterday. This morning, I happened upon an Andy McCarthy post over at NRO, decided to blog about it, and thought it would go perfectly with what Cox had written. I'd almost blogged Cox's remark, because I thought it was scarily left wing, and I wanted to blog McCarthy because I thought interestingly extreme.

MCarthy's "interestingly extreme" position, it turns out, is his contention that top Democrats (Pelosi, Reid, Obama, and their underlings) are not motivated so much by a desire to be re-elected, but by a desire "to execute the permanent transformation of American society." Both Cox and Althouse are fairly sure he is wrong on this.

Um, but why? Obama pledged to "transform America." Which is the "extreme" position? To assume he was lying when he said that? Or to assume he was telling the truth about a rather extreme position of his own? (It's apparently not "extreme" for Obama to want to transform American society, but it is 'extreme' for his opponents to note he said it and believe his own words???)

Further, the current healthcare plan polls as massively unpopular. Unless we conclude Pelosi doesn't know what polls are, we must conclude that she knows passing the bill will hurt her party's popularity, and possibly cost them the majority. If so, then the passage of the plan is indeed more important than getting re-elected.

How I think, or how I want to think, is remarkably simple. I look for a model that fits the data. If the current model doesn't work, and another solves more problems, fits more behaviors, then I jettison the first model for the second one. My old mental model assumed Pelosi et al were persuing what they thought (perhaps wrongly) was a mandate. That view breaks down, given current data. The replacement model says Democrat leaders aren't angling for short-term popularity, and thus (being at least vaguely rational actors) must therefore be thinking of some longer-term goal.

That may be wrong, but simply characterizing it as "extreme" doesn't shed any light on how or why. I wish Ann (or anyone) would propose her more "moderate" explanation which makes sense of these new developments, so that we could all analyze it — instead of merely dismissing Andy's position as "extreme". (Isn't it also a bit "extreme" to ram through a wildly unpopular bill using a unprecedented (and possibly unconstitutional) strategy? How can you explain one extreme behavior, aside from appealing to chance, without appeal to an equally 'extreme' model of what's going on?)

I don't know Ann very well, but she seems nice, and frequently trenchant in her observations. And I have much sympathy with anyone who dares resist the flow in Madison, Wisconsin. But she did vote for Obama and then realize, later (with, to her credit, apologies) that he wasn't the finely-tempered moderate she'd envisioned — despite (what seemed to me) copious evidence to the contrary. Was that an example of the same process which is producing this analysis? (Which I imagine, perhaps wrongly, to be: "Oh that sounds too extreme. Let's not think it.")

I hope Andy's wrong too, but I don't have a better explanation. Anyone?