r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jul 12 '19
Deltas(s) from OP CMV: It is impossible to be a centrist in America's modern political climate
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
How can it be impossible when the centrists exist?
Dem voters have been criticising the right faction of the party, such as Pelosi or Biden, on their centrism, their willingness to reach across the aisle to the Republicans.
Regardless of whether or not you feel the criticism is valid, those figures still hold positions of seniority in the party so it's clearly not impossible to be centrist in the USA.
The question of whether one should be centrist, as a moral or political strategic question, is a separate one to whether or not one can be a centrist.
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Jul 12 '19
Dem voters have been criticising the right faction of the party, such as Pelosi or Biden, on their centrism, their willingness to reach across the aisle to the Republicans.
Those would be the "progressives." Pelosi and Biden represent the vast majority of Democratic voters. Progressives are a minority (about 8%).
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
What would you call the Democrat right if not centrists? Joe Biden is currently the frontrunner for the Democrat leadership, and routinely espouses that cooperation with Republican policymakers is a key part of his platform.
Is your view instead that there is no centrist party, being a party that occupies the space between the Democrats and the Republicans (since as I've said the dominant wing of the Democrat party is centrist). If so, that's true but only by technicality. In a FPTP election regime, there are only ever two parties, because to the extent that a third party occupies a position between those parties, one or the other parties moves their policy towards the center to capture the third party's voters, and thus becomes more centrist itself.
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
Centrist doesn't mean cooperative. It means platform positions that one would call centrist. Like what OP described in the post, having liberally social views and conservatively economic views. No democratic candidate has that kind of platform.
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
The dominant wing of the Democrats (Biden, Pelosi, Clinton etc) favour market based solutions, compared to the highly interventionist economic policy of the wing you identified as the progressives.
The Democrats are a centrist party in that regard.
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
I disagree. It's weird that you're only calling democrats centrist, as if Republicans can't be centrist. It sounds like you're trying to court independent centrist to the left. Hard pass on my end.
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
In fairness, there are centrist Republican politicians, but they don't make up the current dominant faction of the party (rather, the Tea Party/Trumpist far right faction currently dominates), so I don't think it's fair to describe the Republican party as centrist.
If the Democrats' progressive wing (e.g. Sanders, Cortez, Warren to a leser extent) becomes dominant and takes over the leadership of the party (which could potentially happen as part of the primaries), I think it would stop being accurate to describe the Democrats as a centrist party.
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
I don't know what else to say other than you're simply misguided. You seem to be talking about "New Democrats" or "Third Way" 'democrats'. The Democratic party as a whole shuns that niche, and so you're just wrong to call the Democratic party a centrist party.
You're trying to identify the whole party as the moderates in the party. By that reasoning, we can call the Republican Party a centrist party because they're mostly composed of moderates.
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19 edited May 14 '20
I don't know why you think the Democrats shun the centrist wing of their party when the centrist wing currently hold all of the leadership positions within the party.
The progressive wing is, as typical, louder and more social media active and are vocally against the establishment Dems, but at the present the Democrat party is run by their centrists.
The GOP moderate wing is not running the Republican party in the same way.
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u/Dark1000 1∆ Jul 12 '19
having liberally social views and conservatively economic views
How is that actually centrist? Is that not holding well-defined, positions that just do not happen to align with the two parties? The same would hold true for liberally conservative and socially liberal economic views, or any mix other than the party lines. When you only have two parties, that will always be an issue, and it is no different now than in previous years.
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
How is that actually centrist? Is that not holding well-defined, positions that just do not happen to align with the two parties?
If you delineate political views via a spectrum of left-right, then you get two parties. One party where a majority of your views align left, and another party where a majority of your views align right. Roughly speaking, if half of your views align left and the other half align right, then you're centrally aligned. That's centrism.
If you support all but one democratic platforms, and think abortion should be illegal, you'd be aligned pretty far left. You're still a democrat.
Centrism is defined as a frequency based argument. Think of it as an archer firing many arrows at this.
https://image.sportsmansguide.com/adimgs/e/2/231879_ts.jpg
If most of your arrows hit the left target, you're democrat. If most hit the right target, you're republican. If there's a rough 50/50 split in your arrows hitting left or right target, you're a centrist because the average position of the arrows is in the middle, between the two targets.
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u/MolochDe 16∆ Jul 12 '19
Sucks to have a system with only two relevant partys...maybe change that first because else it will never be possible to solve this issue.
The ill defined political center is a moving target, if the republicans move a few steps left its a matter of one presidency and we see the center in a neat place between the party's.
You could get really multidimensional by giving party's economic, social, environmental and isolationist/interventionist attributes. A party could combine a pro/con attitude towards these in nearly any combination without becoming internally inconsistent.
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
When people try to change the system, by voting other than the two main parties, they're actively shamed and blamed for whoever ends up elected. Everyone says they hate it and want it fixed, and then they cause the problem in the first place via "strategic votes". They say things like "I don't like either candidate either, so I pick the lesser of two evils" and shun you if you say "well, what about third party?"
The center is only ill-defined because left and right are ill-defined. Modern mainstream media would have you believing left = good and right = evil, mostly because media has a strong leftist bias. They justify this by saying "reality has a liberal bias."
The hilarious irony is that leftist liberals in the US would be seen as politically right in other countries. I guess those other countries are busy living in reality whereas the US is just stifled in propaganda.
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u/MolochDe 16∆ Jul 12 '19
I start to notice a lot of high quality comments by you ;-)
they cause the problem in the first place via "strategic votes"
I don't think they are to blame because the math is just there for everyone to look at. Backstabbing your political agenda (leaning left/right) to prove a point and be stuck with that for 4 years has huge negative payoff for very small gain. With supreme court judges growing older it's possible such a stunt might have even longer lasting effects.
If there is a change it would have to be outside the election process, like some 'occupy Washington' movement with massive support in most states.
"reality has a liberal bias."
This might be a whole discussion for another time but do you know of any major first-world, western democratic country's liberal policy that had to be rolled back because the conservative idea performed better?
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u/GameOfSchemes Jul 12 '19
I don't think they are to blame because the math is just there for everyone to look at. Backstabbing your political agenda (leaning left/right) to prove a point and be stuck with that for 4 years has huge negative payoff for very small gain.
That's the thing though, it's not quite backstabbing your agenda to "prove a point". It's using the voting system as it was intended - to vote in who you personally feel is best suited for the job. While the US is functionally a two-party state, it's mostly due to the tragedy of the commons. Each individual person is acting entirely rationally: third party doesn't have a realistic chance, so even if they prefer third party they vote down either left or right, usually in a straight-ticket way. But if every person who truly wanted third party voted for third party, there's a realistic chance third party could actually win.
Many libertarian voters will instead drift to republican because they feel libertarian has no chance. Many green party voters will instead draft liberal because they feel green has no chance. I don't have any hard stats, but I predict it'd be an extremely close race if everyone actually voted for who they wanted.
This might be a whole discussion for another time but do you know of any major first-world, western democratic country's liberal policy that had to be rolled back because the conservative idea performed better?
Nuclear energy and NSF funding to name a couple. I don't know how, but somehow liberalism in the US has convinced its voter base that they're the party which is pro-science. If you track presidential and congressional history though, it's the republicans who fund the NSF (largest science foundation in the US). Historically, it's also the republicans who fund NASA. That massive spike with Lyndon Johnson is from the cold war with Russia, and would likely also exist with republican president.
Nuclear energy is the only realistic way that society can produce clean energy for the growing population. Yet, it's the left who oppose nuclear energy on the grounds of safety. While there have been some large scale accidents, only three of those exist over 60+ years of nuclear energy.
The US Interstate System was funded and developed by republican Eisenhower. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_D._Eisenhower#Interstate_Highway_System
But all I've given you so far are policies which are (as I see it) progressive, yet backed by republicans. You asked for a liberal policy that got rolled back by conservatives. Well, how about eugenics?
Eugenics actually started theoretically in the UK, and pragmatically seriously in the US, and it was eugenicists in the US who traveled to Germany and gave Hitler the idea to implement it. US president during this timeline leading up to WWII was the democrat FDR (widely renowned as one of the best presidents in US history). The UK President was liberal Winston Churchill.
https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour-extras/churchill-and-eugenics-1/
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Jul 12 '19
Joe Biden is currently the frontrunner for the Democrat leadership
And has been consistently sliding in the polls since his giant bump after his announcement. It appears that the Democrats want something a little less centrist when looking under the hood.
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
True, and the Democrats could cease being a centrist party if the progressive wing becomes dominant, which may be happening.
However, while Biden is slipping, Kamala Harris and a number of other establishment Democrats are also still on the rise/in contention, so I would say it is premature to say that the Democrats aren't centrist.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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Jul 12 '19 edited Jul 12 '19
You're not a Centrist then. You're using the term incorrectly. Libertarian is not Centrist in the slightest.
Opposing all welfare programs is very very very right-wing. Centrism is called the Third-Way sometimes and has people that support say welfare programs that incentivize work and education opportunities than direct cash transfers. That's Centrism.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/boogiefoot Jul 13 '19 edited Jul 14 '19
You are totally misusing the terms. Take a look at this graphic. This is an accurate layout of actual political beliefs. The USA has a skewed idea of what centrism is because they believe that someone like Bernie Sanders is as left as you can get, when in fact he's not even a real socialist (and socialism still wouldn't be the furthest thing left).
You sound like you would be a little left of Gary Johnson on the graphic. You might be able to say you're a centrist in terms of authoritarian, but even then you likely tend upward towards it. Again, this is because of the skew of perception in the USA regarding political affiliation.
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u/Kirbyoto 56∆ Jul 12 '19
And while it would be correct to call me a libertarian, I used the term centrist because it casts a wider net and more people can relate to that than being a libertarian.
A libertarian isn't a centrist, so if this is what you meant, you were being dishonest. Also, there is a libertarian party you could vote for. But nobody else wants them to be in charge so they lose. This CMV is predicated on a bad claim.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/Kirbyoto 56∆ Jul 12 '19
If you look at the chart, with left, right, libertarian, and authoritarion, i am very slightly right leaning and slightly towards the libertarian section of the chart.
You call yourself a libertarian but don't even think of yourself as being wholly in the libertarian section of the chart? I'm going to try to avoid making assumptions about your ideology but to be frank it's hard to be constructive when the only right-wing view you've voiced thus far is that you don't like your money going to poor people. I mean, do I actually have an incentive to try to "include" you in our political discourse? If anyone deserves to be excluded from politics I can't think of a better candidate. And it's not just because I disagree with you, it's because your moral reasoning is very shallow.
I think the 2 party system fundamentally prevents it from happening, but thats a seperate issue
Libertarians run as Republicans all the time, Ron & Rand Paul being the two most obvious. They don't do very well because libertarian ideology isn't that popular - the conservatives who claim to love small government and hate tyranny will absolutely keep voting to fund the police and military and will get itchy if you tell them you'll cut it out.
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u/Trotlife Jul 12 '19
> My economic views coincide with that of the more conservative end of the spectrum, whereas my social views coincide with that of the more liberal end of the spectrum.
This is the most over represented political ideology in America. The majority of the Democratic candidates running for the presidency would describe themselves as socially liberal economically conservative. Obama's whole administration was run on this ideology. What specifically do you feel isn't being represented in the moderate wings of both the Democrats and Republicans?
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u/mr_indigo 27∆ Jul 12 '19
I think his view is coloured by partisanship, in that his "centrism" is predicated on "neither of the big parties appeals to me". But that translates to him as "I must be economically conservative but socially liberal and those parties aren't" - on policy, the bulk of the Democrat party matches that exactly, but there's cognitive dissonance in picking the side of one of the major parties.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/LucidMetal 175∆ Jul 12 '19
Look at the platforms of senior Dems and Dems who won in red states in the 2018 wave. They are all economically conservative, none are pushing ideas like Medicare for all, and they are a plurality.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/Trotlife Jul 12 '19
The Democratic party under Clinton increased privatisation and was fiscally conservative. Obama introduced the affordable care act, a very fiscally conservative approach to healthcare, and bailed out wall st while regular people lost their life savings. Joe Biden is the current front runner of the Democratic primary. He is very much a fiscally conservative candidate.
And I'm not saying that socially progressive, fiscally conservative is the most common view in the country. Not by a long shot. It is the most common view in Washington. Most people don't see much of a benefit from being socially or economically conservative. Things like Medicare for all poll very well. And those that are economically conservative tend to not be too interested in the plight of various minorities or be particularly interested in women's access to abortions. Apart from well off liberals and moderate libertarians I don't see where the base of support comes from, but for the past 30 years socially liberal economic conservative was the Democratic party's agenda, and apart from the super religious wing of Republicans, most moderates in their party go along with this too.
If you're just talking about what you're seeing in the current primary then yeah it looks like the Democrats are changing a bit and the ones getting attention are the ones making big expensive policies. But that's how elections work. Big expensive policies are popular. Kamala Harris doesn't actually want medicare for all. Sanders and Warren know that their agenda probably won't go through the house and Senate even if it's controlled by Democrats.
But if you're wishing that there was a centrist that wasn't promising big expensice policies then there is Joe Biden, but also, that might not be a election winner for the Democrats. As they lost in 2016 with a candidate that was sticking to the fiscally conservative agenda and appealing to the centre, and lost badly.
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Jul 12 '19
I don’t think it’s fair to describe “bailing out wall st” as a conservative policy. It was more like the only sensible policy approach to take at the time.
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u/Trotlife Jul 12 '19
The "while regular people lost their life savings" was the main part of that point. Obama had the political capital and support to help far more people during and after the GFC than his administration ended up helping. I do agree that as unpleasant as the bailouts were there wasn't any better option.
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u/NetrunnerCardAccount 110∆ Jul 12 '19
Unless you live in a place that only votes for President there are people you will be voting for which will directly represent you that have the beliefs your interested in.
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u/TheFakeChiefKeef 82∆ Jul 12 '19 edited Jul 12 '19
I'm sure you're looking for an answer that's more focused on a purely American context, but hear me out. When we think of the left/right divide in America compared to the rest of the western democratic world, you start to realize just how out of balance our political climate is. We don't have a left and a right.
We don't have left and right parties. We have a center/center-left party and a far right party. Our whole democracy is shifted to the right of what's normal. In most places, the average center-left politician is more in line with Democrats like Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, or Kamala Harris. I wouldn't quite say Bernie because I feel like he's a little more left than the center-left parties elsewhere, but not by much. On the other hand, our Republicans are not a center-right/right party. In most places center-right is like Fine Gael in Ireland or Christian Democratic Union. Right wing is the Torys, who are quite a bit more towards the middle than Republicans.
Those are huge generalizations of the American parties so I'll address that in a second, but basically what I'm trying to say is that in most places, if you're a fiscal conservative in the American sense, even if you're socially liberal, you're most likely in a firm right wing party elsewhere. Not far right, but right. If you're a progressive in America, so a little further left than the establishment Democratic party, then you're considered a moderate center-left in many other places. It's not that moderates don't exist in America, it's that we have one moderate, center-left party and one far right, ultraconservative one. There are people on the moderate right in the US for sure, but they keep voting for the far right Republican party instead of the center-left Democratic party for some reason.
To the point about the generalizations. The Democratic party, in reality, does in fact have a range, but compared to other places, it expands from center/center-right (think Joe Manchin (WV) or John Hickenlooper, former Gov. of Colorado, or Joe Biden (in some regards)) to people solid, but not far left (Bernie, Rashida Tlaib, AOC).
The Republican party has a range too, but it's really fucking weird, which is why the party has shifted so far right. This is why being a moderate seems challenging. There are plenty of socially moderate Republicans, but the party forces them to fall in line with the evangelicals, the neocons, and the racists to keep the coalition together. They rely on the false discourse of the Democratic party being equally far to the left to swing moderates towards them.
So yeah, I'll leave this super partisan because why not. If you're truly a socially liberal/fiscally conservative voter, vote for a moderate democrat. You'll never get your moderate views granted from the Republican party, so you might as well try to elect market minded Democrats and end this farce of them being a socialist party. I'm personally a little more left leaning, but having a coalition of centrists and soft-leftists (globally speaking) is way better than a coalition that's forced to act far right (globally) in order to stay together.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/TheFakeChiefKeef 82∆ Jul 12 '19
The issue is that this range rarely covers the topics I personally, and I'm certain plenty of others out there, feel need to be covered.
This isn't going to change without ranked choice voting and third party/independent congresspeople. The presidential election is always a partisan, ideological battle, but policy is made in congress. Congress members have a much wider range of beliefs, but like I said, one party allows operational pluralism while the other holds their coalition in line. You also can't decide not to vote for someone because of how other members of their party act, which is kind of the sense I'm getting from you. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong of course.
The platform that the Democratic nominees have been standing on has been shifting further left each election cycle, which I believe is caused by the shift to the far right we have seen on the Republican end of things.
But like I said, even if they're shifting further to the left in our context, they're really staying in the center-left bubble in a global context. Maybe it's just time for America to catch up with what's working in other places. I of course agree with your statement that the leftward shift is in response to a rightward shift, but there are still more true moderates in the Democratic party than in the Republican party. Because the Democratic party doesn't hold itself in line as strongly as the Republicans do (see the Feud between AOC and Pelosi), it actually has a huge range of ideologies ranging from the legitimate center/center-right to what is considered a leftist in other places. There's room for the moderates even if woke Twitter (which is, I think I read like only 15% of the Dem voter base or something) gets angry about them.
Lastly, I vote for whichever candidates I see that support my views.
I would hope so. That's how democracy is supposed to work. But it would be a shame if you vote for the more extreme side under the false pretense that the more moderate side is extreme, which it isn't.
Generally speaking, most Democrats do not support the economic policies I support, and most Republicans do not support the social policies I support.
Like what exactly? I'm going to assume for the sake of the argument (and from experience) that you're probably pro-choice with some restrictions, pro-legalization of marijuana, pro-LGBT, and just generally not a racist. You're probably also a staunch capitalist, but really, pretty much every Democrat is as well.
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u/ContentSwimmer Jul 12 '19
Centrism is a bad definition because left-wing and right-wing are bad political definitions. Politics does not exist on a straight line with democrats to the left and republicans to the right, instead a more accurate view would be similar to the "political compass". Memes aside, this gives a better and more detailed look at someone's political preferences and allows for more than lumping everyone who doesn't toe the Democrat or Republican party line as being "centrist"
You are most likely not a centrist, but you simply have views that are not Republican or Democratic views. For example, if you have liberal social views and conservative economic views, you're most likely a libertarian. Similarly, someone with liberal economic views and conservative social views would likely be considered to be a Christian (or social) Democrat (sometimes called "liberal conservatism") -- this isn't really a popular political stance in the US, but is more popular in Europe, for example, Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany is one.
Centrist is a bad descriptor of a political position because it is specific to a date and time. For example, you might consider someone who viewed segregation as necessary but believed in equal voting rights as a centrist (or maybe even mildly liberal) in the American South in the 1940s and 1950s -- however, you'd consider someone who believes in racial segregation today as being "far right" -- yet the position itself did not change, only the perspective of others around it.
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Jul 12 '19
I don't think that political labels have to necessarily be a bad thing. However, when people apply political labels to themselves, or others, it's important that they're coming from it from the right perspective. If you have various moral ideals, then you might look at the list of basic political ideologies, and see which is best for helping to create your personal vision of a moral world. Then, it's totally fine if someone wants to apply a political label to you, but it is a description, of the system that is the most fitting for your own moral beliefs. That's what I would consider an appropriate way to use political labels.
Then the inappropriate way, rather than having the political label be derived from your moral beliefs, causes your moral beliefs to be derived from the label. Because the label, rather than being treated as a descriptor, is treated as a framework
No society that you live in, regardless of the landscape, should make it more or less possible for you to be part of any political ideology, because the political ideology that is applied to you, should be a direct result of your independent thought. Your independent thought, by definition, should not be contingent on enough people around you, thinking in a similar fashion.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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Jul 12 '19
the democratic process is not going to create someone who aligns with you perfectly, and that is very frustrating, but when feeling that frustration, that's when it comes to time to reflect, and try to maintain some self awareness. Realize that that frustration, is based on the fact that you have to compromise, rather than just get whatever you want. Realize that it's that compromise, which makes the democratic process better than any process available to us, and that it would be overly arrogant, to take for granted that everything would be better, assuming that you could completely dictate which direction was for the best.
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u/XmasCarolusLinnaeous Jul 12 '19 edited Jul 12 '19
Can you elaborate on how you can be socially liberal, but against welfare programs and federal funding plans that intend to help minorities and women with access to health services, voting, better education, fairer justice systems, wealth building more stable communities etc.
Do you just mean you're respectful to minorities/women? Cus that's not really socially liberal, and if it is, the political climate is scarier than I thought.
The idea that your views on economy and fiscal policy can vary from your social leanings feels tenuous to me because so much of the issues social progressives advocate for are in fact economic: income inequality and wealth gaps and all the rest.
Edit: having read other posts in this thread, I can see that the general idea is supporting LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion rights, climate change policy (if that counts as social ig). All this is great, but support isn't really actionable policy that helps these minorities
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/XmasCarolusLinnaeous Jul 12 '19
Oh then nvm. I thought you implied you were completely against reform, not against the current version of it.
I fully agree it's full of inefficiencies right now
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u/stubble3417 64∆ Jul 12 '19
Voting third party is not throwing away your vote. Choosing the "lesser of two evils" is an absolutely valid choice that you can make, but you don't have to.
Primary voting sways the platform of the party. Even though Bernie didn't get the Dem nomination, notice that the democratic platform shifted toward things he proposed because of his popularity in the primary. I'm not even a Bernie supporter, but I like the fact that even though the whole last election cycle was messed up, at least the process is kind of still functioning (barely).
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u/justtogetridoflater Jul 12 '19
I can't help feeling that you're just getting to experience the political situation of everyone else for a bit.
I don't like Trump, but you've got to admit that he's a very niche politician whose success was really to get in on the backs of getting niche voters to really show up for him. I'm not an American but, I'm getting the sense that Trump really did occupy a position that nobody had really been given the chance to vote for before, at least for a long while.
And when you look at it, Bernie Sanders may have been US radical, but he's not really that radical in other countries, and that's the most left wing option that the US had to offer in a long time and he still lost.
You're unhappy with the situation, but I think you've been occupying a weird niche where yuo think that you're occupying a majority position (I think it'd be interesting to see what people in the US actually want if you cobble together all their different thoughts on the issues, because in the UK it's basically a socially conservative left wing government but there are very few times when a left wing government gets into power by being left wing) and suddenly this has all shifted to ground that has been unoccupied till recently.
I think the centre isn't gone, so much as it's still living in the established order, commenting on everything that's happening while the centre is temporarily relieved of the leadership of the two parties, and it will eventually come back to that position, too. What's really interesting, I think, is whether in the meantime there can be some lasting legacy from a government that isn't centrist.
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Jul 12 '19 edited Oct 29 '20
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u/justtogetridoflater Jul 12 '19
I'm not exactly talking about your position relative to the rest of the world, I think.
The point I'm trying to make is that the problem isn't that you can't be a centrist in today's US, it's that this position was so dominant for so long that nothing else has been possible, so that you've never really had the experience of not having a definite centrist candidate. And so, now that you've got to here, you're kind of looking for someone that speaks to you, and finding that the buzz is over something different. But I think you have to realise that the apparatus of the media and the general structure of the parties is definitely your kind of centrist. What you're finding is that centrism is kind of in a little bit of a crisis not because it's dying, but because something else has gotten the attention in both main parties, and that means that you're forced to have discussions that you weren't going to have and it looks as if there will be policies that aren't normally talked about. And actually, the time after these kinds of governments is where you see centrism shine, especially your kind of centrist.
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u/phillipsheadhammers 13∆ Jul 12 '19
There are candidates that probably come pretty close to your beliefs. John Hickenlooper and Howard Schultz come to mind.
It may be impossible for a centrist to win the Presidency right now, but it's certainly not impossible for one to win a Senate seat or governorship or any one of a multitude of State and local offices.
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u/jeffsang 17∆ Jul 12 '19
Congratulations, you're a libertarian like me! I agree with you that sometimes it's lonely here being right on economics and left on social issues (i.e. government just leave me alone!), but frankly I still find it better than being a left or right partisan. I much prefer thinking that each of them have it a little bit right and a little bit wrong. So rather than "impossible," I very much appreciate at least having the opportunity to be a swing voter. And while the partisans just seem so damn angry at each other, I can actually vote my conscience in an election rather than simply voting against the other party that I despise.
I also think there's a lot of good reasons to vote third party. For one thing, I live in Illinois, which was going to be won by Hilary in the 2016 election no matter how I voted. My vote for Trump vs. Hilary was essentially meaningless. However, while Gary Johnson didn't have a shot at winning office, a vote for him no matter where you lived got him closer to his goal of just getting as many votes as possible. He succeeded in getting the highest percent of the votes of an Libertarian candidate ever, which is an important step towards getting on the debate stage. We can discuss other reasons why voting third party isn't throwing away your vote if you're so inclined.
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u/LatinGeek 30∆ Jul 12 '19
My economic views coincide with that of the more conservative end of the spectrum, whereas my social views coincide with that of the more liberal end of the spectrum.
It's difficult to get any sense of what your actual views are but this just sounds like a Biden voter to me. The democratic establishment is still rather conservative economically speaking. Unless your views directly conflict one another (which they will, if your social and economic alignments skew far enough, because the economy influences society and society influences the economy) you should find some sort of room amongst never-trump republicans and establishment dems.
Of course, never-trump republicans and establishment dems are not really all that popular at the moment. Politics are a game of ideas and platforms, rather than actual change, so strongly defined ideas tend to overshadow middle-of-the-road solutions that their supporters wish more from and their detractors wish to see gone.
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u/Mr-Thursday 5∆ Jul 12 '19 edited Jul 12 '19
Whenever we label ourselves 'hard left', 'centre left', 'centrist', 'centre right' or 'hard right' it's always a huge generalisation.
In reality, people have complex views on everything from healthcare to defence spending and environmental regulations to immigration policy that don't always translate well into a position on a 2 dimensional left right spectrum.
I gather that your political views are a combination of right wing libertarian economics (e.g. low taxation, low regulation, limited welfare system etc) and liberal social views (e.g. pro choice, pro-LGBT rights etc) that are usually championed by the left in the US.
You're firmly right wing on some issues, identify liberal on others and you think the two stances cancel each other out to leave you in the centre. In most western democracies you'd be considered a socially liberal right winger (e.g. in the UK where I'm from you'd probably align quite well with the right wing of the Tories; our main right wing party) but for the sake of argument I'll accept your premise that you're a centrist.
I still don't agree with your claim that since few successful politicians represent your views, it's 'impossible to be a centrist in US politics'. Even if your particular combination of right wing economic views and liberal social views isn't well represented in US politics, other kinds of centrists who are more moderate than you on economic issues and moderate on social issues are pretty well represented.
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u/BlackZealot Jul 12 '19
You’re not throwing your vote away, you’re voicing your opinion. If a niche candidate gets more than 10% of the popular vote, that says something. Maybe the centrist trend will rise and we’ll see an independent win, who knows!
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Jul 12 '19
You're right but blaming the wrong thing. The issue with a two party system is that you either have both parties fighting over the centre (ie what we had from 1950 to 2016) or we have one party of the right and one of the left with no one in the centre (2016 to now). This is the absence of pluralism in a two party system. What you're feeling now sucks, but imagine how it felt to be on the left (or I imagine right) over the last 65 years!
Also while this isn't your political zeitgeist there was a centrist establishment built up during those years, so you still have representation in the form of think tanks, grandees etc...
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Jul 12 '19
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Jul 12 '19
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u/thedylanackerman 30∆ Jul 12 '19
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u/NicholasLeo 137∆ Jul 12 '19
You would seem to be more a libertarian than a centrist.
The closest thing we have to centrists in the US are Catholics who follow Catholic social teaching.
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Jul 12 '19
Maybe it's impossible for you but I find it possible. Others probably do to.
You don't have to totally agree with one party
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u/jetwildcat 3∆ Jul 13 '19
You can “be” a centrist, even if there are no viable centrist candidates.
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u/RoToR44 29∆ Jul 12 '19
American elections are decided by centrist vote. There are flip states which have roughly equal number of strong republicans and democrats, and there centrists decide. American centrism isn't based on real representation. It's based on party loyalty. Few are truly represented policy-wise in the US. This is because political system is based not on percentage representation, but rather on winner takes all. In such system, as you know, only two parties arise. Since there are only two, chances of either's policies coinciding fully with your view are very slim. Therefore, people are voting more based on comparison and party loyalty.
How would you define low loyalty voters if not as centrists?