A Centrist Lost in 2020

Politics & Elections
1

As a centrist with both conservative and progressive leanings I feel like I am part of a growing middle that will be lost in 2020. It seems like every person I know, every newscast or commentator i watch and forum i read gets painted with a “team color” of blue or red with no in between.

I recently took the quiz at isidewith.com for grins and my results clearly show my concern. My party affiliation spread between democratic, green, socialist, Libertarian and GOP was 7% :frowning:

Why can’t we find some common ground in our politics and policies? I know some issues are colored by money more than belief (Global Warming vs Fossil Fuel industries and lobbyists comes to mind)

But why can’t you be against the border wall but agree that maybe you do need a state ID to vote? Maybe spending 2 billion on high tech surveillance is common ground on border security.

Why can’t there be acknowledgement that the Rich do pay a lot of taxes (Thank you) as opposed to marking them all as evil, while going after the billions that are sheltered offshore by Amazon, Netflix, Apple, etc.?

Why can’t you be PRO law enforcement while also supporting 100% body camera adoption and acknowledging that both racism, mistakes and corruption do exist?

Why can’t a non-violent felon vote in elections? They are still citizens and stripping away those rights does nothing to normalize a criminal into a productive citizen.

I despise Trump “as a horrible human being” who has clearly shown himself to be both corrupt, dishonest and arguably racist. Yet I am continuously bewildered by Trump supporters who “seem” to genuinely think of Trump an honest, fair and smart man who is just a victim of “fake news”.

But on the other side of the aisle we have a Democratic party that is going (IMO) too far left… to the point that I (and I believe millions of others) feel left behind. While I think someone like Joe Biden would do a good job, my fear of the ultra-left AOC party of the future scares the heck out of me TBH.

At this time I truly have no idea how to vote in 2020

  • Global Warming - 100% agree that global warming is VERY and can only /facepalm at the deniers - most of which - are either clueless voters or incented by the fossil fuel industry directly or downstream.

  • Education - I fully support free college education. The Student loan epidemic casued by Sally Mae privatization until 2010 was predatory at best and full blow corrupt at worst. No unbiased review of the facts can support any other conclusion. And while we are at it, how about implementing a combination of teacher testing standards, common core AND large pay increases for one of the most important jobs in America (Note - I am not, never was and have no family members in education).

  • Single Payer Healthcare - While I agree the government sucks at handling many programs and waste is generally increased. That inefficiency is vastly outweighed by the corruption and greed of privatization. While I still support the Adam Smith laissez faire economic model in many areas, healthcare and retirement are not among them.

  • Gun Control - I own guns. I support the 2nd amendment but cannot understand the conservative logic that anyone (Dems) will take away your guns. It is hyperbolic and
    republican scare tactic. While I think criminals will - 99% of the time - get guns regardless of any controls, if better background checks and some safety standards (fingerprint locks for example) keep one child of shooting themself or others, the time cost is worth it. And automatic weapons, there is no argument for this IMO.

  • I support our military and defense budget (mostly for our servicemen and new technology) but acknowledge we have wasted billions of dollars that could have been used to help our citizens.

  • Decriminalization of Drugs - From Harry Anslinger to Richard Nixon to Jeff Session this “War on Drugs” is one of the most ridiculuous and wasteful efforts in American history. I do not use drugs (other than alcohol from time to time) but this issue has ALWAYS been a pawn for Racism (Ansligner) and Anti-War Counter Culture (Nixon). The prison privatization explosion and our backwards thinking of rehabilitation show a sad state of understanding and rationalization.

For anyone interested there is a great interview with Johann Hari that is so reasoned and thoughtful I find it hard for anyone but hardline oldtimers and those incented with jobs in drug enforcement to disagree.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDpjvFn4wgM&t=4745s

Long post, but very cathartic for me. Wondering if others feel as I do or if everyone here is firmly on their team. :slight_smile:

2

You’re never going to find a candidate that lines up 100% with your values, but except for maybe Voter ID, your positions seem to line up with the mainstream Democratic Party.

3

Yes. You should be comfortable in the Democratic Party

4

I honestly can not understand why you would vote Republican at all given your listed views. You might think of yourself as a centrist but you’re actually not.

5

He is. And the Democratic Party is a perfect centrist fit for darn near everything he listed. America, which only has two political parties for all intents and purposes, has a right-wing party and a centrist party. The “AOC”-left constituency of the Democratic Party is not the mainstream. If you think the Dems should be more centrist and less progressive, feel free to get in on the conversation and steer the party. Those of us on the left will be happy to fight back, mind you, but that’s fine.

6

You raise a good point, thanks for all the feedback.

I definitely like to think that I do align more with the democratic party but reflecting on my post I probably posited an incomplete view of my political leanings.

Some of my more conservative leanings include:

  • I am pro tax reform (flat/consumer) - not likely to ever happen though
  • I do not support healthcare for illegal immigrants
  • I do support improved border security w/o the wall but understand the debate
  • I generally (with some exception) disagree with affirmative action
  • I do not support Univseral Basic Income
  • I actually support increased tariffs on some countries
  • I disagree with foreign terrorists given constitutional rights
  • I am only ever so slightly against travel bans from terrorists countries
  • I am pro-drone strikes against terrorists countries even realizing the casualties (keeping our soldiers safe being paramount)

I think my fear is the old guard democrats will give way to more of the hardcore progressives/socialists which I find every bit as scary (for very different reasons) as the far right.

7

AOC is just one new member of one House of Congress. It’s the Republicans, for their own reasons, who are presenting her as the new “face” of the party. She is savvy enough to be able to leverage that fact for her own purposes. As far as I’m concerned, she is just a down-payment on balancing off some of the far-right loons that the Republicans have elected and may just help drag the center back to, well, the center.

8

How much of this fear is legitimate, and how much is it that this is what the GOP wants you to think?

9

From the OP, you definitely sound like a Democrat to me. Seriously - which of your listed positions do Republicans agree with? As for your second list of points – aside from Affirmative Action* and the flat tax idea, which of those points are Democrats against? Obama LOVED drone strikes, for example.

*Can you describe exactly what you are against, by the way? It seems to me that quite often people who are “against” affirmative action are “against” the straw man that politicians on the Right have convinced people Affirmative Action is, rather than any real policy.

10

From reading through your stance on the issues, you fit very comfortably in the modern Democratic party. Most of your worries about the Democrats seem similar to the mostly-fictional representation of the party common on right-wing infotainment (radio, Fox News, etc), rather than reality – while there are a small number of very hard-left Democrats, the most popular and powerful Democrats in the present (Obama, Biden, Pelosi, all or nearly all Democratic senators and governors, etc.) are very close to you on the issues.

11

There will be two candidates.

Vote for the one who is not named Donald Trump.

That is all.

12

Yeah you’re well inside the Democratic tent. And well outside even the wide lawn outside the GOP tent.

Oh there will definitely be items that you and most other Democrats disagree about. But not as many as you may think and there is more room for that disagreement in this tent than the other.

What are your three most important issues? Which party hits two out of three of those or more?

Pretty sure it’s D.

13

The other side is irretrievably evil. You can’t find common ground with child-eating, old folks-euthanizing, corporate-weaseling devil-worshippers.

I remember Warren Hinckle (onetime editor of Ramparts) mentioning how he enjoyed drinking at cop bars, as he found many of his leftist buddies to be insufferable on such occasions. So maybe a solution is to go out drinking with people of differing political philosophies. :dubious:

14

Yeah, this. As an observer from Canada, the US has been pushed so far to the right, that even if the AOC boogeywoman was true, it would likely take decades of the Democrats being in sole control of all branches of the US Government to move things far enough to the left that anyone outside the US would think you have a leftist government.

Just take a look at UHC, which you say you support. Both Presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their terms trying to revamp the current US system, and the best they could do was Obamacare, which was originally a Republican plan to begin with.

Do you really think that anything AOC has proposed will be easier than that?

15

The thing is also, that too many people seem to think the sum total of their input into the processes of a democratic state begin and end at voting. They don’t. Good (small-d) democrats continue to lobby, write, petition and otherwise bother their representatives in between elections to guide their behaviour.

If you’re that concerned about voter registration, vote Democrat, as it covers you in everything else, and push hard on registration with your representatives after.

I mean, the alternative seems to be voting R, and being broadly content with voter registration but finding yourself having to push on a whole litany of other things.
Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

16

Most of your stuff is solidly in the Democrats positions and actively opposed by Republicans, so I have no idea what your difficulty is. The one thing I quoted isn’t actually anything that should be called ‘centrist’, it’s authoritarian opposition to the fundamental principle of the rule of law. You’re saying that the government doesn’t need to follow it’s own laws when dealing with certain classes of people. Sadly it’s not an uncommon position, but I can’t agree with calling 'screw due process, just torture 'em and hang ‘em if you want to’ any sort of reasonable middle.

17

You are correct… :slight_smile:

Healthcare
Education
Global Warming
Defense
Net Neutrality
Killing the War on Drugs

18

Yeah. I don’t know how many times we’ll need to say this, but there is only one issue in the 2020 campaign. Will this person beat Donald Trump? Whoever the person is, whatever the policies they advocate, wherever on the political spectrum you think they are, doesn’t matter unless they beat Trump. The country is not going to change overnight. Bills will still have to go through Congress. Money will still have to be found somewhere. Foreign threats will still loom. The courts will still be stuffed with Trump appointees. If AOC herself were magically made President the country would still move only a tiny bit left on a small number of issues.

Stop looking at the headlines. Ask yourself what you and the country will get if Trump wins and if the Congress goes back to being controlled by Republicans. Then ask yourself what you and the country will get if a Democrat wins and the Congress is controlled by Democrats. If you see a better outcome with the latter, vote Democrat. Vote the party, not the candidate. Parties govern and parties matter, far more than individuals.

19

>Gun Control - I own guns. I support the 2nd amendment but cannot understand the conservative logic that anyone (Dems) will take away your guns. It is hyperbolic and republican scare tactic.

Except for the Democrats such as Dianne Feinstein who have stated that, plus some Dopers. Most gun grabbers have learned to not say this outright.

Fingerprint locks? I have a bedside safe with one. It takes several tries most of the time during the day in bright light.

Automatic weapons? Do you mean semi-automatic, or are you unaware of the 1934 National Firearms Act and its successors?

No, you’re not a centrist; you just think you are.

20

And of course, the whole “voter registration” bugaboo ignores the position that lots of Democrats actually hold: “Okay, make a state ID mandatory, but make those IDs easy to get for any citizen”. The real problem isn’t the requirement for ID, it’s that getting a valid ID is quite difficult (deliberately so?) in many jurisdictions, for certain “types” of people.

And consider this input from the other side. If you disagree with him on this one issue, you might as well be a fucking commie. :rolleyes: