Velocity clarified that they meant affirmative action. I’m guessing you’re not talking about affirmative action.
I can’t parse this.
I think centrists are people who value fairness, and they tend to be utilitarian. They tend to acknowledge multiple perspectives, tend to be a combination of pluralistic and democratic, and are willing to compromise to ensure that the system, to the extent possible, works for people across the board. Centrists tend to take the view that government should operate in the public interest. With respect to government, they tend to take the view that government may be in a position to promote equal opportunity but it shouldn’t necessarily commit to ensuring equal outcomes.
Back when I actually voted Republican, I remember a quote from then vice-presidential candidate Jack Kemp. As Republicans, we promote equal opportunity. We’re not going to guarantee the results but we’ll at least make sure that every person has a shot at the American dream. That resonated with me. But the GOP has gone over the cliff since then.
What does everyone else want?
Just took this one sentence out of the paragraph as an example, but that question could apply to the entire paragraph.
Non-centrists want laws and policies to augment the power that a particular group has (or wants to have). Referring back to Jack Kemp: that version of the Republican party acknowledged that government might have a place in people’s lives. He might have disagreed about the extent to which people rely on a public pension versus a private retirement account, but there was a willingness to acknowledge that voters might want social security even if he didn’t agree with it ideologically. And Republicans like him, at one time, acknowledged the will of the people.
Today’s Republicans do not. They know they’re losing in the marketplace of ideas, and instead of conceding and trying to evolve to meet the demands of voters, they’re instead trying to redefine what democracy means. They’re trying to impose an illiberal form of democracy over the objections of the electorate that votes against them. In doing so, they are inevitably setting up a clash not only between parties but between ordinary voters and citizens.
All of that being said, a left wing government is certainly not above illiberalism and nationalism. Venezuela is an example. The communist regimes of the 50s, 60s, and 70s also make clear that leftist regimes are equally capable of nationalism and anti-democracy.
I’m going with “no.” I’m not sure what to call that. All I can say is I’ve never seen that combination of beliefs in a single human being.
I have a “reasonable” conservative friend who fits this definition. He’s a devout Christian. His idea of Christian love is more about providing a platform for all points of view than it is about standing up for the downtrodden. And I find it very frustrating that I can’t figure out what he actually stands for. His response to everything is “good point.” He voted for Trump for reasons I still can’t really discern - though after the attempted insurrection he said, “Well, he finally lost me.” I guess he draws the line at sedition. Yay?
I’ll take it.
I tend to think of the term as distinct from moderates. Moderates want to avoid extremes. But centrists value staying in the middle. They stay between the mainstream policies of both parties.
I find moderates easier to deal with and get along with. Centrists need to “both sides” everything.
Man oh man have you nailed it there. The centrist label seemed squishy-er a couple of decades ago but just like how the tea party fairly quickly morphed from a quasi-libertarian movement to just a re-branding of the far-right, “centrist” seemed to become the new name for neoliberal. Republican economic and foreign policies with some virtual signalling social issue idpol crumbs thrown out to solidify their “not an actual republican” bona-fides.
Where do Liberals fit into all this? Best as I can tell they spend 90% of their time handwringing about the far left rather than discuss actual policy.
I always thought a centrist was someone that could look at both extremist sides and say … your both full of shit here’s the compromises that happen in the real world …
I consider myself to be a centrist but I don’t judge both sides as equal. Right now, I’m voting Democrat because of what the Republican party has turned into. Are there batshit crazy Democrats? A few, yes, but they tend to represent the fringe rather than the core Democratic party while the same isn’t true of the Republicans. For the GOP, batshit crazy is the core of their ideology these days.
But maybe I’m just a centrist in name only? I’ve always been fine with gay rights/marriage, I don’t care what bathroom transgender people use, I’ve been against the war on drugs since I was in my early 20s, I’ve grown increasingly incensed at banks and other financial institutions engaging in skullduggery, and like many other people I’m getting tired of minorities being killed just for being minorities. About the only issue I can think of that I’m pretty solidly on the right is guns.
Man, just take the win. Like a chump, I thought sedition would finally break Trump’s hold on the GOP but people like my mother don’t think he did anything wrong. Some of them blame Antifa. So when someone turns against Trump just take it as a victory. It would have been nice if it had happened early but just feel good that happened.
I think they meant “kind of bullshit to me” - some kind of autocorrect or text-to-speech typo?
To me, a “centrist” is someone who says that they can practically work with both sides, or that their politicians ought to do so as much or more than they are currently doing, in order to compromise in order to get things done.
I haven’t heard a lot of apparent conservatives describe themselves as “centrist” lately like others in this thread, but that makes sense, since it is possible to work with Democrats.
It has not been possible to work with Republicans for the past 12 years. Their stated number one goal has been obstruction. Their stated idea of compromise is to do things their way.
That’s my biggest apprehension about Biden: that he will continue to naively try to “work with the other side”, like it was once possible to do earlier in his career and that Obama tried in vain to also do. While on average I’m at or only slightly to the left of Joe, my biggest difference is that I’m a “moderate liberal” whereas he’s a “centrist”.
We don’t need to listen to people who literally think we’re satanic child murderers. We don’t need to compromise with traitors.
Seems to me this is mostly about labeling, not reality. “Liberal” was turned into a swear word by conservatives, for example, and many people who lived under that umbrella don’t use that word any more for themselves though their views haven’t changed.
Because of gerrymandering and other ill-meant efforts, there is little incentive any more for either party to cater to the middle.
Most people are not wholly to the left or wholly to the right, but there’s no room for gradations when war is declared, as the trumpists literally did.
As everyone on earth has noted, the Republican party has become the crazy-ultra-right-wing-fascist-nazi party, with absolutely no room for any different point of view. The Democratic party, with its long-overdue correction toward New Deal liberalism, is still going to leave those who are moderately conservative with a small c right out. One imagines a lot of those ‘independents’ fall into the camp of no-party-seems-to-fit.
As a progressive I’m more comfortable with Dems right now than I’ve been since maybe Carter, myself.
I was responding to you about Alcoholics Anonymous.
Stupid user of stupid phone submitted post without noticing bullshit was changed to bulletin. Took me a minute to figure out what I meant originally. 
To be a centralist you must posess the abilty to have empathy for others. To be able to compromise for the sake of a common good for all society, not just your voter base.
Its the voter base that is the problem, they elect people who are unwilling to compromise. They are too easily stirred into a frenzy by politicians and news media promoting fear.
You cannot have true centralist until this bullshit ends. Voters need to become willing to comprimise and pull together for an imperfect solution to issues.
Thanks. @MrDibble got it right. I would never have guessed it.
Some general observations from reading the thread. Several people described centrists as being in the middle, sort of a reasonable position. But most people didn’t claim to be one. It’s unclear if claiming to be one and describing one in positive terms would get different reactions.
As an extreme centrist, I hold fairly strong views on number of issues that when averaged together, place me in the radical center.
It leads to an interesting assortment of junk mail/spam e-mail.