Wait, does centrism ever win an election?

You could argue this happened in 1992, and it would also be the last time centrism won an election. In 1992, Democrats had basically given up on the political hegemony that had defined them since WW2, and accepted the political hegemony of neoliberalism and Ronald Reagan. And they won on it. It won an election for them.

And since that time, Democrats have been convinced that they had to run to the center to get "moderate" voters, when in reality, "centrist"/"moderate" voters never actually manifested. It was a middling black-swan event, but what it did, is it gave corporate democrats a hall pass to permanently assume a thing about a thing that didnʻt exist or even actually happen.

The very principal of a left versus right spectrum, represented as a normal distribution, is a construct of liberalism^1^. Its a way to represent an assumption about how voters think and behave and are distributed. And you are under no obligation to accept this construction. And when this construction has to get pushed up against reality; real actual voters with real actual data, it falls apart^2^. And this is because voters are messy, complicated, contradictory things. And this should be an obvious explanation because actual voters are actual people, and actual people are messy, complicated, contradictory things. A scientific materialist should faithfully reconstruct the models, push the models against the data, and reject the models which donʻt match the data. Any rational person who has borne witness to the previous decades of politics should recognize how the liberal construction of voters behave doesnʻt map to the data. It canʻt predict outcomes. There are ways of analyzing politics which do predict future states. But if you narrow your view to what assumptions liberalism demands you make, youʻll struggle to predict future state of politics, which is the ultimate test of any theory. If

You are not obligated to accept the assumptions of liberalism. And if the assumptions of liberalism dont predict beyond the data theyʻre trained on, you should reject those assumptions. You are not immediately obligated to accept other assumptions. In science, we reject theories all the time when the evidence tells us to, and sometimes that leaves us with an uncomfortable feeling of uncertainty about how that system works. But it is better to be uncertain than it is to be comfortably wrong.

1: I consider liberalism to be the parent philosophy of democratic liberalism, republican conservatism, neoliberalism, neoconservatism; all of these extension find their roots in liberalism. Two philosophies not finding their roots here are social democracy (roots in marxism), and american fascism (roots in nazism/ european fascism).

2: I can go into explaining this, but I want to keep the argument brief. The case involves multivariate analysis and stats.

It feels like a safe trap to fall into. Republicans have the easier task because they just cater to where people are and use fearmongering to get there. Ends justify means. But it's nonconstructive. Blind lead the blind. To me that's definitionally conservatism. When lost, Democrats feel they just need to be Republican-lite (or they are themselves compromised assets -- like Sinema, Fetterman, Schumer, etc.).

Democrats have to actually persuade and have a vision and lead the electorate, which can be a harder task. When they have charismatic leadership who can sell this with conviction, this is when they succeed. Especially when as you point out the other side is fresh off of being exposed for the grifters they are (gas prices, etc.)

Centrism won 2020, kinda. Exactly because of the president who pissed everyone off first

It doesn't work but they pretend it does because that way the donors get what they want and they get to "appear" to be trying, when in fact they're not. Covert Republicans and controlled opposition.

Wait, does centrism ever win an election?

It can in countries with an actual political spectrum and multiple parties spread across all points of that spectrum.

Less so in a country with only a binary choice like the USA has.

Wait, does centrism ever win an election? Thinking back on both Republican and Democrat victories, it seems catering to the moderates of the other side to try and win them over never works.

Yes, centrist candidates tend to perform well in two-party systems. However, in systems with open primaries and/or two-round systems, centrist candidates can struggle to reach the final round. Indeed, US politics became much more polarized after the introduction of open primaries.

Wait, does centrism ever win an election?

You need their votes to win any election.

You can't even get your own voters to show up (2 million Ds sat out the last Presidential election).

You need independent votes to win anything. There aren't enough Ds or Rs (28% each). Without independent support (of which centrists are the majority, two thirds) you lose. Every time.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/fact-sheet/party-affiliation-fact-sheet-npors/

Math never lies. Partisans do

Completely agree, but for anyone not in Texas you need to understand that for a lot of people here "average centrist" is basically "militant communist terrorism".

In retrospect (and purely, only in retrospect), if we had packed the ballots with progressives they'd have gotten in anyway. I feel strongly that the election was decided here in Texas by low information voters doing the opposite of what they did last time because that's all they could think to do. I really don't think it went any deeper than that. The fascists knew that about their base, that's why all their ads have always been fear based. This time, real world fear was flying in the face of the manufactured fear, and it became impossible to ignore any longer. Many of these people have never left the state. They've only seen six dollar diesel in memes about California. When they saw that at home it was like seeing a tiger in their kitchen. They ran for the voting booths the same way they'd run for the shotgun.

Under no circumstances would I have ever placed a bet on a statewide blue sweep! I remember Anne Richards, I feel like she'd be happy about this outcome.

I think AIPAC and Israel are in their death throes

It did for Bill Clinton and they've been chasing that high for decades. Both bribes and Blue No Matter Who votes! 🤤

In the global sense - 32 of the 33 OECD ("developed") countries have some form of universal healthcare, so yeah, that's a "centrist" issue, and anyone against universal healthcase is, in that sense, already right-wing. Same, really, with most social safety nets.

So it always rankles me when someone in the US claims to be "centrist". Not only is that already right-wing, but with the Overton Window, it really IS generally right-wing.

I've got news for you that might seem like clairvoyance.

The 'moderate' running on Bernie's exact platform down to every single word spoken?

If they're too lazy to vote every centrist out of the Democratic party during the primaries that's on them for not choosing who they want representing the democrat side by going to vote during every election

The Republican party is a lost cause

cruelty and grift played no part in the election huh? Interesting theory-- that someone else made up for you hoping you'd accept and consume. Cant go looking at other causes.

I'm an independent voter who doesn't like the Democrats because I'm a fucking anarchist, cope harder.

Also, we literally all know what kind of "centrist" you are, Lemmy is a small place.

Independents are 44% of the voters (of which centrists are a significant part, over 30% alone… still a larger segment than D or R parties)

Bullshit.

Abdul barely won after fighting not only the Republicans, but also the Democratic party. It sure seems like Progressive ideas are more popular than MAGA and Centrisim combined. I think the lesson here is that if Dems lean into their Progressive wing instead of trying to suppress it, they'll win with FDR numbers.

Liberal is the center upon which the whole left/right is gauged against. It's the right that keeps denying that.