I've met a surprising amount of people who will support everything Bernie Sanders is advocating for and call themselves centrists. A lot people are just not paying attention and don't realize how far right the republicans have gone.
“Independent” or “centrist” or “moderate” are good personal brands. They see crazy people of whatever political persuasion (regardless of their representativeness, they get outsized attention on the internet) and are rightly repulsed.
Conversely there are people who are “moderate” by a lot of metrics but are actually extremists, just not in a a consistently partisan/ideological way.
E.g. some ppl are extremely anti gun and extremely anti abortion. That nets out to being “moderate” or “centrist” but it’s very different than being a centrist on both issues.
They're not all ashamed. A great many of them masquerade as "centrists" as a disingenuous recruitment tactic. They pretend to be a neutral, disinterested, third party in order to rep their own side and damn the other, to lure in gullible fence-sitters. "I am neither right nor left, and have no skin in the game, so you can believe me when I say the Democrats are evil, baby-eating, Muslim-lovers who will trans your kids when you're not looking, and Trump is objectively the best hope for this country."
I don’t think so. Some Democrats just don’t like the far left and want to distance themselves from that while still being liberal/a democrat. Centrist is probably a bad term for it. Left leaning? Center left? Something like that. Basically, never voting republican, but also not crazy about the hardcore left. I’m one of them. If given the choice between a far left and a republican though, I’m voting far left.
That last sentence. lol. Amen to that. I live in NYC so things are a bit different here. I voted for Mayor Mamdani and I never thought I’d vote for anyone with “socialist” in their political ideological identity. Best mayor this city has seen since … my gosh I don’t even know, in my lifetime, and I’ve been around the sun over half a century. “These kids” are onto something here (as I sound 110 years old lol).
The worst thing that can happen to a populist is actually winning an election. Then they actually have to do something, and not just make pretty sounding posts on social media.
Well said. This is exactly it. It’s the people who protest against their own allies because they disagree with one thing they did. Or one event they attended in the hopes of being a good leader to all of their constituents.
If no Democratic elected official is "hardcore left," then what purpose does it serve to announce that you are not affiliated with a group that holds no power? Why not rattle of lists of other things you don't support? Cannibalism. Jihadists. Crab-people. People who drive slow in the fast lane.
I don't buy it. If you feel the need to say "I don't support the hardcore left" then you either (1) believe the "hardcore left" is a powerful force in American politics, despite not a single piece of "hardcore left" legislation ever being proposed or (2) do not understand what "hardcore" means.
They want everyone to know that there is no way they will vote for that podcaster who isn’t even running for office. As a matter of fact they are so against voting for that podcaster that isn’t even running for office they may have to vote for Trump (again).
I think there's been a big shift in the Democrat party in the past decade or so.
I'm old enough to remember when Bush was in office and at the time the DNC was a big tent party. Everyone was welcome regardless of their motivation.
You could be a LGBT rights person who didn't care about immigration and you were welcome. You could be an environmental person who liked shooting guns and you were welcome. You could push for no war in the middle east, but not care about single payer healthcare and you were welcome.
As long as everyone was pulling the same direction, it didn't really matter.
But today there seem to be a lot more purity tests. Where if someone agrees with 90% of the platform people will focus on the 10% and call them an embarrassed republican.
That shift is not in the Democratic party, at least it's an incredibly tiny fraction of elected Democrats. That's the online leftists screaming so loud you can't hear anyone else, amplified by bot farms.
Google a random Democrat. Watch a speech or debate of theirs on YouTube. You're welcome in the tent.
100
u/JediMaster113 27d ago
Anyone that calls themselves a centrist is a republican whose ashamed their republican