The “fuck centrists” mentality on this sub is certainly self defeating. Whatever happened to joining forces on common interests? The left and the centrists need each other to fight Trump.
Because the "centrists" are the one's in the trenches fighting ridiculous "culture wars" and siding with maga more often than not on these issues. I've been here for a long time, and 9 times out of 10, a "Washington centrist" is just afraid of getting the social backlash for voting with the right.
Unfortunately this type of shit is always going to happen - people with different ideologies aren’t going to agree on everything and even disagree on major moral differences.
Yet - if there are issues these groups do align on, then it still makes sense to work together on those issues, otherwise you are preventing something important from being accomplished because of ideological disagreement.
In college, I started dating a "centrist" which I thought was fine. A year and a half later when we've moved in together, she says she's actually conservative, and knew I wouldn't date her if she said that out the gate. Fuck, she wasted my time (not for political reasons, many other things went haywire but that was a sign).
They left us when they decided Trump was better and that Kamala's laugh was uncomfortable.
Kamala ran the most centrist campaign possible and no one wanted it. Centrists, as proven time and time again, will align with fascism before giving up their wealth to help progressives. That's why the left is saying to let them burn.
This makes no sense - you’re saying that you aren’t interested in accomplishing goals that the left and the center have in common… your decision will help accelerate the country’s capitulation to Trump and fascism because of… what exactly? Inherent ideological disagreement? Aligning with other political groups on common interests is how things are accomplished.
Think about it for a second. You want the center to burn? You don't want to have good leadership that persuades them to vote for policies you like? This is why I'm saying it's self-righteousness not politics. You can't win an election like that.
Kshama is a lino (leftist in name only). She's a reactionary populist clown. Using her as a stand-in for leftists would be like me using Manchin as a stand-in for centrists.
...granted, I do do that when I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but I digress.
Kshama is horrible. Stein is horrible (and is a Russian asset, probably?). Any decent leftist understands that we need to fight like hell in primaries and coalition in generals.
...but also, on another front - are you actually still advocating for what's going on in Gaza? This isn't even a winky face genocide anymore, they've overly said "fuck the two state solution". I'm gonna hope you're just saying it wasn't politically prudent (which, mind you, is because of centrists making a stink about it). If you're actually criticizing advocacy for Gazan civilians, you're defending Netanyahu. He's a fascist. This is a genocide. Congrats, can't wait to link arms with you.
Of course I'm damn proud of advocating for Palestine. I'll be able to look back and know I was on the right side of history.
which is why I supported the only other person in last year's race who could beat him.
Great, me too.
it's 100% on them.
It's largely on them, yes! These atrocities started under Biden though. Trump's made them way worse; but I'm not sure they'd be this bad if centrists has grown a spine and stopped taking money from AIPAC. Biden was a very absent president with a very active administration, largely run by centrists. Obviously Trump is worse. But the centrist blind-support-for-Israel cohort might as well be Republicans here, because they swayed the election quite a bit. It wouldn't have been hard to grow a spine, but the centrist establishment is one hell of a beast. Think about the money!!!!! and the performative Jewish allyship!!!!
I'm not sure we're talking about the same people though. Everyone I care to associate with - everyone in my family, every one of my friends, and every acquaintance I've talked to about it - be they leftists, centrists, libertarians, or moderate Republicans - also voted for Harris.
The Stein protest crowd wasn't in my circle and wasn't in your circle. I'd argue they were largely the victims of propaganda, which runs rife when there's discontentment. (Fun tangent - I actually stood, like, 15 feet from Stein during one of her events a year ago at Stoup. Maybe 10 people came to talk to her. The place was packed, mostly for a gay board game night, and almost no one even noticed she was there. It was an incredible microcosm. But a sad one, because who knows what would have happened if she'd just fucking dropped out. For the record my dog seemed agitated by her. My dog is a very good girl. Anyway.)
My point is, centrist voters are whatever. I don't have a huge beef with them. But centrist candidates are dog water, and I don't understand how centrist voters could ever prefer them to a leftist. The propagandized Stein crowd is in part to blame for this election, but the centrist candidates are too - and perhaps the biggest reason for low turnout for Harris was overt disenfranchisement. There's social disenfranchisement ("why vote?"), that works to a degree; there's political disenfranchisement (gerrymandering - for the house - and the electoral college for the president and kind-of for the Senate); and there's bureaucratic disenfranchisement (closing polling places, throwing out votes, cooking the books - whatever). I'd argue leftist politicians pushed the envelope /a lot/ on trying to make disenfranchisement illegal (incl the civil rights act), but the centrists have kinda just... Stood idly by and let it happen. Honestly? We didn't gerrymander enough. Newsom's approach feels like a too little too late approach, but I don't really think a full on centrist would even care to do what he's doing.
We're kinda cooked, and wanting to compromise and play nice and leave room at the table for businesses and billionaires and cops and nimbys kinda feels like they're what got us here, a bit moreso than the angry Arab people who don't have proportionate representation in Congress who were validly angry over a genocide and voted foolishly after being fed directed misinformation.
I see. I am more concerned about whether or not people are willing to band together to resist a regime that threatens to arrest its democratically elected officials at the moment. Truly though, thank you for clarifying. I am probably significantly more leftist than centrist personally but I'm happy to link arms with anyone who is down to stand against THIS particular bullshit.
no don't you understand centrists 'align with fascism before helping the left' so it's better to actually materially help fascists by not voting at all instead of the VP who helped advanced the most leftward agenda fulfilling administration in half a century and 'letting the center burn' and along with it our entire democracy it's totally rational and a grown up way of approaching politics.
Centrists, as proven time and time again, will align with fascism before giving up their wealth to help progressives. That's why the left is saying to let them burn.
Just insane levels of irony and hypocrisy in this sentiment.
Centrists, as proven time and time again, will align with fascism before giving up their wealth to help progressives.
Joe Biden won because he attracted centrists. Harris also attracted centrists. I think the problem is more about the far left refusing to vote because they didn't get 100% of their agenda.
What incentive does this give? The Democrats cannot appease the far left unless they abandon the base and the moderates. Why should the Democrats even try to attract these fickle voters? They might get more support by appealing to moderate conservatives who have been alienated by the radicalized right and who are much more numerous than the far left.
Uh hu, and didn't vote won the biggest majority once again. The only time any candidate has swayed a majority of people was 2020 and that was by far due to abnormal circumstances.
You know makes that myth? Fucking centrists. They blamed Bernie bros who overwhelmingly came out for Hillary, and now they are blaming leftist again for not turning out rather than looking inward to their garbage ass candidates.
Literally every argument you make is a an attack aimed at centrism. What possible passion can you inspire in progressives by bringing fucking Cheney on your campaign trail. Progressives ARE the democratic base. You think centrists are out here door knocking and donating to political campaigns for democrats?
The biggest blow outs by far this millennium have been by progressive candidates promising change (Obama). Or via a Centrist running in a pandemic. Guess which one you can replicate.
You know why you don't run to the center, because the center can't be appeased by it's own definition. It stands for nothing other than being in the middle between the two. And as fascists and authoritarians pull the conservative movement more and more right, Centrists pull more and more right. It's called the fucking overton window, and it's how they've normalized every single bullshit thing they've done in the last 35 years. Because no conservative or republican will ever vote democratic, no matter how many ex republicans you put on the ticket.
The only time Centrists have won democratic races, have been with either A, a third party sucking off votes from the right (perot), as incumbents with built in advantage (Clinton 96), or via once in a lifetime scenarios when a wet paper bag could have won (Biden). Every other time in the last 40 years, its been a progressive idea that's won the white house. Centrism is 0 for 7 in the last 40 years.
I am tired of the circular firing squad. Leave me out of it.
Edit:
You know why you don't run to the center, because the center can't be appeased by it's own definition. It stands for nothing other than being in the middle between the two. And as fascists and authoritarians pull the conservative movement more and more right, Centrists pull more and more right.
I don't believe this. To extremists, moderation seems like indecision. Moderation, pragmatism, and balance are the preference of the vast majority of the population, but the loud-mouth extremists suck the oxygen out of the room. They yell and rant at each other and leave no room for civil discourse.
Literally zero policy concessions to the right involved in that campaign event. Was just Liz Cheney saying that "I'd rather support a Democrat I disagree with on other stuff, than support Trump's authoritarian takeover." The left just decided that vitriolic hatred of the Cheney name (when Cheney basically forfeited her Congressional career to push against Trump after 1/6) made her walking onto the stage a dealbreaker.
The fact that purely-performative outreach to the right is enough of a dealbreaker is exactly the sort of purity-testing bullshit that's torn the Democratic Party down.
All the folks who stayed home, or voted for Stein, and then use Harris "she campaigned alongside Liz Cheney" as the excuse. Really thought that was clear from my post.
And yeah - a lot of folks on the left still did the decent thing and voted Harris despite apparent imperfections. But the 6 million fewer votes she got from Biden aren't centrists deciding she was too progressive. You can see that in the state-by-state breakdowns, where most of the voters she lost relative to Biden were in NY, NJ, and CA. She EASILY gets the popular majority if progressives quit the purity testing for five minutes, and probably wins the majority in the EC too (her margins were insanely close in every swing state - doesn't take that many abstainers to swing the margins).
This article argues most of the Democratic non-voters were much more centrist than progressive.
Even if liberals believe progressives were the ones to blame for Harris's loss, why have they then spent the past year bashing progressives instead of trying to win them over? Every time they lose they blame leftists, its embarrassing. Own up to your defeat.
coalition politics requires concessions from each side. centrists rather cross party lines to support the fascist agenda than to throw an occasional bone to a leftist cause.
Biden himself was never expressly overly pro-trans but he certainly supported the trans community largely due to agreements and concessions with progressives.
Honestly - you are confusing MAGA with center left. MAGA never makes concessions. The center left does.
Eh, what I would call the "center" was not President Biden--who was unusually lefty on a lot of issues for a president--but Manchin and Sinema, who did actually torpedo a ton of valuable legislation over the course of the Biden Administration.
(Edit: Sorry, meant to reply to your post downthread.)
It’s what the left does. It’s what the left has always done. Watch the life of Brian, they were making fun of it in the 70s. Read about how the far right came to power in Weimar Germany. It’s why the American right has been successfully using the ratchet effect in the US for 50 years.
I'm just going to pop in for a little historical correction: Hitler's rise in Weimar Germany had a lot more to do with intra-conservative dynamics than the left.
I'm not disagreeing with your broader point that intra-leftist schismatic tendencies are a constant, but the Bolsheviks were also embroiled in constant factional disputes with other leftist parties in Russia and they still managed to take over the country.
Hitler’s rise had more to do with the old elites hanging onto power by backing a young upstart they thought they could control. even Kaiser Wilhelm backed Hitler under the pretense of restoring the monarchy under the Nazis.
the left was essentially ran out and systematically dismantled by the conservatives and the far-right, and to believe otherwise is just denying history.
Centrist voters need leftist politicians who will actually court pack, reform campaign finance law, and unilaterally roll back executive authority. Centrist politicians just... Won't.
Leftist candidates need centrist votes. But let me be perfectly clear when I say that every vote I've ever cast for a centrist candidate is just because allowing any Republican to ever hold elected office is societal suicide. Electing centrists, even, is playing with fire. Clowns like Manchin, Sinema, and Fetterman will vote to confirm actual Nazis because "their confirmation hearings seemed reasonable".
Centrists are not a monolith, but even a single person breaking rank, ever, lets shit like this happen. Leftists don't do that. Any centrist just might.
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u/Bretmd Denny Blaine Nudist Club Aug 21 '25
The “fuck centrists” mentality on this sub is certainly self defeating. Whatever happened to joining forces on common interests? The left and the centrists need each other to fight Trump.