I mean a centrist can be a thing, I think. I'm not sure I don't count myself as a (left leaning) centrist. In a democracy, the issues that are going to be vexed issues are the ones on which about 50% of the population falls on either side. Our system was built so that we need significantly over 50% of people wanting something in order to move forward (it is intrinsically small-c conservative in that respect). That's just so we don't all start to implement something with a 51-49 vote, and then Larry changes his mind and the majority of the population doesn't want that thing any more and we have to start undoing all we've done. As a result, on the vexed issues, you're not going to be able to make any progress. A centrist just resigns himself to that reality and seeks out small-bore issues on which it is still possible to find 60-40 splits and make progress. That feels unsatisfactory, of course, because those big, population-splitting matters are still population-splitting. You just have to wait until popular opinion makes those closer to 60-40 and then you can take your shot at making progress on those.
The words are ever evolving but this is being "moderate". You aren't positioned in the center equating "both sides", you are moderating your ferver for change but the directionality is "consensus progressive", which is the policy position of like 70% of Americans, and the "team" of like 55%.
(This model presupposes the good-faith willingness of all parties to abide by the workings of the system. Under McConnell and Trump and the Roberts Court, the system its itself is under assault. In such circumstances, one cannot operate as a centrist. It's an open question, in my mind, as to whether our system can survive this strain. If it does not, we will have a collapse, that benefits only 1% of the population (and not even them, really), and the rest will sit there wondering, "we had it so good before, what happened?" A few might remember how the system worked, and how it supported as-much-thriving-as-is-possible-to-secure, and try to persuade people that good-faith observation and operation of the old system was worthwhile, and in the state of extreme suffering 2/3 might be persuaded to give that a go and we might get it up and running again with a renewed respect for the importance of good-faith operation. But it will only happen after extreme suffering changes public opinion. This phase is, in my view, a likely scenario for my elder years; I won't live to see the recovery; I'll only experience the suffering.) (Possibly centrism and fatalism are psychologically connected.)
Making those who embrace dynamic centrism letting or even wanting the pro autocrats and theocrats to win. Wanting whichever side is dominant to dominate faster so that the master can be supplicated in return to their immunity to attention.
Or to cast it differently : centrists tend to see the extreme as natural enemies. Here the centrists seem to be seen as some sort of traitors.
Centrists embrace the extreme, just paint themselves as being outside the target.
It's simple math. sum(wing_positions) / count(population) = centrist_position.
People with stable policy values are spread across the spectrum, mostly toward the left before it branches or splinters into a million Judeah's People's Liberation Fronts. Many of those people call themselves centrists. But whether they are or aren't depends on where the center is.
If all the Republicans rush toward the extreme wing, you have 35% of the population hanging out with Adolph, same playbook, same speed, open about it. They're excited, they can do the thing they always wanted. So now the middle policy position among everyone, those with stable policy values and those who chose to move rightward for their movement, is off the deep end. The centrists, who find clever rhetorical ways equate everything, are now deep into rightwing territory criticizing the
way in which our political freedoms and civil rights are being stripped, but saying leftist extremists are the threat to watch out for.
Stable moderates who were once in the center are now distant the "centrist" position, they don't consider anything "mainstream" Republicans say at all. They might want to progress society incrementally, usually view a North European influence to be a good direction generally. The dynamic centrist meanwhile now views the stable moderate position as the leftwing position to only half accept. That somehow a good synthesis is between militant ICE and its extra judiciary efforts and a strict immigration system. The centrist takes the Republican talking points at face value, and repeats the ones that are design to "sound" centrist as their own position. Every lie JD Vance tells to sound "reasonable", while he does something off the deep end, is the centrist position. Ever moving, shifting, to be the moat around the rightwing castle. Or leftwing, if the left is strong enough.
It is up to those with values to unite and be strong, the centrists can never be counted upon.
There is an inertia problem.The Republicans by their nature can suddenly lurch right, and pull the centrists with them. The left cannot. Our differences branch too far, our core agreement just simply isn't radical at all. We cannot lurch the center back, we can only be resonant and in harmony enough to be heard more clearly than the right's position. Our wing's party has to cater to the frustration that we as a whole have more stable values and seek compromise.
On a practical level this means the center is just this moving target between "normal" and "radical right", dictated by the right.
So to the inertia– the centrists' voices are part of the voices that control where the centrists are. The right lurches right, says radical new stuff, the centrists lurch right, start saying the previously radical stuff in the new way. They're hearing their own voices. Even when the left concentrates its message — its one power in the discourse — the centrists are hearing the far rightwing voices and their own rightwing voices, and aren't well pulled back now are they? It would take a collapse of the rightwing voices for the centrists to leave for it to be a quick return the middle-wing position.
