Centrism as an ideology seems like a stretch to me, but this definition can do some work.
“This bias is marked by an instinctual suspicion of anything suggesting ideological zealotry, an admiration for difference-splitting, a conviction that politics should be a tidier and more rational process than it usually is.”
Seen in this light, centrism is basically an anti-ideology that is rooted in a kind institutional faith. Particular results aren’t the primary concern, but rather a desire that the system be able to work its magic by forcing various parties to the bargaining table where the best compromises can be hammered out to achieve the optimal possible goals.
What is most disliked is anything that thwarts the system, like parties that refuse to work within the system or to agree to reasonable solutions where no one gets everything they desire but everyone gets enough to be satisfied. Imagine if labor and management could never find a middle ground and everyone was either permanently locked out or permanently on strike. In that kind of situation, people would lose faith in the entire concept of labor agreements and start clamoring to rip up the system entirely or for one side to win a final and settled victory.
This is about where we are at with our Congress.
And the voters aren’t really helping to arbitrate and force compromises on reluctant politicians. This is one of the reasons the media is under increased pressure to abandon neutrality and report on which side has the better argument. One side offers some ideas about climate change and the other side denies it is happening or that anything can be done at all. Is it really hard to just say that someone is being unreasonable here?
That’s just one example, but there are many more.
Centrism is fundamentally a conservative disposition that favors our system of government and just wants it to function. In this sense, it most definitely has majority support from the people. The problem is the inability to force functionality on a divided people.
This is why Biden is criticized when he suggests that he can make the Republicans compromise. But it’s just as laughable when Bernie Sanders says he can force them to sign up for his Medicare for All plan. It’s very frustrating that we can neither move nor stay in place, and while centrism has no answer for this, neither does radicalism.
As an electoral strategy, the Democrats are locked into a dependence on the suburban vote. I begged them to work on fixing this problem, but it has only become more pronounced. So now the only way the Democrats can win is to crush the Republicans among white, well-educated and affluent professionals. If they do not accomplish this in the metro areas around Cleveland, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Charlotte, and Atlanta, they are most likely going to lose.
And that means that radical solutions that make well-to-do, well-insured and tax-averse suburbanites uncomfortable are going to work at cross-purposes to the Democrats’ goals. The only way those policies lead to a majority in the Electoral College is if they appeal to a big part of Trump’s 2016 voters. Right now, that looks like a crazy bet to make. The party doesn’t seem to know how to appeal to those folks and is disinclined to try.
It’s a shame because they’re the people most open to radical change. They proved this by betting on Trump in the first place. A lot of them will listen to some really non-conventional proposals that suburbanites would never consider. But they have to believe that those proposals are meant for them. Right now, most of the stuff they hear from Democrats is clearly focused on other populations and interest groups.
The almost sick thing about this is that the stuff that would represent true radical change that would benefit people in Trump’s base is almost all the same kind of stuff that would help the most disaffected people in the Democratic base. I’m talking about breaking up the big monopolies and helping people compete again as small businesspeople. I’m talking about helping people get more consumer rights. I’m talking about making it easier to raise small amounts of capital and taking on regional inequality in everything from transportation to infrastructure to education.
Radical proposals can sell but what the Democrats are doing is pitching them to the exact people who don’t want them while blowing off the people who might listen.
They’re boxed in now as the suburban party, and yet they won’t run on what suburbanites want. I never wanted them to be a suburbanite party but it’s the worst of all worlds for them to be this bad at it.
Centrism isn’t the answer in itself, but it’s definitely preferable to losing because your strategy isn’t calibrated at all to your challenge. If you want to run on making the system function, you don’t necessarily need to have a real plan to actually make it function, but you better not say you’ll make it function by imposing a bunch of implausible ideological changes that your base doesn’t want and that the other side will fight harder than ever.
Almost any strategy would be better than this. Running as hard populists with a pitch tailored to Trump’s disaffected base would be highly risky, and so would running solely to satisfy the suburbanites who are comfortable about everything except Trump’s style of leadership. But either of those choices would be preferable to driving up Trump’s support while destroying your own.
You are an incisive and rigorous thinker, so I make the following suggestion with due humility: Your are way to certain of your gloomy conclusions here. It is much too early for such a confident take (positive or negative). We aren’t even close to having a nominee! How do you know how he or she will run in the general? The politician who survives this very crowded primary is going to be a pretty good politician — which means a platform and theme in the general election that is optimized for contest and not the primary. Maybe I’m wrong, but you seem dismissive of the possibility. I don’t get that.
I feel the same. Great comment.
What is bothering me about Martin’s posts of late is partly the negativity, but even more the unresponsiveness.
It started with Boris Johnson’s win. Martin saw that as an omen of doom. People responded that there are aspects of British labor that are not the same as Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren, and that Jeremy Corbyn was particularly bad. Maybe, maybe not, but it would have been nice to see some recognition of this view in Martin’s writing, saying why he doesn’t agree.
Then, a post with a single poll showing Trump beating all of the Democratic candidates. A single poll. People, including myself, pointed out that it was only one poll. No response. I’m just seeing the cherry picking of evidence.
Martin might be right. However, we don’t even know who our candidate is yet. We don’t know that it won’t be a centrist candidate, and centrist candidate doesn’t necessarily mean Biden, who I believe Martin saw was our best shot to defeat Trump.
What worries me even more is the voter suppression issue, something that I rarely see Martin talk about, but if the Democratic governor of Wisconsin only won by 20,000 some odd votes and a judge just allowed them to kick off 200,000 from the voter rolls, then what does that mean? What about Georgia, which is supposedly in play?
If Trump and his allies were so confident, would they need to resort to these tactics?
Corbyn is uniquely bad but so is Boris Johnson and the entire concept of Brexit which is like committing national suicide because Putin told you to.
But the UK is just one data point. The fascists are on the rise everywhere from Europe to Istanbul to New Dehli. And Trump is actually strengthening. He’s about at the high point of his presidency right now despite half the people thinking he should be in jail.
The only way to lose this election is precisely how the Dems are going about it, which is to look at the states they need to win, like Pennsylvania, and do everything possible to ramp up Trump’s rural margins while depressing their own suburban advantage. It’s fucking insane.
And it really doesn’t matter a whole lot who wins the nomination at this point because none of them have developed a plan for even holding Trump down to 2016 levels in his strongholds. This means we’re completely locked into a suburban strategy which will be unlikely to be sufficient. Maybe promising to hand out pot brownies at the polls can mobilize the youth vote or something, but they’re pissing away what should have been an easy win here in Pennsylvania, and it’s not much different in Michigan or Wisconsin.
That makes sense. The frustrating part is that nothing he does ever seems to phase about half the country.
So what do you propose to do? What is the remedy? Because it seems to me that if it’s true that he gets re-elected, assuming Republicans also keep the Senate, then there are dark times ahead and I’m not sure America as we know it will survive.
My worry about the gloomy posts as of late is the tendency to dampen enthusiasm among activist types – especially since that is likely the blog’s primary audience, and we’re the ones making donations and knocking on doors as primary season nears. If we’re already being told to barricade the fortress and drown our sorrows, what’s the point? I get having a realistic appraisal of the situation – there are no ideal candidates, 45 is going to do everything he can to rig an election with whatever foreign enemy help he can get, and we have no idea what black swans are in the offing. My gut tells me this is going to be a close one – both in terms of popular vote and electoral college. It’s one of those all hands on deck situations. I’d be sounding those alarms early and often. Just me, maybe.
The GOP has no reason to compromise. They oppose using government to provide for the general welfare. So why discuss how to make it function beyond the bare minimum (no shutdowns)? If your position is that government is the problem why bother trying to make it work?
I suppose if I lived in Europe or the UK I could buy into something like centrism. But inequality here is far too severe and getting worse every year. Plus that Orange Turd just loves it, And our fucking betters couldn’t care less. So I’m going down with the ship, if that’s where it’s going. No votes for the conservidems unless it’s the last person standing.
How do the Democrats make a successful pitch based on anti-monopoly arguments that the billionaire and millionaire owners of media outlets are determined to thwart (see the absolute pile-on on Elizabeth Warren over the past few months for examples)?
She could have withstood that and even flourished because of it. But she got outside of her lane and went careening into suburban oblivion. I think it’s too much to piss off both the media (and their paymasters) and a huge chunk of your professional base, all while taking positions that a quarter of the party won’t defend let alone work to enact? It’s insane. I had most of my hope invested in her and that’s gone now.
Me too. She went off the track. I don’t know how she gets back,
This is the central logical fallacy that makes the whole argument collapse.