"centrism"

[bradrn]

I feel as if americans can underestimate how broad political divides can be …

I’m not American, thank you very much. Australian politics does have rather broad political divides: the spectrum of parties from the Greens to One Nation covers as wide a range as you could possibly hope for. It’s just that our two major parties are relatively close to each other, compared to the Democrats vs the Republicans. And I get a similar impression looking at other political systems worldwide — the Democrats and the Republicans are abnormally far away from each other, compared to other pairs of major parties.

[WeepingElf]

I feel as if americans can underestimate how broad political divides can be …

I’m not American, thank you very much. Australian politics does have rather broad political divides: the spectrum of parties from the Greens to One Nation covers as wide a range as you could possibly hope for. It’s just that our two major parties are relatively close to each other, compared to the Democrats vs the Republicans. And I get a similar impression looking at other political systems worldwide — the Democrats and the Republicans are abnormally far away from each other, compared to other pairs of major parties.

German politics is quite similar. Someone, I forgot who, once likened this to a beach on which two ice cream vendors have their stalls. At first, they set up their stalls at opposite ends of the beach; but then, both think "Hmm, I can gain more customers in the middle of the beach when I move my stall some way towards the middle; I won't lose the customers on 'my' end because I will still be closer to them than my competitor", and move their stalls towards the middle. In the end, the two stalls are close to each other in the middle of the beach. (Of course, this may be upset by further ice-cream vendors coming to the beach and setting up their stalls near the ends of the beach that are so far from the two stalls in the middle.)

[Linguoboy]

We could look at what people call themselves— in 2022 it was conservative 36%, moderate 35%, liberal 26%. (FWIW the "liberal" number has been going up, not down, over the last 30 years.)

Yeah, "moderate" is the term I would use. Literally no one I know who occupies what Travis is calling the "political center" would refer to themself as a "centrist". (They don't often use "moderate" either but a wordier formulation describing the various ways in which they think that folks they agree with in general principle "go to far". A lot of older cis-male white gays I know fall into this category; I think most identify as "liberal" but are heavily establishmentarian in their politics.)

[Travis B.]

We could look at what people call themselves— in 2022 it was conservative 36%, moderate 35%, liberal 26%. (FWIW the "liberal" number has been going up, not down, over the last 30 years.)

Yeah, "moderate" is the term I would use. Literally no one I know who occupies what Travis is calling the "political center" would refer to themself as a "centrist". (They don't often use "moderate" either but a wordier formulation describing the various ways in which they think that folks they agree with in general principle "go to far". A lot of older cis-male white gays I know fall into this category; I think most identify as "liberal" but are heavily establishmentarian in their politics.)

Just because people don't typically describe themselves as "centrist" does not mean the term does not have value. "Centrist" is a term you use to describe other people normally. And IMO in that usage it is less loaded than "moderate" because "moderate" implies that being in the political center is a good thing whereas "centrist" is a more neutral description. (This is also why people are much more likely to describe themselves as "moderate", because of course they believe that being a "moderate" is a positive thing.)

[Moose-tache]

Gather round, children, grandma's had her gin and tonic, and it's time for a story.

Once upon a time, there were some dirty people who lived in the towns. Imagine people leaning out of a window that is itself already leaning. It was a look. Well, you don't grow wheat in a town, no sir. You grow misery. And sometimes, out of that misery, comes widgets. But there was a problem. You can make all the widgets in the world (literally, if you're the inventor of the widget), and it still won't get you into the yacht club, or contemporary equivalent... the jousting club, let's say. Enter, Liberalism.

Historically, Liberalism is an 18th century ideology that was ascendant in places and times that the bourgeoisie were ascendant. Politically, Liberalism is the belief that the best possible society is the one that maximizes liberty, where liberty means the extent to which individuals are not beholden to the traditional authority structures of Georgian-era Leicestershire: the crown, the clergy, and the aristocracy. By aristocracy, I don't mean The Haves, I mean people who are, legally, officialy, a superior type of person than you, and have a fancy piece of paper to prove it. Deliberately, the private ownership of the means of production is not listed among those traditional power structures. The whole thing is predicated on the idea that the Creator gave us birds, trees, the private ownership of the means of production, lichen, rocks, etc., and then we added weird arbitrary things on top, like feudal privileges. Having an ideology is important, because for the bourgeoisie to be united, it can't just be the owners who benefit from the new world order. If you're a white collar peasant who counts the bubos at the small pox factory, you accept that you are at the mercy of an owner who does no useful work, because you no longer have to kiss the bishop's foot, or hand your daughter over to some nonce in a castle, or whatever people got up to before the invention of streaming.

As many people have pointed out, most famously Foucault, Liberalism has been the foundational, dominant form of political theory in the United States since day 1. As in, July 4. Because Liberalism is entirely dominant in US politics, the debates between left-Liberalism and right-Liberalism suck up every molecule of oxygen in the room, but from a wider historical perspective, Congress is like one of those late Roman councils where people excommunicate each other for thinking that Jesus parted his hair on the left.

Let me use a hypothetical example. In the town of Gluten, they've fallen on hard times. The bakery has closed for lack of customers, and the people can't afford bread anyway because they lost their jobs at the bakery. The Republicans' response would be to provide capital to the bakery owner, so they can reopen, maybe even expand their payroll. The Democrats' response would be to give everyone in the town money to buy bread, so the bakery has the funds to reopen. The federal government using its massive resources to provide liquidity during times of crisis is one of the last things everyong agrees the government should do. But you'll notice, no one, and I mean literally not one single person in any position of power in either party, would even think of using those federal resources to make bread. That's the one thing that not only must the Dems and GOP not do, they mustn't even think it.

If you're on the far left, this is just one political organization arguing with itself. But if you're on the far right, it's also unacceptable. Those people would love it if the federal government would do even less than the Republican response, because they're Nazis, and chaos is a great foundation for a race war and a coup. I know it can be hard to believe sometimes, but there really is a distinction between the center-right and the far-right. When the far-right says they're not nostalgic for slavery, they're lying. When the center-right say it, they're telling the truth. Remember the principles of Liberalism? If you're a center-right Republican, you believe that Capitalism can be a true meritocracy, but only if you get rid of the feudal bullshit where one person is legally better than another, which in the American context means racism. The Democrats believe the same thing. The two sides disagree only on whether or not this house cleaning has already been completed. And yes, the Republicans blur the line by pandering to the far-right, but that doesn't mean there is no difference. Anybody can pander. Joe Biden panders to the unions, but he still does union busting, because deep down, he's still a Liberal, not a Leftist.

If you're an American, the distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans may feel significant. But it's not. They're just the grandchildren of Robert Walpole, fighting over their inheritance.

[Raphael]

If you're an American, the distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans may feel significant. But it's not. They're just the grandchildren of Robert Walpole, fighting over their inheritance.

True until a couple of decades ago, perhaps; but the GOP is a truly far-right party by now.

FWIW, for me personally, part of what got me first interested in US politics, back in my late teens - that was part of the reason why I ended up on this board in the first place - was that, even then, it seemed to be a lot more about basic disagreements on fundamental questions affecting everyone's lives than German politics was at the time.

[zompist]

Moose's argument needs a good many caveats.

One, she's using "liberal" in the European sense— i.e. to refer to moderates and conservatives. Cf. the polls I cited earlier: just about half of Democrats call themselves "liberal." Is that the Joe-Biden-loving, center-right, almost-Republican wing that Moose calls "Liberals"? No, it's the half of the party that calls themselves moderates and conservatives. Some leftists, probably because they really hate Matt Yglesias and Jon Chait, like to create confusion by calling the centrists liberals. The actual liberals mostly wanted Bernie Sanders.

Second, this apparently disappointing class of Democratic voters is usually identified by another name: we call them "Blacks and Hispanics." In 2019, 55% of white Democrats identified as liberal, while only 29% of Black Democrats did. 40% identified as moderate, 25% as conservative. There are a number of reasons for this, including stronger religious belief among Blacks, loyalty to the politicians who actually talk to them, and a wariness of allying with what has historically been the weaker faction of the Democratic Party.

Now, Moose has a point in that there really is a center-right and a center-left, and if that was all there was, we could have 1976 back. American politics, for at least the 1950–1990 period, was indeed a struggle between two very similar parties, each of which had liberals, moderates, and conservatives. Political scientists actually used to complain about this— they thought more ideological parties would be better. Now we have them, so I hope they're happy, since no one else is.

And third, leftist both-sides-ism didn't look good in the 1930s and it doesn't look good today. Was there no difference between the Social Democrats and the Nazis? It turns out there was.

Because the sides aren't mirror images, the center-right isn't, like the Dem center-left, half the party. It's about 26%. And also, though you might expect to find some center-solidarity, there really is none. All those tut-tutting Never-Trumpers ended up voting for Trump and there's no indication they won't do it again. When three quarters of the party is going full-on fascist and the remainder keep supporting them, they are complicit. (There are a couple of exceptions, but Brad Raffensperger is not a national politician and Liz Cheney is gone.)

[Raphael]

Second, this apparently disappointing class of Democratic voters is usually identified by another name: we call them "Blacks and Hispanics." In 2019, 55% of white Democrats identified as liberal, while only 29% of Black Democrats did. 40% identified as moderate, 25% as conservative. There are a number of reasons for this, including stronger religious belief among Blacks, loyalty to the politicians who actually talk to them, and a wariness of allying with what has historically been the weaker faction of the Democratic Party.

Regarding that, there's a paper titled "The Curious Case of Black Conservatives", which argues that a lot of Black people simply don't use terms like "liberal" or "conservative" in the same way white people do, and therefore, paying too much attention to what they tell pollsters about their self-identification in these terms confuses matters: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3602209

[zompist]

Regarding that, there's a paper titled "The Curious Case of Black Conservatives", which argues that a lot of Black people simply don't use terms like "liberal" or "conservative" in the same way white people do, and therefore, paying too much attention to what they tell pollsters about their self-identification in these terms confuses matters: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm ... id=3602209

Fair enough, the self-IDs are only that-- how people respond to that question, not how political scientists wish they did. And Black Democrats who self-ID as conservative are certainly not far-right in any way.

But there are other measures. E.g. Joe Biden did significantly better with Blacks than Sanders did-- Black voters pushed him into the lead on Super Tuesday, and they were also key to his general election win. There are also things like the lower Black support for same-sex marriage (59%, as opposed to 69% for whites).

It's also worth noting that under-30 Blacks were much more likely to support Sanders... but also that many of the white primary candidates besides Biden had a good deal of trouble reaching and motivating Black voters.

[Moose-tache]

Once again, I like F D Signifier's take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLlRwF ... DSignifier

[Raphael]

Once again, I like F D Signifier's take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLlRwF ... DSignifier

That video is titled "The TRUTH about Black Republicans". zompist, me, and the paper I linked to had been talking about Black Democrats who tell pollsters they're "conservative" when pollsters ask them if they're "liberal", "moderate", or "conservative".

[Moose-tache]

Once again, I like F D Signifier's take on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiLlRwF ... DSignifier

That video is titled "The TRUTH about Black Republicans". zompist, me, and the paper I linked to had been talking about Black Democrats who tell pollsters they're "conservative" when pollsters ask them if they're "liberal", "moderate", or "conservative".

I invite you to stick around, even longer than the title of the video.
Some of the things he and his guests address are the question of what is "Liberalism," what is the relationship between the center-left and Black liberation, and how Black voters are and are not "socially conservative." It's worth a watch.

[Moose-tache]

Also, I will concede that there is one way that the center-left and center-right do make the gap between themselves very significant. Every few days they line up on either side of a fish and say "this is my fish" back and forth. If you are that fish, this is a very big deal. If the Republicans say "pronouns are bad," the Democrats will dutifully say "pronouns are good." If you happen to be a person who owns pronouns, you've got a pretty clear correct and incorrect choice there. This kind of miniature political Stalingrad routinely becomes a matter of life and death for anyone who's not straight, white, and male, and obviously I'm not going to tell those people that it doesn't matter which party they pick. But these two organizations aren't different in the way they operate or conceive of the world and their role within it. It's just that one side found group X more useful as a villain, and the other side found them more useful set atop a pedastal. The end goal of these two organizations is the same. You're not getting your damn health care either way, because that would hurt profits.

[Raphael]

Moose-tache, all you're demonstrating is that both the Democrats and the Republicans are to the right of you, personally. Yeah, I guess if seen from Alaska, Oregon is in the south. You haven't provided any evidence or arguments, other than your own assertions, that the Republican Party is center-right.

And it's pretty interesting that you first point out some clear differences between Republicans and Democrats, and then go back to asserting they are the same. Your reasoning seems to be that they have to be the same because you don't like either of them. Well, I like neither Brussels sprouts nor any of the edible mushrooms I've tried so far, but that doesn't mean that Brussels sprouts are a type of fungus now.

[Travis B.]

Moose-tache, all you're demonstrating is that both the Democrats and the Republicans are to the right of you, personally. Yeah, I guess if seen from Alaska, Oregon is in the south. You haven't provided any evidence or arguments, other than your own assertions, that the Republican Party is center-right.

And it's pretty interesting that you first point out some clear differences between Republicans and Democrats, and then go back to asserting they are the same. Your reasoning seems to be that they have to be the same because you don't like either of them. Well, I like neither Brussels sprouts nor any of the edible mushrooms I've tried so far, but that doesn't mean that Brussels sprouts are a type of fungus now.

Agreed completely.

[Torco]

@bradrn I'm sorry for calling you American, didn't mean nothing by it.

for myself, I don't think the repus and the demos are the same thing, but like... what i mean is that outside culture war stuff <and, don't get me wrong, culture war stuff is not nothing, but it's also not everything> are they really THAT different? for example, neither wants to change the constitution, or the basic economic system in any deep way, they're both for more money to cops, more money to the military, they're both for the america world police proyect (though they disagree on the exact world policing actions to be carried out)... I don't see any debates that are like "nationalize copper / privatize copper" (sub copper for something else) or "rewrite the constitution/not do so" or "lets have an NSH / no unemployed people should just die". it's all privatize everything, the constitution is sacred, unemployed people should die. .. and like, yeah, the republicans are cryptofascists -or, at least, cryptofascist-friendly- and the democrats are not, and that's a big deal... but in other countries you have cryptofascists and liberal-conservatives arguing about more things than solly cryptofascism vs. liberal-conservativity.

Now, of course, this 'not that different' is quickly closing up, as the republican party goes more and more... populist? trumpy? crazy? outright fascist? whatever you want to call it. And perhaps it's by now an anachronism: while cryptofascists and liberal-conservatives are somewhat similar in practice, if you remove the crypto then things change a lot. As the imperial core continues to polarize, alongside the rest of the world, well... I don't know, man. I'm just amazed how much repeated, refried american talking points I keep hearing here in the third word.... I suppose we *are* all living in america cocacola wonderbra.

[zompist]

You're not getting your damn health care either way, because that would hurt profits.

This seems like gaslighting. I have health care because of the Democrats, and despite years of malicious effort by the GOP. My wife could easily be dead if it weren't for the Democrats.

One party wants us dead, one party doesn't. If you can't figure out which is which, that's a you problem.

@bradrn I'm sorry for calling you American, didn't mean nothing by it.

for myself, I don't think the repus and the demos are the same thing, but like... what i mean is that outside culture war stuff <and, don't get me wrong, culture war stuff is not nothing, but it's also not everything> are they really THAT different? for example, neither wants to change the constitution, or the basic economic system in any deep way, they're both for more money to cops, more money to the military, they're both for the america world police proyect (though they disagree on the exact world policing actions to be carried out)... I don't see any debates that are like "nationalize copper / privatize copper" (sub copper for something else) or "rewrite the constitution/not do so" or "lets have an NSH / no unemployed people should just die". it's all privatize everything, the constitution is sacred, unemployed people should die. ..

I dunno, have you read any US news media after 2004? Maybe you haven't heard that Blll Clinton is no longer president?

The police are a local matter. There was in fact a huge brouhaha about "defunding the police" around 2020. It had some ramifications in various cities, but it also exposed the huge gulf between young urban activists and the voters in general. And it ran into the same problem we've been discussing above: Black people in poor neighborhoods are not united in thinking there should be no police, because they're exposed to crime.

We're a very old country as republics go, and unlike most modern countries, it's really hard to change (or "rewrite") the Constitution. That's both good and bad. It's generally the GOP which is more eager to make changes-- one pet conservative idea is to hold a constitutional convention. And the polarization thing makes amendments almost impossible. This isn't so much an area where both parties agree, as one where both parties are trapped by an existing situation, and by each other.

As I noted, we do have a national health plan, created by Democrats and opposed by Republicans. The biggest problem is that states are allowed to opt out of one part of it (Medicaid expansion), and many Republican states do, harming millions of their own people. It was written to have a public option (i.e. actual gummint doctors), but that was nixed by one stupid Dem senator. Yeah, we have a lot of veto points, and that's good and bad (e.g. it also prevented the GOP from ending that national health plan).

What are you even talking about with "privatize everything"? What has been privatized? Conservatives even explicitly complain that once something becomes a state function here, it's very hard to get rid of it.

I don't really see that nationalizing things is a real test of progressivism, in First World countries; there are far better methods for combating plutocracy. What would you like us to nationalize? Have you ever heard of the Defense Production Act? The government can in fact direct industry to produce certain things, and Biden has used it to do so. And is this just a US thing: has any European country recently nationalized any major industry?

[Travis B.]

The thing is that it is easy to say "oh the Democrats and Republicans, they're all the same" from afar. This is a typically myopic leftist thing - they can't see the actual drastic differences between the two because their point of view is so skewed.

[zompist]

The thing is that it is easy to say "oh the Democrats and Republicans, they're all the same" from afar. This is a typically myopic leftist thing - they can't see the actual drastic differences between the two because their point of view is so skewed.

Well, that's not entirely fair. In practice, as opposed to social media chattering, leftists can be very practical and readily work with other progressive movements.

And contrariwise, it's very easy to get frustrated with the Dems for not being progressive enough! There are a lot of reasons why, but they don't erase the frustration.

But there's a mostly online group of leftists that think it's some kind of strategic brilliance to focus all of their vitriol on the 25% of the population that is closest to agreeing with them.

[bradrn]

@bradrn I'm sorry for calling you American, didn't mean nothing by it.

No need to apologise. Canadian is practically American.