Whither Centrism?
What to call non-crazies who aren't Democrats?
Yesterday, Dan Drezner took some time away from a hard-earned vacation to ponder “The End of Centrism?” I recommend the piece in full but highlight the central premise:
Wikipedia reminds me that back in 2011 I wrote, “I find liberals write ‘even conservative Dan Drezner…’ while conservatives often deploy terms like ‘academic elitist’ or ‘RINO.’ In my case, at this point in time, I believe that last appellation to be entirely fair and accurate. I’m not a Democrat, and I don’t think I’ve become more liberal over time.” Well, now I’m not even a Republican in Name Only, as I formally left the GOP the day after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
So what am I? Back in the day I had always defined myself as a centrist, a moderate — the kind of person who figured that no one had the monopoly on political wisdom in this country and that the center felt like the proper place to be. This was particularly true in foreign policy, when I would often find those on the right too hawkish and those on the left too dovish.
That was a long time ago. I think it’s safe to say that the political landscape has been scrambled. And after reading way too much about Richard Hanania, I think I’m going to have to stop calling myself a centrist.
Drezner devotes several paragraphs to Hanania but, long story short, he’s a white nationalist/supremacist who had claimed the mantle of “enlightened centrism” and was treated as such by the mainstream press before some particularly odious writings under a pseudonym were exposed as his.
Now, one racist calling himself “centrist” shouldn’t ruin the label for everybody, but there are others who describe themselves that way who are at least racist-adjacent. Drezner continues,
In fact this is likely the area where my own thinking has drifted furthest to the left as I have aged. The past decade alone has revealed too many examples ranging from bank lending to law enforcement to teaching surveys for me not to conclude that way too many U.S. institutions stack the rules of the game in ways that discriminate against a welter of minorities. In 2023, being a centrist seems to require contesting that assertion.
Now, do I have somewhat contrarian thoughts about the best way to respond to this situation? Probably! Witnessing efforts to see DEI policies implemented have soured me on that form of remediation. There are probably a lot of other policy arenas I’d like to see addressed before tackling the issues raised by DEI policies. But that is a very different conversation from what one might call “first principles” on the extent of discrimination in American society. There is simply too much data on that question. Re-litigating it — as folks like Hanania want to do — is both tedious and exhausting.
If the racist right is trying poach the term “centrism,” leftists seem perfectly willing to concede the ground.
Daniel Bessner recently declared, “‘Centrist’ is probably the least useful, yet most occluding, term in modern political discourse.” Reason’s Jesse Walker thinks this is a recent phenomenon: “I don’t think this was true a decade ago, but it may well be the case now. I regularly see radicals, even outright socialists, derided as ‘centrists,’ sometimes by people whose ideological outlook is barely to the left of Bill Kristol.” The implication here is that to the left, centrism is just crypto-fascism in sheep’s clothing. And hey, Hanania certainly gives them a data point to advance that argument!
Honestly, I’m not entirely persuaded that a handful of hard-right would-be public intellectuals calling themselves “centrists” should dissuade others from using it, any more than the adoption of Aloha shirts by some Proud Boys means the rest of us can’t wear them. But I’ll return to that.
Drezner concludes:
To the extent that I have first principles when it comes to American politics, they are:
- If you lose an election and attempt to overturn the results through extralegal means you should be exiled from politics;
- Presidential control of the executive branch is not in fact absolute;
- Technical and subject-matter expertise is inherently a good thing and should play an important role in policymaking;
- The United States needs to preserve its open economy if it wants to preserve its leadership status among its allies and partners;
- The threats facing the United States come as much from complex systemic risks as they do from other great powers.
I don’t know where that places me along the left-right political spectrum at this point in time. What I do know is that I’m not calling myself a centrist anymore. That term has way too much baggage in 2023.
I agree completely with all those points except perhaps for the bit about calling myself “centrist,” on which I’m still not sure.
Like Drezner, I’m a longtime Republican who became increasingly alienated from the party over time and for whom the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016 was the last straw. While I’m effectively a Democrat at this point, having voted for that party’s nominees in the last two elections and, absent some radical developments, the upcoming one, that party is well to my left on a whole host of issues. The Democratic Party is the default because there’s no reasonable opposition at the moment.
As I noted on Bluesky Social yesterday in response to Dan’s post, “None of the labels I grew up with make much sense anymore. But, yeah, it’s hard for there to be a meaningful ‘center’ without a respectable ‘right.'” I’m not sure what useful verbiage there is that describes gradations between, say, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, Matt Yglesias, Dan Drezner, and the crazy right.
The very language of ideology just makes very little sense when notions like free and fair elections and the value of expertise are rejected by one of our two major parties. A choice between the basic values upon which the country was founded and anarchy can’t be decided by rational policy debate.
Whither centrists? Today they’re called Democrats, Independents and RINOs.
I tend to think of it terms of Democrats, Traditional Republicans*, and MAGA, with the Center positioned right between Traditional Republicans and Democrats and MAGA way, way off the starboard rail.
The problem is that Traditional Republicans have no real prominent voice. Not in the Media. Certainly not in Congress. Christie on the campaign trail, but he spends all his time railing against Trump and so his message is lost.
*e.g. Romney, Christie, ASA Hutchinson.
The best thing that could happen is if some Traditional Republican stood up and said,
Alas, cojones, they do not have them.
I don’t find a two dimensional scale all that useful. My views are fairly heterodox WRT many subjects. I’ve called myself at various times (other pompously) a rationalist. Somewhat mockingly, a soulless technocrat. If forced to reduce my views to a single perspective, I suppose I could call myself a Rockefeller Republican.
I follow exactly one political Facebook feed, my Representative Chip Roy, of the misnamed Freedom Caucus. Certainly of the right and even far right, he has more in common with George Wallace than any traditional Republican (who are now the RINOs BTW). Recently, Chip has been railing against something called the Uniparty. His Facebook followers are even more rabid, probably keeping a roll of paper towels nearby to wipe the spittle off their screens.
At the end of the day I just call myself an American.
The bulk of the Democratic Party is as centrist as it can be (responsible budgeting, socially liberal). The only explanation I can come up is that centrists non-democrats simply do not want to commingle with others.
@Daryl: Chris Christie and others are saying just that. They’re just non-entities in the current GOP. Hell, McConnell is saying that, just not loudly or publicly enough.
Politics is about the accumulation and exercise of power. With this in mind, we should heed Washington’s advice and personally beware of political parties. While I am a registered as a major political party member (I really have no other meaningful choice), it galls me that my government gives the two major political parties, and other gadfly political parties, more favorable treatment and assistance in promoting their candidates, including easier pathways to getting on the ballot. All qualified candidates should have equal access to an open primary ballot and there should be no partisan ID on any ballots. Moreover, as a voter, it is not the government’s job to record my or any other voter’s party affiliation or non-affiliation. It is simply none of their damn business. Finally, it is not the government’s job to tell us who and what kind of person we are voting for. Instead, it is the job of standing political parties, individual supporters, other assembled groups, as well as the candidates themselves to educate the voters about who these office seekers are and what they stand for. The government has no business putting their thumb on the scales of candidate selection. If we go this route, eliminating the partisan incursion into our candiate qualification process and voter records, we might just put more of the exteremists in the ranks of the unelected, which is where they belong.
I think people just should tell the truth. Most normal non-black people in this country probably have a weak form of what an obvious racist like Hanania believes about black people–their culture or genes or whatever makes them criminals and poor. Same goes with trans people. None of these people citing a freak like Jesse Singal care about kids or their health. They are uncomfortable with trans people and the idea of it.
Centrists have created this political culture where there are supposedly like 7 actual eugenicists in America and 3 actual transphobes and the rest are just asking questions. It would be better for everybody if we just told the truth about what we believe, instead of having this insane resentment re: the consequences of what you believe.
I live in Illinois. I am a registered voter in Jackson County. There is no political party registration associated with my status as a registered voter. When I voluntarily go to my polling place to freely excercise my right to vote in a primary election I must publicly select a ballot from one political party or another. If I select a ballot for the Democratic Party does that make me a Democrat? I have never been to any official gathering of Illinois Democrats. I have never donated money to any candidate for political office. Does the fact that I have a history of voting for the Democratic candidate in every election since I voted for George McGovern in 1972 mean that I am a Democrat?
(No telling what I would have done in November 1968. However I was two months shy of my 21st birthday. The legal voting age at the time.)
@Mister Bluster: This is similar to Texas. When you register to vote, you don’t register with a party. Texas is an open primary state. Basically, if you vote in a Republican primary, you are a Republican for a year. This means that if there is a runoff you can’t switch parties to vote in another party’s runoff. Which makes sense. You can also actively join a party by going to the Party headquarters and sign up as a party member. This is more permanent, I believe.
City elections are non-partisan. There are no party labels on the ballot.
“Hell, McConnell is saying that, just not loudly or publicly enough.”
McConnell is also a source of the problem. He brazenly engineered the stacking of the Supreme Court with Federalist Society yahoos. He is all about about obtaining and wielding power by whatever norm-breaking means are available.
When I first started voting, I might have described myself as a centrist. These days I describe myself as a “left conservative”. On most of the big ticket policy choices I lean to the left side. And I’m not in a hurry to take radical steps or am I interested in hyperbolic language. I support Social Security and Medicare. This is, in my world, a “conservative” stance. Just like supporting Roe v. Wade was. What’s done is done, don’t mess with it. That’s “conservative”. It isn’t Conservative, though.
It fascinates me, by the way, that most MAGAs support SS and Medicare. Trump supports Medicare. In fact, Trumpism is due, in part, to the mainline R’s steadfast insistence on unwinding or privatizing SS and Medicare. People my age, including MAGAs have lived under the threat of “pay for other people’s SS, but don’t get any when it becomes your turn” all our lives.
The most recent assault on SS was under the GWB administration. I think the voters notice that.
@James Joyner:
That was my point in my first comment…there is no prominent voice…or maybe a better way of saying is that there is no one saying it loudly enough and forcefully enough and with any sense of urgency.
Maybe it takes getting a group of significant voices together to drown out the RWNJ’s.
And the message will never get through as long as the MTG’s and BoBo’s and Gaetz’s are continued to be treated as normal.
I’ve said it before; Conservatism has a lot to offer this nation. I don’t agree with much of it but that’s kind of the point.
Have I ever mentioned that we desperately need a multiparty system?
And that having only two viable options can be really, really problematic especially when one side can only obtain power not by competing with the other side but by capitalizing on institutional features that amplify their voices?
More later, I expect.
Off-topic rant:
Hanania was on my “to write about” list for a while, but honestly, every attempt to do it depressed me too much. Thankfully Drezner did it far better than I ever could have.
One thing I will point out was that his promotion went far beyond the “mainstream press.” Like Chris Rufio and others before him, Hanaia was routinely cited by “serious conservatives” including Ross Douthat, and “heterodox/radical center” thinkers like Matt Yglesias and Bari Weiss as someone who “raises important points” up until his early writings surfaced about a month ago–long after most of us kept pointing out that his positions were largely white supremacist ones stated politely.
While I understand a commitment to open discussion, I’m not sure why–other than Hanaia’s David Brooks level of politeness during his ascendence–so many people felt it’s important that we seriously considered the softer side of supremacy (or why to some people Hanaia apparently sounded like what should be the intellectual center of our discourse).
To be clear, I know Drezner isn’t one of those people (and if I remember correctly had Hanania’s number pretty early).
@Daryl:
I take, and agree with, your meaning. But that made up quote is skating pretty close to, “Joe Biden is getting stuff done for everyday Americans. We must get back to where we can effectively oppose that.” Which pretty much actually is the position of anti-Trump establishment GOPs.
The conceptual problem in US politics is that it is linear, with the right at one pole and the left at the other pole, and everything in the mushy middle is centrist. Strident partisans, especially, like framing everything in terms of a binary to be able to label who is and isn’t in the tribe.
But, of course, political views and policy are not, in reality, linear. The binary construct can’t, for example, explain someone who is both strongly pro-gun rights and strongly pro-abortion rights (or someone who is the the opposite of that). It can’t explain ideas and policies that lay completely outside the limited right-left paradigm or things that are ignored by partisans.
“Independents” is probably the best word I can think of to describe those who don’t fit neatly in the narrow partisan and ideological holes of the right-left linear construct. It’s really only those who truly are in the middle on most issues who can rightly be called centrists. And I think a lot of Americans fit that definition.
@Scott: There was a thing called DW-NOMINATE. It ranked representatives and senators on a left-right scale. I recall reading years ago one of it’s founders defending it, saying that while there were many issues, if Senator A was to the left of Senator B on, say, taxes, he’d also be on the left on defense spending, civil rights, tariffs, and what have you. That statistically a unidimensional scale worked very well in practice.
I haven’t seen much reference to it in years but WIKI says it has evolved into a two dimensional system called just NOMINATE. They look at history and added a second axis to reflect “cross-cutting, salient issues of the day”, i.e. slavery, bimetalism, civil rights, etc. WIKI says the one-dimensional model is 83% accurate, but with the second axis it jumps way up too … 85%. So the second axis is relatively unimportant.
I would myself see at least two dimensions in the electorate, liberal-conservative and the currently “cross-cutting salient” culture war. And, having studied here under Dr. T say that the two party system forces that into a single D-R axis. Or maybe just that the correlation between lib-con and cultural issue positions is so strong it really is just one axis.
There are days I think the whole thing resolves to just normative (conservative) v utilitarian (liberal). Example: The Bible says abortion is a sin, end of story (ignoring the fact that it doesn’t, actually) v let’s look at the situation and try to minimize harm. .
@Steven L. Taylor:
Hehe. Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
In a multiparty system, the Traditional Republicans, lacking a governing majority, still end up in a coalition with the Libertarian Party, the Evangelical Party, and the MAGA party. Then what? We re-labeled a bunch of cowards and traitors only to find a rose by any other name(s) is still a rose.
@Modulo Myself:
Oh, I definitely believe culture is keeping black folks poor and making them interact with the justice system. More of an “our culture” than a “their culture” type of thing though.
@Andy:
True. But how many such people are there? If pro-gun and anti-abortion are strongly correlated, which I expect they are, a one dimensional left-right scale works fairly well.
As to the general question of what to call the the people formerly known as “centrists”, as the Republican Party moves further from reality and towards fascism, if they can’t bring themselves to vote D, I’d suggest we call them Republican fellow-travelers. A bit more seriously, I think Biden’s doing the right thing by calling the pluto-populist GOPs “MAGA” and the rest of them Republicans. Using the jargon, he’s giving people who can’t bear to think of themselves as Democrats a permission structure to vote D “just this once”, or at least stay home.
For some reason, the song “Which Side Are You On?” is running through my head.
Are we talking actual centrists here, or Traditional Republicans?
I tend to call the actual centrists Low Information Voters. All the people who say things like “we need to get the politics out of politics” and “they’re all corrupt” and “if you’re taking flack from both sides you’re on the right path”… they’re generally useless people.
There’s a small smattering of Three-Or-More-Issue-Voters, who might be pro-life, anti-gun, pro-environment, pro-LGBT, anti-tax and some mishmash of beliefs that don’t match the current ideological sorting. In the end they get their priorities in order, and fall in with one party or the other.
And then there are the Traditional Republicans. People who believed the rhetoric of the Republican Party in years past, supported increasingly imperfect candidates who held onto that rhetoric while mostly just consolidating power in the hands of the upper classes and white supremacy. People who, when the mask was pulled off, revealing what the left had been saying was under there all along, continued to put their support behind that mask which is now lying on the ground unused. I call them Dupes. In a bit of time they will work their way into one of the previous groupings.
To be clear, this latter group is far better than those who embrace what was under that mask. Those that do embrace the monster are basically the right wing version of Tankies, and there are so many more of them than we feared.
Being a Republican (or its euphemism, “conservative”) requires approving of that situation.
Once upon a time, it was possible for informed voters to agree that endemic institutionalized racism and its sequelae, and wealth inequality in general, were problems to be righted, but to disagree strongly about the most effective and just means for righting them. In the decades since then, the academic economics literature has generally resolved all of that uncertainty, in favor of the “liberal” proposals. Things like minimum wages, affirmative action, public education beginning pre-K, universal health care, the right to organized labor, separation of church and state, science-based policy, etc. have all been established as better than the alternative.
So where does that leave a potential for centrism? You can want to preserve injustice and inequality, or you can ignore the literature on how best to correct injustice and inequality and make everyone better off in the long run, or you can join the ranks of liberals quibbling over the details of which universal health plan or which public education system is best.
Or, I suppose, you can adopt a philosophical position that says there are things more important than injustice and inequity, and that you don’t care if everyone is worse off when those principles are given priority. If there were any actual libertarians, they would fall in that camp. Ditto the theocrats and at least some flavors of communist. I can actually respect such folk (though not very much) more than the people who want to cling to the hope of trickle-down economics or the free market driving out racism.
@Steven L. Taylor:
And that having only two viable options can be really, really problematic especially when one side can only obtain power not by competing with the other side but by capitalizing on institutional features that amplify their voices?
This is really what people mean by centrist–the type of person who sounds like an institution when they speak.
@gVOR10:
We’re one of the largest countries in the world in terms of population, one of the most diverse in all sorts of ways. Can we really say that 350 million diverse Americans ought to fit in a binary when tiny countries have multiple parties and don’t have that binary? People are responding to the system as it is.
And it wasn’t that long ago that issues like abortion weren’t cleanly divided by partisansip. Only recently, with the ideological sorting of the parties and the nationalization of basically all political questions, do you see specific issues clumped neatly into left or right buckets.
As noted, people then respond to the system as it is – The psychology of tribal identity and in-group incentives do the rest because, on most questions, one’s political identity is what determines policy views, not the other way around, especially on stuff one doesn’t know much or care much about.
A huge diverse country of 350 million deserves more than two choices, hence my and Steven’s desire for a multiparty system. If that should ever happen, you’ll see a lot of “loyal” Republicans and Democrats flee to the exits.
Also, we can see the shift and realignments between the left and right over time. So what defines the two poles changes as the interests of the constituencies change, and the list of issues also change what bucket they are in for the same reason. College educated voters used to be a primary constituency of the GoP. Now they are a primary constituency of the Democrats. And the political views of each party has changed in accordance with that. There really isn’t much in the way of principles involved.
@DrDaveT:
I don’t agree that “conservative” is a euphemism for Republican. I also don’t think “liberal” is a euphemism for Democrat. Although increasingly rare, there still are such things as “conservative Democrats” for example.
@Daryl:
“…if some Traditional Republican stood up and said…”
Some seem to have done so; but they are now no longer Republicans, best as I can judge from across the ocean.
Judging from similar ideological coherence collapses in other countries, its going to take time and massive electoral drubbings to force the Republicans to reconstruct, or for a new party to seize the centre/right hill.
Which is hardly a novel insight.
The problem seems to be how deeply entrenched a Trumpified/”Christianist” nationalist Republican Party will continue to be in many areas as a blocking force.
Resentment is one hell of a drug.
But then, US politics is very different from most countries in some key respects.
Sociology is one (race, religion, their interaction, default individualism, etc) another is the party system.
I’ve mentioned before, the whole concept of public party affiliation, and it’s role in public elections (open or closed) is one that causes jaws to drop in most other countries. Primary elections are rare as hens teeth outside the US.
@DrDaveT:
There are a fair number of “reform around the edges” types, who want to keep the system as it is for themselves, but cut back on the inevitable abuses. (Inevitable abuses, because every human system has abuse, not because the current systems are especially prone to promoting abuse, at least in their minds.)
I know people who this would still apply to. In fact, I would say that the difference between liberals and progressives is pretty much a difference of implementation and priority, and even more so with the neoliberal centrists.
I don’t think this is true, and it is certainly not universally acknowledged.
If you look at homelessness, for instance, there is no clear consensus.
Do we just need to build more housing? Provide support for people who are one emergency away from losing housing? Create more economic opportunities in cheaper areas? Break up the rental company price fixing? Put the mentally ill in institutions so we don’t have to see them? Let them build tent cities under freeways and in certain parks?
It’s not that the “liberal” solutions for governing have proven better (see people shitting in streets), it’s that half the political class has no interest in solving those problems, because it is easier to claim that it’s a Democrat problem that people are shitting in the street.
I think it’s a little different: The Democratic Party is the default because a vote for any other party’s candidates makes it incrementally more likely that the worst possible candidates will win.
I say this because there are probably several minor party candidates who are potentially reasonable in their opposition. In my own case I probably don’t agree with them, but they are not nuts.
@Gustopher:
I was lumping liberals and progressives together, perhaps unfairly. I agree that the difference between them is one of preferred means, not of ends, so perhaps my argument was a bit circular there. I was mostly trying to point out that it’s intellectually difficult these days to agree with liberals about the big problems but cling to traditional conservative “remedies” for them.
I certainly agree with the second half. Denial is a long river. And there are Tobacco Institute-style academics who will still shill for Laffer Curves (or even The Bell Curve) if the gig is cushy enough. And the University of Chicago hasn’t given up on the dogmas of Friedman and Becker, even if the rest of the world has.
“True. But how many such people are there? If pro-gun and anti-abortion are strongly correlated, which I expect they are, a one dimensional left-right scale works fairly well.”
I know quite a few people who are pro-abortion and are gun owners including me. Of those I know in this group all of them also believe it’s ok to have guns regulated in some way. So on that left-right scale you have to place gun nuts (not restrictions), gun owners who think its OK for local communities to place restriction on guns, those who dont own guns and want lots of restriction and then those who want no guns. If you are dealing with real people and not litmus tests it’s that way for abortion also.
Steve
@Andy:
I do not quite believe, as you do, that a lot of Americans fit the definition of a ‘centrist’. However, if I grant you the point, and if there are indeed a lot of ‘centrists’ then I think many are likely disaffected non-voters. I think most of those ‘centrists’ who do vote stay on the team they’ve been with because they believe that they have nowhere else to go. A few will jump ship if their Party is perceived as being too far gone on certain important hot-button issues (reproductive rights, immigration, foreign policy, whatever-du-jour.)
I believe the Right is now much father from the center than the Left is. How many of the 74 million people who voted for Trump are ‘centrists’ or even RINO’s? 20-25% 33%? How many of the 81 million Biden voters are ‘centrists’? 10%? It’s got to be less than the GOP because they are now closer to the center (drag queen reading hour notwithstanding.)
Not sure where this takes us, but I do not believe that we could or will end up with viable 3rd or 4th party options.
@al Ameda:
You could definitely be right – that is just my perception.