I have always felt that "center" was less a matter of the specific opinion positions* , and more a matter of the style of discourse, or the degree of nuance presented about the varying opinions for a particular topic. That may be just my personal feeling on the word, but I have had people agree with it over the years.
*Though obviously extremes can be identified, e.g. advocating violence against $GROUP_NAME is not especially "center" in the current US context.
Interesting. I'm trying to picture that, but I'm not sure if I can. To me, that sounds more like how people arrive at a position rather than the position itself. Or, how someone comes to the content of their opinion as opposed to where on the spectrum that opinion might be.
So I am using the word "center" instead of "moderate" intentionally, because the latter might not exist--at least not in the way the common use of the word "moderate" suggests. There is some research (will dig up and edit this post if I can find it) that demonstrates how most moderates do not exist in the way we imagine. The study I am thinking of explains how surveys often use naive averaging on a single axis for policy preferences, and wind up labeling people with a mixture of extreme views as moderate. Meanwhile, those individuals are anything but moderate on any single, specific issue.
Instead of "moderate", what makes someone "centrist" to me is when someone is the opposite of "dogmatic", when someone has an ability to look at the other side and see how a logical path can be walked to reach another conclusion (than their own). Even if that person does not agree with the specific conclusion, they can follow the "stack trace". And what this understanding gives them, what this ability to reason about the other side gives them, is the necessary preconditions for compromise.
That is center to me: ability to compromise. Opinions are not center. People are center, or centrist, if they possess the disposition and non-dogmatic stance necessary for compromise. Barring revolutionary upheaval, every opinion needs to be implemented in policy eventually, and policy details involve compromise more often than not.
Maybe I am splitting linguistic hairs, but that is how I hear the word "center": a place where people with a level of understanding can come together and compromise. Compromise, famously, being an arrangement where neither side fully gets what they want.
The BBC comes to mind, although they're not a perfect example. They have a mandate to present both sides of an argument (hence Nigel Farage got so much airtime in the run-up to the EU referendum).
That said, ask anyone in the UK and they'll always tell you that the BBC is "biased" against one group or another, so the way they actually present those arguments varies. But at least they get a mention.
In U.S. discourse the concept of a political "center" can generally be reduced to the concept that nobody is advocating for anything that's really all that different than things are now. Or to the extent that they are they are advocating for slow, incremental changes. "Common sense, bipartisan solutions" and so on.
Thus, in practice, centrism is in fact a political philosophy that advocates for corporate hegemony and income inequality. Those are current major societal trends, so by definition any approach advocating no major changes serves to perpetuate those trends.
Other major societal trends include outrage culture and hyper partisan behavior. I see the "center" as being against those things more than they're pro corporate hegemony and income inequality (obviously).
Those two points of view are the same point of view.
People are outraged because society is becoming profoundly unfair. People have different takes on why it's unfair and who is getting the worst of it, some of which fall under some kind of definition of "left" or "right" but the basic force causing the outrage is that our social contract has been systematically dismantled.
Those who did the dismantling, and have benefitted from it, of course, are not outraged. But all the people yelling and angry scare them. So they're opposed to that. Welcome to centrism.
I disagree. Outrage culture comes from social media. It became profitable (in attention points) to create and ride waves of outrage. I've yet to see a mob go for the 0.1% for having all of the money, it's always some shallow drama or an easy pc win.
Balancing caring for people with economic realism.
Being pragmatic about cherrypicking policies from both sides of the capitalist and socialist political spectrum - for example nationalised rail but privatised phone providers.
Not holding limiting beliefs that align with either current right/left politics - i.e. support abortion rights for women but also Christian employees to openly wear crosses and pray at work.
Here's a policy that everyone I've ever spoke to who describes themselves as a centrist has believed is a good idea - non-violent prisoners shouldn't be sent to prison but should have to work in recycling centers improving how much gets recycled instead of put into landfill or burned for a longer period than the equivalent prison sentence would be. After all why should they cost the public whilst in prison when they could help the environment?
Everyone I know who describes themselves as a centrist might not agree on everything the other does but we largely agree on 75%+ of policies because they tend to be seemingly common sense when we talk to each other.
*Though obviously extremes can be identified, e.g. advocating violence against $GROUP_NAME is not especially "center" in the current US context.