[aksss]

The context is different when referring to politics in a two-party system like the US, versus political philosophy. In the US political system, the center is relative to where the two parties are - there is no “absolute truth” of the center. The democrats are the party of the left like republicans are the party of the right — meaning political views will roughly trend according to party membership. Centrists are defined by being able to keep a foot in both sides, so democrats are by definition not centrist anymore than republicans. Either party may be comprised by more or less centrist politicians, but if that holds it just moves the center over time. Both parties change their stances on issues periodically in ways that would seem to violate first principles of a philosophical left/right philosophy. But political philosophy is always more accurately measured in a quadrant system[0] than a linear one. In a two-party system, or one of a forced synthesis/aggregation of viewpoints and dialectic conflict, a Democrat will tend to hold views left of center in the US, or at least support politicians who hold such views, and the reverse for Republicans.

[0] the intersection of two axes measuring social and economic positions, popularized as the “political compass”

[tsimionescu]

Politics in the US is not limited to the two parties. The population of the US has a wide range of political opinions that don't neatly aligned to the mainline Democratic or Republican views. Especially in the US, with its system of primaries, the real politics of the population are relevant even when the official election essentially only offers 2 candidates.

And in the real US, the Democratic party is to the right of a vast majority of its own voters' views, on issues such as Medicare for All most prominently, but others as well. It's even to the right of the views of large swaths of Republican voters on many issues, such as withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic party is much closer to the Center of the political opinions of the US population, at least on economic and foreign policy matters (I would say it's well in the center-right of American political views actually on those matters). It may well be on the 'real left' on social and family matters, to be fair.

Not to mention, there are many other political forces and voices, which form a clear left pole far to the left of the Democratic party (I gave specific examples), and they have large amounts of increasingly organized support. They will likely pull the Democratic party to the left instead of establishing a pure leftist party, but that is far from having happened. You can look instead at how much the extreme right has been pulling the Republican party right to see the mechanisms

So the way I see it, the US population has left leaning people, right leaning people, and centrists. Looking at the relative opinions of the population, the Democratic party is overall in the Center, and the Republicans are well on the right (these are overall generalizations). Of course, in the absence of better choices, leftist voters will generally vote Democratic, as the Center is preferable to them than the Right.

More importantly for this claim, papers like the NYT and networks like CNN are explicitly cultivating centrist beliefs (especially on economic and foreign policy matters), often leaning far more to the right on such issues compared to the majority of the population (look at Brian Williams repulsive praise of the 'beauty of our weapons' on MSNBC[0] as they were reporting on a US missile attack on a Syrian base).

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNHOJwgZyfo

[aksss]

In practical terms the US is limited to two parties. Name the last time a third party won the Presidency. This is woven into the structure.

This doesn't limit the spectrum of opinions of individuals by any means but it does compel some degree of consensus and organization to mount a serious campaign.

> They will likely pull the Dem party to the left

Yes, the parties vacillate in how far left or right they are, and the center moves accordingly. Still, the center of US politics isn't defined by some "objective truth" it's defined by the relative position of the two political parties. Some ideas that have been centrist in the past are now extremist, some ideas that have been considered extreme in the past are now considered the accepted consensus.

[tsimionescu]

In the end this is just a matter of definitions. For my own understanding, I define left and right and center in terms of the relative opinions of the population, not the parties. You define them by the parties' positions - that's fair of course, it's a workable definition.

I do think there are advantages to my definition - by your definition, the majority of the US population has an extreme left position on Medicare for all, as an example.