[lapcat]

> The bottom line being that America really needs a middle/center party

What does that even mean? What would a middle/center party do, exactly?

I'm getting older (maybe ancient in the tech world), and just during my lifetime I've seen the terms "left", "right", "liberal", "conservative" morph multiple times into things that, if not hopelessly vague, are unrecognizable from previous definitions.

Maybe the particular issues need to be specified. Economic issues are very different from social and cultural issues. And then there's also foreign affairs, if anyone cares about that.

The politicans who are considered "centrists" nowadays, for example Joe Manchin, just seem to me to be sellouts with no principles who go to the highest bidder. Am I wrong about that? I honestly respect a consistent ideologue more than that. In any case, what message do the so-called centrists have for young men?

From what I've seen in the exit polls, if they're to be trusted, economics was the most important issue for voters. Those who felt worse off now voted for Trump, and those who felt better off or the same voted for Harris. For the first time I can remember, the Democrat won the upper income voters, while the Republican won the middle class voters, which is a reversal from 2020.

I remember that Harris's opportunity agenda for black men was like... cryptocurrency and legalizing weed? WTF was the campaign thinking (other than taking donations from crypto advocates)?

[poincaredisk]

I can't speak for the OP, but in my country we have several parties, so I can express my political opinions in a more complex way than the left-right linear spectrum. The parties don't position themselves by just being "more left" and "more right", but tend to cater to a specific audience. For example, we have many LGBT issues, and I can vote for a party that spends a significant part of their political power on improving the situation. If I wanted to focus on economy, there's a party who I'm mostly aligned with, but unfortunately I don't like their conservative and even far-right tendencies, so I prefer another, more populist and pro-social but still solid party. There are some parties which are completely not for me, but which cater to, for example, farmers and have a significant following in rural population (they're slightly conservative, but pro-social and have nothing to do with far right, just to give you an idea of the differences). And yes, we have the mandatory populist party.

I don't have a party that I agree with 100%, but I can decide what is most important for me and vote for a party that wants it. And most importantly, if I don't like my choice, I can vote for another party next year without making a 180.

I think that's nice.

[lapcat]

> I think that's nice.

Agreed. I like the idea of political pluralism much more than the idea of a so-called "centrist" party.

We do have other parties in the US, such as the Libertarian and Green parties, but our system makes it very difficult for them. They have to fight like crazy for ballot access, they're locked out of news coverage, they don't receive public funding, and they are reviled as "spoilers" by the two major parties.

[serf]

>What does that even mean? What would a middle/center party do, exactly?

Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

In recent years, I guess due to success of certain parties, everyone has decided that it is in fashion to have a group to demonize - to hate. This (necessarily) creates a group of disenfranchised people that have an axe to grind.

It used to be that political parties demonized far entities that were as far outside the voting American public as was feasible; now it's fashionable to attack people that constitute American voters. Now we have hordes of people that were demonized by one side or the other, and a lot of them want to vote one way or the other out of pure spite rather than political interest.

[aaplok]

> Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

Well politics is about making choices where consensus is unattainable. By nature of not being consensual, there will be some angles from which these choices are undesirable. So attracting allies "from all angles" is essentially the same as saying "whoever is not my ally comes from no (reasonable) angle", which is precisely what the democrats are being described as doing in the article. They are the utmost "centrist" party in a way.

The answer to the demonization issue is not to pretend everybody must be your ally, it is to acknowledge that one can reasonably disagree with you, and be willing to engage with your political opponents rather than treat them as enemies, to reach an agreement acceptable to most (though not all).

[lapcat]

> Forget the wording 'centrist', parent is trying to describe the need for a party that seeks allies from all angles rather than trying to produce outrage towards specific groups of people in a lazy effort to foment in-party support and credit.

Fair enough. I'm all for breaking up the duopoly.

However, the strategy of scapegoating and creating enemies is hardly a new phenomenon. It's as old as politics itself. More recently, I'm old enough to remember Reagan railing against "welfare queens". In 1968, George Wallace ran for President, and won 5 states, on a platform of racial segregation. There was also the McCarthy era, of course, where there were supposedly enemies, Communists everywhere in the US. And George W. Bush weaponized patriotism after 9/11, painting anyone opposed to US imperialism as supporting the terrorists. (This same happens today to anyone opposed to US imperialism. They're called antisemites and supporters of Hamas.)

In the end, though, polls usually show that people vote based on their pocketbooks. Economic issues are almost always most important and salient, despite all of the other political commotion.