politics

There Is No Such Thing As Centrism

Americans don't want Democrats to make policy like Republicans. They want them to fight like Republicans.

Any time you hear a cable news pundit talk about centrism, or a newspaper columnist write about centrism, or a politician programmed by their corporate masters opine on the value and necessity of centrism, remember that centrism isn't real.

Centrism is whatever you want it to be. There is no firm definition of political centrism because it means different things to different people, it means anything to anyone, depending on their political aims, their audiences, and the people who put money into their checking accounts. Scratch the surface of centrism – dig a little deeper, but not too deep, for hellfire could lick your face – and you'll find it is nothing but a magic elixir designed in a lab to suffocate any public policy that could interrupt the logic of capital (eternal growth) for even one moment.

Become a Bad Faith Times supporter today and get access to the weekly BFT Podcast and our lovely BFT discord community

The New York Times on Thursday released polling about the direction Democrats should move in the coming years. The Times' questions and framing was vague and unhelpful, seemingly created to start a 100-years war on Bluesky, where folks are still hashing out the 2016 Democratic Party primary in less-than-cordial ways.

An outlet like NYT, one of the major media companies that simply can't comprehend the current political mood of the American electorate and won't acknowledge the unprecedented nature of Democrats' midterm advantage, would never, ever ask the following questions about the direction of the Republican Party. The Times asked potential Democratic Party backers if they would like to see the party move left, stay put, or move toward the "center."

The center being "to the right," of course. It's right there! Just describe the position directionally and you've got it.

If you're feeling generous (I'm not), you might say NYT would not do this sort of poll for Republicans because the party long ago dedicated itself to undermining and eventually destroying constitutional democracy in the United States. The ungenerous among us might say major media outlets need the Democratic coalition to be fractured if the midterms and the 2028 elections are to be close and exciting and subject to the bloodless, profit-driven horserace coverage that exacerbates the scourge bothsidesism and discourages democratic participation.

I have many questions about centrism. I guess I'll start here: How does one become more centrist on health care? Does that mean, perhaps, that one believes families should enter medical bankruptcy for some health issues but not others? Maybe being centrist on health care means denying basic health services to anyone who doesn't have enough paid employment. How much? Well, that's up to the centrist brain. What is the centrist position on government coverage for life-saving medications? Maybe that could be achieved through a system in which the government covers a portion of that medicine, but only enough for the person in need to continue paying rent and grocery bills while not being able to save one single dollar in case of emergency.

Maybe the centrists can come up with a Dignity Algorithm, one that offers only enough government support for one to maintain their last shred of human dignity and nothing more.

I am begging a nearby centrist to come to my home and explain to me the centrist position on immigration. I would imagine it would be something like this: Allow the president's personal paramilitary force to invade American cities but only arrest immigrants accused of crimes. These alleged criminals all hang out in the same places, naturally. They do not have families who would be scooped up and chained up and tortured by the president's lawless paramilitary – or so the very respectable and learned centrist mind would have you believe. Maybe the centrist immigration stance would boil down to not showing them the images of masked men with big guns beating and handcuffing brown and black children and throwing them into the backs of unmarked vans (on a more serious note, it's those images that have shaken a lot of "centrists" out of their complacency over the past 18 months).

I'm dying to know the centrist position on transgender rights. Perhaps this would require an individual review of whether a person is indeed transgender. You know, just to make sure they're not faking it. Because the centrist mind surely understands transgender issues more than, say, doctors and medical experts who have dedicated their entire professional lives to these matters. Again, the centrist mind grants dignity to human beings, but only some, and only a little bit at a time. We can't, after all, be greedy for dignity.

All of these centrist positions might sound to you, the bright and savvy Bad Faith Times reader, like right-wing positions. Because they are. The poll is actually asking if potential Democratic supporters want the party to be more like the GOP in its policy positions (as much as an explicitly fascist political party can even have policy positions). It's why the Times article about the new polling is brimming with supposed Democratic Party supporters begging party leaders to abandon trans people and immigrants if they want to win in 2026 and 2028. This is called popularism, and it's the crowning jewel of political loser shit.

It's About Fighting vs. Complacency

The keepers of the Democratic Party are going to love the results of a NYT polling designed to provide cover for party leaders who want nothing more than to drag Democrats rightward, either because they think that's the way to win or because it serves the interests of the oligarchs who fill their shit-filled troughs every election season.

The party's long-awaited 2024 autopsy – examining a bloated corpse that has deteriorated to almost nothing – pushes the false narrative that to beat Republicans, Democrats must adopt slightly friendlier versions of their preferred policies. The report points to the end of the 1980s, a decade of Republican domination that saw weak-kneed liberals brand themselves as Reagan Democrats, as an example of how the party can gain power. I can't lie to the BFT reader: This shook me up.

In 1989, after losing three straight presidential campaigns, our party refocused the conversation around policy and purpose to reclaim the vital center of American discourse. Understanding the center is where most people live, then-DNC Chairman Ron Brown led Democrats out of the political wilderness by supporting candidates putting people first, prioritizing the economy, and offering America hope. It was Ron Brown who understood every corner of America was hurting and proclaimed his tenure would be less about race and more about “the races we win.” Ron Brown also challenged the Democratic Party to think and be different. He focused less on pie-in-the-sky narratives and asked the party to “get real about the politics of success."

Whether the party can steer a furious and increasingly radicalized electorate toward the imaginary politics we call centrism is anyone's guess today. I would say no, the party will not be able to hold back the seething anger you see in every part of a society being pillages by criminals running the United States government. They will try though. They always try.

Many Americans – far too many – like to think of themselves as reasonable and sober-minded and, most importantly, realistic. Let's not get crazy and make American life more dignified and economically secure. Let's not lose our minds and provide protections for regular folks against the vampiric corporations sucking them dry. Let's not pretend we can wrench those fangs out of the necks of working Americans. Instead, perhaps, we can ask the vampires not to bite quite so hard.

The New York Times and every other major media outlet know this and they exploit this desire to appear respectably centrist – to the detriment of progressive forces within the Democratic Party who seem to understand what their supporters really want in this era of ascendant authoritarian terror. They want fighters. They want brawlers. They want pro-democracy politicians who will stop pretending we live in precedented times and use any and every effort to punch back against opponents who no longer recognize even nominal restrictions on their power.

"In their own words, many say leadership is weak and not fighting hard enough," political data journalist G. Elliott Morris wrote in a breakdown of polling cross tabs showing how voters perceived elected Democrats.

Likely voters pointed to Democrats as respecters of democracy and respect for institutions and all the stuff that doesn't really matter anymore. Republicans, meanwhile, were ahead "on willingness to fight (R+4), clear messaging (R+8), getting things done (R+7), and strong leadership (R+11)," according to Morris.

In this fundamental way, polls like the one released this week by NYT miss the point entirely. Right now, in the midst of competitive authoritarianism in a degraded republic, those who oppose the Republican agenda don't care much about policy beyond, I suppose, making things a little cheaper. It's (mostly) not about centrism vs. leftism. It's about elevating people to positions of power so they can use all available mechanisms to destroy the authoritarian threat, the animating force of the No Kings movement.

The tens of millions of American voters who desperately want a combative opposition party to beat back the fascist boogeyman don't want congressional Democrats to do policy more like Republicans. They want Democrats to fight like Republicans: Ugly and brutally and without regard for norms or decorum or feelings. They want a fire to fight the fire that we know will consume everything if we let it.

Follow Denny Carter on Bluesky at @dennycarter.bsky.social.