Why do "Centrists" always seem to favor conservatives, rather than progressives?

[ProfessorPlum]

I found this interesting little essay about, among other things, why Steve Bannon of all people had been invited to The New Yorker's festival.

http://www.ianwelsh.net/why-did-the-new-yorker-want-steve-bannon-to-headline-their-festival/

All of this is stuff that centrists can live with. High executive compensation, pro-corporate policies, keeping unions and the left down.

...

So the bottom line is that centrists are ok with fascists because fascists are pro-corporate and executive wealth.

...

On the other hand, the left wing is hostile to large corporations and high executive compensation. At the least the left would highly regulate corporations and break many of them up, while slapping on c.90% marginal tax rates and punitive estate taxes.

...

Left-wingers are an existential threat to centrists because centrists are, substantially, supporters of the status quo. How America and the world is (or was before Trump) is essentially good to them. The parts of the status quo that right wingers want to overthrow don’t hurt centrists. The parts of the status quo that left wingers want to overthrow do.

I've seen this kind of thinking over and over again on the part of "centrists", like every time Michael Bloomberg thinks he wants to start a third party. This kind of thinking is rife in the media as well. These people aren't hard right ideologues. Just economic beneficiaries of the status quo.

[OilemFirchen]

1. Nope. Not gonna give him the click.

From your excerpt, we learn absolutely nothing about his allegation. To whom is he referring?

Then, of course, there's this:

Ian Welsh has been blogging since 2004. He was the Managing Editor of FireDogLake and the Agonist.

[ProfessorPlum]

2. your post is negative

but has not a shred of actual argument about the essay or the assertions therein.

weird.

[OilemFirchen]

5. So is yours.

Mine at least provides perspective on the author. Your offers nothing of substance whatsoever.

[ProfessorPlum]

22. actually

yours was an ad hominem argument, and didn't address the substance of the essay

[OilemFirchen]

26. You're damned right.

Ad hominem is perfectly appropriate when making a general observation about the validity of an argument, absent any substantive support of the argument. It's especially appropriate in this informal forum, where the citation of the now-defunct Firedoglake and its staff is frowned upon.

There are ample ad-hom attacks against Glenn Greenwald, for example - a former contributor to FDL - which, I assert, are appropriate. Just because an individual is from the "left" doesn't shield him or her from reflexive insults, any more so than would be hurled at, for example, Sean Hannity or Alex Jones. Or Donald Trump.

[ProfessorPlum]

28. ad hominem is a logical fallacy

and indicates you have no rebuttal to bring against the substance of the argument.

maybe you do, though, you just aren't showing it.

[OilemFirchen]

32. It's only a logical fallacy when used in an attempt to rebut an argument.

Since you've provided no argument, then it's an appropriate response.

[ProfessorPlum]

34. it was the author's argument

and it is that centrist movements and people that consider themselves centrists often don't mind the economic effects of conservative policy, because it benefits them or at least doesn't harm them, while conversely progressive policies don't benefit them.

You can agree or disagree, but you haven't addressed it at all, just kicked up a bunch of dust.

[OilemFirchen]

36. I'm pretty sure that's a summation of your content-free OP.

Who are these centrists? I do believe I asked that question quite some time ago.

And no, I won't read the article.

[ProfessorPlum]

37. I can see why you think the essay has no content

That happens when you don't read

[OilemFirchen]

39. You posted the OP. You picked the cites.

If you believe that those cites adequately represent the content of the article, then it would appear that I was smart to avoid it.

[ProfessorPlum]

43. Oh you're smart all right

That much is obvious

[LanternWaste]

8. Oddly enough, the essay also contains no actual arguments. Weird, part II

Nor does it contains objective evidence to support its own assertions and editorials. It simply takes anecdotal evidence, and draws its own conclusion lacking observation, testing or measurement.

But I get it... if you didn't hold others to a higher standard than you hold the author to, you'd be as dismissive of the article as everyone else is.

[emulatorloo]

13. Well said.

[mythology]

9. Sure it does. The author edits a website that is extreme left.

Running a site that is so intellectually dishonest that it claimed the Obama administration treated liberals like a real pen has consequences to one's credibility.

[ProfessorPlum]

10. what is a real pen

[MicaelS]

12. Duh! Automated signatures.

http://www.rstmkt.com/real-pen/

[ProfessorPlum]

14. what does it mean to treat liberals like a real pen

[ProfessorPlum]

33. sorry, I should address the question to you

what does it mean to treat liberals like a real pen?

[emulatorloo]

11. The "essay" you posted is nothing but fact-free speculation

Not everyone finds value in vapid vague sloganeering and speculative hot takes.

[ehrnst]

44. And there we have it. (nt)

[George II]

46. the OP is an offensive insult to the majority of Democrats.

[NurseJackie]

52. Yes it is. I wonder if it was intentional.

[brooklynite]

3. The New Yorker wasn't looking favorably on Bannon...they saw him as "good copy"

Personally, I think the protesters should have agreed to stay on the agenda, contingent on their ability to publicly interrogate him.

I, for one, am not uncomfortable hearing voices I disagree with.

[QC]

4. Funny how that works, isn't it?

I'm sure it is the purest coincidence, though.

[toddwv]

6. Because they are "centrist" in the way

in the same way that many "libertarians" are libertarians and many "Christians" are Christians which is to say that they are centrist in name only.

[ProfessorPlum]

18. that's right - it's a convenient means to an end

there is a flavor to a lot of these third party, centrist movements that just wants all of the partisanship and bickering to be toned down, so that the beneficiaries of the status quo can just continue quietly making money.

[Hortensis]

7. Won't click either. It's premise is mistaken to the point of stupid.

Professor, which "centrists" are being bashed here? So far looks like the usual bashing of the entire liberal Democratic mainstream. I'm in there over on the left quadrant, btw.

Centrists are people of any affiliation or none who who genuinely vote centrist. They may predominantly lean left or right but in any case are all solidly to the right of the Democratic mainstream, which has moved away from center. As you and this author should both know.

Btw, given that enemies of the American electorate have divided and conquered by breaking our center, don't you think it's way past time to develop a new appreciation for those who are centrist instead of clueless antagonism and lack of respect? Maybe think of them as a bridge to a united working majority.

United we stand, divided we fall.

[George II]

47. Bazinga!

[budkin]

15. I've always noticed this

You hardly ever hear of anyone being "center-left."

[ProfessorPlum]

16. You're right. even though the vast majority of the country

favors policies that I would label center left.

[ProfessorPlum]

17. boy, this post certainly drew out the defenders of

right-leaning centrists quickly.

Must have hit a nerve

[emulatorloo]

19. You are surrounded by left liberals and progressives on DU

So cut the bullshit that your fellow DU’ers are “right-leaning centrists”

[ProfessorPlum]

20. I was talking about defenders of right-leaning centrists

and there seems to be quite a few of them here

[emulatorloo]

21. There are no "right-leaning centrists" posting in this thread.

[emulatorloo]

24. There are no "defenders" of rightwing centrists at DU either

Just folks with good bullshit detectors who recognize fact-free speculative “essays” making accusations against vague strawmen.

[ProfessorPlum]

25. well, you're certainly smarter than me

you've got it all figured out

[George II]

49. That's the way it is here, obviously many of "us" are okay with it that way. You?

[FiveGoodMen]

30. That explains all the missing posts when I look at it.

[ProfessorPlum]

31. LOL

that reminds me, I need to update my ignore list . . .

[George II]

48. Not a nerve, but can't see the purpose other than to take a gratuitous swipe at MOST Democrats.

[Trust Buster]

27. How is the author of this article clueless ? Let me count the ways.......LOL

His first mistake is to label the right “conservative”. That term belongs nowhere along the right wing political spectrum given their behavior. That was my first clue that this author lacked any sort of qualifying analytical skills.

Second, in my opinion, ideology is not a significant determining factor in an individual’s choice of positioning along the political spectrum. Personality type is the main determine factor. The ideology follows to match one’s personality.

Those individuals who are center Left or center Right have personalities that are level headed and realistic. They have the ability to control their emotions and feelings of self importance and allow their intellects to guide them. Those on the far Left and far Right are generally emotion-dominant individuals that pay little interest in reality-based pragmatism. I find that the farther one falls outside the center of the political spectrum in either direction, the more narcissistic qualities tend to be found.

In summation, this author is arguing that the center Left is too level headed and realistic. He wants center Left to be more emotionally driven despite the fact that it is against the very personality of a center Left person to be so by definition. He thinks it is a choice. He really has no clue folks.

[zipplewrath]

35. Let me guess

Those individuals who are center Left or center Right have personalities that are level headed and realistic. They have the ability to control their emotions and feelings of self importance and allow their intellects to guide them.

You consider yourself a "centrist"?

[Trust Buster]

38. You bet. And a damn smart one at that. Now, if you would actually like to speak to the subject

Matter, I would appreciate that more than an emotional response.....LOL

[zipplewrath]

40. Typical

No self criticism, but plenty for everyone else. I'd be curious if you found ANY common short comings with in the larger centrist community.

[Trust Buster]

42. You prove my point. I wrote a lengthy post regarding my views. You respond with emotional snark

Thank you for helping me illustrate my point..........LOL

[zipplewrath]

53. You're welcome

Now, to the point of my question...

[Squinch]

29. Fact free divisiveness and straw man insults. Gosh. What a surprise.

[pansypoo53219]

41. CRAPITALIST media. brainwashed since reagan.

[JHan]

45. This was a terrible essay. And centrism is not the reason that Bannon was invited.

Facilitating Trump and his voter base is why that happened.

making excuses for Trump and his voter base is why that happened. And this is prevalent on the far left as well - see Ted Rall.

The author is bashing centrists without tackling Centrism itself - what it is, who defines themselves as such, etc. This is intellectual laziness.

All we get are "Centrists are bad people y'all"

But I'll treat your post with good faith and not dismiss your op since "Centrists" get bashed here so often.

Beliefs exist on a wide spectrum. They may lean moderate on some things, swerve more left/right on others. Lakoff calls them (Centrists) "bi-conceptuals" You may find they apply their "liberal" or "conservative" beliefs inconsistently. Their beliefs do not follow a clear straight line, they don't fall neatly into our unidimensional categories such as Libertarians, or leftists who are socially conservative but economically liberal, or socially liberal but believe in protectionism etc etc etc etc

Different sorts of people identify as "centrists" so you will find even within a group of self-identifying "centrists" a wide diversity in ideology and how they characterize their politics.

Sometimes views exist in a continuum and change with new information or changing circumstances.

And there are some who call themselves centrists when they are actually low information - they haven't got enough information to form a definitive position on an issue.

From "The Nature of Political Ideology in the Contemporary Electorate,"

"If ideological preferences are multidimensional, it means that responses to the unidimensional ideology question, especially the moderate and DK ( don't know) categories,likely capture not only those who are centrist but also those who are cross-pressured between policy domains. For someone with a liberal position on one policy dimension and a conservative one on another, the "liberal" and "conservative" labels are simply inadequate descriptors of political beliefs. As such, when asked their political ideology on a one-dimensional scale, these individuals should be more likely to say DK or to select the middle category.

The finding that the moderate label masks differences between policy centrists and cross-pressured respondents has consequences for our theories and models of political behavior…

There is a clear tendency for scholars and journalists to treat political moderates as a homogeneous group, painting broad strokes about their attitudes and behavior. Yet, our analysis documents important heterogeneity in the policy preferences of moderates that could well influence conclusions about their voting behavior.

If you’re measuring people on a liberal-moderate-conservative spectrum, these people will be captured as moderates even though they may hold beliefs which are quite radical about particular issues, simply because their views aren’t consistently radical. And these inconsistently radical voters don’t just exist in theory either, but are quite common.

...Ezra Klein: No One’s Less Moderate Than the Moderates

…moderates are largely a statistical myth. When you dig into their policy positions, the people who show up as moderates in polls are actually pretty damn extreme…

What happens, explains David Broockman, a political scientist at the University of California at Berkeley, is that surveys mistake people with diverse political opinions for people with moderate political opinions. The way it works is that a pollster will ask people for their position on a wide range of issues: marijuana legalization, the war in Iraq, universal health care, gay marriage, taxes, climate change, and so on. The answers will then be coded as to whether they’re left or right. People who have a mix of answers on the left and the right average out to the middle — and so they’re labeled as moderate.

But when you drill down into those individual answers you find a lot of opinions that are well out of the political mainstream. “A lot of people say we should have a universal health-care system run by the state like the British,” Broockman said in July 2014. “A lot of people say we should deport all undocumented immigrants immediately with no due process. You’ll often see really draconian measures towards gays and lesbians get 16 to 20 percent support. These people look like moderates but they’re actually quite extreme.”…

Digging into a 134-issue survey, Broockman and coauthor Doug Ahler found that 70.1 percent of all respondents, and 71.3 percent of self-identified moderates, took at least one position outside the political mainstream. Moderates, in other words, are just as likely as anyone else to hold extreme positions: it’s just that those positions don’t all line up on the left or the right…

There’s even reason to believe “average voters” — which is to say, less politically engaged voters — hold more extreme opinions: engaged Democrats and Republicans tend to adopt the positions held by their parties, and parties tend to adopt positions that are popular, achievable and workable. So voters who follow their parties end up pushing ideas in the political mainstream. Voters who aren’t as interested in politics and who don’t attach themselves to a party push the ideas they actually like, irrespective of whether they’re popular or could attract 60 votes in the Senate or would be laughed at by policy experts.

The other problem is that the term “moderate” makes it sound like there’s one kind of moderate — which is where the idea emerges that there’s some silent moderate majority out there waiting for their chance to take back politics. But someone who believes in punitively taxing the rich and criminalizing homosexuality is not going to form a coalition with someone who believes in low taxes and gay marriage, even though both of these voters would look moderate on a survey.

The deeper point here is that the idea of the moderate middle is bullshit: it’s a rhetorical device meant to marginalize some policy positions at the expense of others. There’s no actual way to measure it, or consistent definition animating it, and it doesn’t spontaneously emerge in any of the data

[George II]

50. "Economic beneficiaries of the status quo". Just what is...

the"status quo" of which you speak?

[SidDithers]

51. Ian Welsh. LOL...nt

Sid