Steve Randy Waldman
@interfluidity.com
i have a passage about centrism, and its slippery dual meaning, in this one. drafts.interfluidity.com/2024/03/28/h...
Text: But wouldn't approval voting just elevate squish moderates, or even worse, "centrists"? I know, dear reader, you don't like "centrists". I detest "centrists". But what "centrism" has come to mean in American political discourse is the set of values and interests well served by the status quo, or at least the status quo as it prevailed until 2016. "Centrists" are socially liberal but fiscally conservative. "Centrists" don't want to tax billionaires, because they worry about incentives and "supply side effects" and whether soaking the rich would do "institutional violence" somehow to the country. The actual center of American opinion looks nothing at all like this. Across factional lines, taxing extraordinary wealth more heavily is close to universally popular. Only the very rich themselves, and the weird sliver of "centrists" that serves them, object. The actual center in the United States is less socially liberal on some causes than "centrists" (which is why "anti-woke" can be an effective populist strategy), but very liberal on reproductive rights, and is overwhelmingly live-and-let-live. Approval voting would give us politicians whose agendas would be better aligned with the actual center of the electorate. This would look nothing like the agenda of contemporary so-called "centrists" in politics and media.