If this is centrism, I'll own it

The American people want stability more than transformation

Over the past few months, several readers have labeled me a “centrist,” clearly with a sense of derision. I would prefer pragmatic, but, yeah, I’m no raging leftist. Mainly, I want Democrats to win, especially in the places that matter — swing states and swing districts that will determine control of Congress and the White House.

My politics are less ideological and more strategic. I’m fine with Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York, Bernie Sanders as the senator from Vermont, and AOC as the representative from Queens and the Bronx. I think we need politicians pushing the country forward, but I don’t think any of them could win North Carolina, Georgia, or Wisconsin. I don’t believe Abdul El-Sayed can win Michigan.

I’m frustrated with the Democrats who call themselves “socialists,” not because I disagree with all or even most of their ideas, but because they are branding themselves with a label that costs votes. As a friend of mine wrote on Facebook, “You’re scaring people away from something everybody should want — affordable healthcare, affordable education, affordable housing, a living wage.” These are the same people who embraced “Defund the police.”

The left in this country is confusing frustration with a decrepit status quo with demand for transformational change. Broadly, people want, as Roy Cooper recognizes, stuff to cost less. They want their incomes to increase. They want the promise of a brighter future for their children.

Instead, they see stubborn inflation causing prices to rise. Their wages are stagnant and the future is uncertain. New technologies make some jobs obsolete and create others most people don’t even understand. Hence, the fight over data centers.

The divide between the haves and have-nots has grown too wide. We need a new tax code that makes powerful billionaires pay their fair share and laws that prevent them from exerting so much control over the government. But I don’t think most people blame the oligarchy for our problems. The masses aren’t grabbing their pitchforks yet.

To build the kind of transformational change pushed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the country needs certain conditions that are not present. There’s no broad consensus about what needs to be done. Trust in institutions is at an all-time low. People aren’t likely to embrace large government bureaucracies to deliver new services.

As I’ve said before, FDR launched the New Deal when the country had an unemployment rate of about 25% and we were in the midst of the worst depression in the nation’s relatively short history. The people were demanding that the government respond.

LBJ’s Great Society, which gave us civil rights legislation, Medicare and Medicaid, and food stamps, came about during the upheaval of the Civil Rights Movement and when Democrats and Republicans agreed that government could be a force for good. While many of the programs are still popular today, the reaction to the social programs and the taxes that funded them led to the Reagan Revolution fifteen years later.

The last great expansion of government came with the Affordable Care Act. Obama had watched Bill and Hillary’s attempt to pass health care reform go down in flames fifteen years earlier. He tried a different approach, setting broad goals and letting Congress hash out the details. It was still messy.

Passing the bill was hard even with 59 Democrats in the Senate. The country watched the sausage being made for almost a year. Progressives couldn’t even get a public option pushed through, much less single-payer. The uncertainty left voters skeptical for years, costing Democrats control of Congress and, arguably, setting up an environment that elected Donald Trump.

Before we can have the type of change that the left demands, we need to restore faith in the institutions that provide it. Government has to prove that it can deliver. We need to rebuild our public education system after years of assault from the right. Offering a public option for health care and expanding Medicaid to reach universal coverage is more likely to garner support than upending the existing system with a single-payer plan. A few years of smaller victories are more likely to build sustainable change than the massive disruption of wholesale transformation.

Finally, the left’s obsession with Gaza reminds me of my younger, more radical days. Back in the 1980s, US support for Central American death squads and Contras was the moral issue that consumed us. We protested and demanded that Americans pay attention and that Democrats take a stand. We were loud and drew a lot of media attention to our cause. However, like Gaza, most of the country didn’t care, or at least not enough to make them vote against the Republicans who supported those policies.

In North Carolina, Jim Hunt ran ads attacking Jesse Helms for his support of brutal right-wing nationalists. It didn’t work. Hunt lost. And while Iran-Contra became a scandal that brought down some people in the Reagan administration, George H.W. Bush was handily elected in 1988. Most Americans don’t really care too much about international affairs and may punish candidates who promote them over domestic concerns. Making Gaza a litmus test for Democrats is more likely to hurt the party than help Gazans.

My personal political journey has taken me from the far left to whatever you might call me now. Broadly, I believe that government can be a force for good. I also think that capitalism is the best economic system to deliver prosperity for the greatest number of people. That said, government is the only force powerful enough to mitigate the negative effects of capitalism and help the people who are left behind. The free market is the vehicle for creating wealth while government ensures that it is not too concentrated and is broadly distributed.

I believe that sustainable progress requires broad public support from an electorate that is inherently resistant to change. My political philosophy is basically to win elections to keep the assholes and greed heads out. I believe that competence and experience beat ideology most of the time.

Right now, I think that people want peace and stability. For the first quarter of the 21st century they’ve been roiled by 9/11, upended by technological change, knocked down by the Great Recession, quarantined by the pandemic, and plundered by Donald Trump and MAGA, all while some war rages in the background. The American people are tired. They don’t want more turmoil.