How would you define "centrist?" vs "leftist?"

[itzamirakul]

I've noticed a couple of posts on this board as well as on other boards where "leftists" have been accused of attacking "centrists."

I would like to know how DUers define these terms. And perhaps where each poster feels that his/her own political leanings rank between the two terms.

[sangh0]

1. My guess is

you're not going to get many coherent responses.

[Zensea]

2. that's my guess too

judging from other things I've seen recently

[FlaGranny]

3. Well, how about this -

Leftist - Gandhi
Centrist - Bill Clinton
Rightist - G.W.

I'm somewhere between Ghandi and Bill.

[serryjw]

27. LOL! I'm left of Gandhi!

MY DEFINITION

Centrist are for

BIG Business &
BIG military spending ( many social liberals)


Lefties KNOW that we can TRIM the blotted defence/military/Pentegon budget by 33% and never hurt this country. Lefties BELIEVE in JFK's diplomacy during Cuban Missile Crisis and if we left it up to the Pentegon none of us would be here!

Lefties believe that 'trickel down' is a crook of &^%@, it never worked and will never in the future BUT some keep beating that drum. Lefties want Corporate Personhood t be hanged in the town square by its corporate taxbreaks'

[Forkboy]

4. For me,and I know this will rankle some

centrists dont seem to actually stand for much of anything.Winning is all that matters,even if you become what you're trying to defeat.I find them,both on DU and in real life,to be frightened and squishy.They are the last people I would want watching my back,because as soon as they see something different the knives will come out.Then when it's pointed out to them that they only care about winning they accuse others of demanding purity (though anyone who was here for awhile can't deny that it was the Kerrybots that demanded purity and lockstep thinking far more than any leftist).

On the other hand,leftists can be as demanding and inflexible as they are.It makes for great threads!

For the record,this post is obviously full of generalizations and wont apply to all people.

[Obviousman]

22. Yep

n/t

[DireStrike]

5. Well, this is just my PERSONAL opinion...

Centrist: Willing to bend over every now and then and let large, burly corporations rape them; might even like it a little.
Leftist: Not willing to be raped.

I base this on the fact that American politics is always right of center.

Look at http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/uselection.php">this.

John Kerry, the #1 liberal in the senate (actually #13, if you go by that same oft-quoted study when it's put in its full context). Look how far to the right he is! He is not a leftist. People think they're centrists when they're republicans, leaning corporatists. It's bull.

[itzamirakul]

9. Link didn't work..

can you check it and repost it please?

[DireStrike]

11. Was an extra Http in there

http://www.digitalronin.f2s.com/politicalcompass/uselection.php

It's just the politicalcompass.org rankings. Youve probably seen them already.

[magellan]

14. I found the Political Compass site a few weeks ago

It's great, and I'm not surprised to see I'm with Nader and Cobb on the Liberal Leftist side. My Republican aunt recently called me a socialist; I was happy to agree, pointing out that so were Gandhi, Mandela and the Pope (she's Catholic).

Then I broke off relations with her.

[itzamirakul]

15. Thanks for the worthwhile link...

I had not seen it before. Good reading.

[BillZBubb]

6. You're a leftist if you agree with me.

You're a centrist if you mostly agree with me.
You're a wingnut if you disagree with me.

How's that?

[sangh0]

8. Probably going to be the pick of the litter

.

[Pushed To The Left]

7. I think I'm both liberal and moderate

I'm very liberal on about 90% of issues, and more conservative on about 10%. A pure moderate might have a 50/50 split, but could still be very passionate about every issue.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. In our current context

a rightist is someone who is driving the country off a cliff at 60 miles an hour.

A leftist says, "We've got to turn left and avoid the cliff, even if it means going over roads traveled before or into uncharted territory."

A centrist says, "We have to slow down to 30 miles an hour and maybe stop for a bit to get new tires."

[DireStrike]

12. Yep. Perfect!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. Thank you! Thank you!

:bow:

[JanMichael]

16. Or a soda from Sonic, then keep on trucking. Right over the edge.

You nailed it.

[Gyre]

17. Easy. "centrist" =s appeaser, loser

3 lost elections in a row mean that "centrist" DLC dems are clearly NOT in touch w/this country. In the law it's called "prima facie" evidence of a fact.

Gyre

[TankLV]

18. A centrist is everone who agrees with any repuke. A leftist is everone

A leftist is traitor to amerikkka and who has the audacity and is impolite enough, and hates amerikkka enough to question all the lying, cheating and stealing the repukes do.

That is - everone with at least half a brain.

[morgan2]

19. a "centrist"

most of the time, is someone who just doesnt have an opinion. They're then swayed back and forth by every opinion put in front of them. They like to mediate, and say well this sounds good and this sounds good. Most people with a well formulated opinion, think the government should clearly be more to one side or another. Many of these people talk about being centrist, but aren't at heart.

[Cat Atomic]

20. Leftists are consistently against the consolidation of power.

Whether it's by corporations, or the White House, or... fill in the blank.

Centrists... I don't really know what centrists stand for. That's sort of the problem, isn't it?

[wyldwolf]

21. simple

Centrist - someone who takes the best of both sides (or what seems to work best) and governs for a majority block of people, not just a small contingent. They are willing to listen to both sides of an issue and make a decision based on that. It doesn't mean they are always correct but then no one is, anyway.

Of course centrists have opinions - strong ones that aren't swayed. As a moderate (a term people often equate with being centrist), I'm very pro-choice, pro-environment, pro-gun control, pro-church/state seperation, and in line with the many positions taken by those considered "left."

But, as a moderate, I'm pro-strong national defense.

I see many self described leftists as being unbending, unwilling to compromise, and completely sure they are correct on issues.

Funny, though, someone weighed in on a thread like this a while back and said no one on DU is really a "leftist." They just think they are.

On edit:

Funny - "leftists" here will often lament their belief that the election 2000 was stolen and that 2004 was as well yet reps from the same school of thought will then claim that centrists are losing elections.

In addition, I find it funny that centrists are being called "losers." When was the last time a leftist won anything? Or even appeared on a national ballot.

Of course, to answer that, one must have a definitive definition of the terms yet none exists.

Some will name FDR or JFK - neither of who were "leftists." In fact, FDR was hated by the left and right of the day for being too moderate.

...and itzamirakul, "leftists" DO attack "centrists" here. Most threads like this turn into a flamefest as such. To them I ask, why not spend the energy organizing and running for elections instead of bickering about the evil "centrists." You can't win if you don't play.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

23. OK, how about this as a first approximation

List your positions on the following scales, add up and divide by the number of scales (3 at present, I hope other people will add more):

Economic:

-4 taxes should be abolished
-2 taxes should be heavily reduced
-1 taxes should be somewhat reduced
0 current levels of taxation are about right
+1 taxes should be somewhat increased
+2 taxes should be heavily increased
+5 private property should be abolished

Add a further 1 or 3 if you believe that the rate of increase of taxation with regard to wealth should be slightly or heavily steeper.
Subtract 2 or 4 if you believe it should be less steep.


Abortion:

-2 Abortion should never be legal
-1.5 Abortion should be legal only in exceptional circumstances
-1 All abortions should be heavily restricted
-0.5 Late term abortions should be more restricted
0 Current abortion laws are about right
+1 Abortion should be more easily available


Gay Marriage:

-2 Ban it by constitutional ammendment
-1 Ban it at a state-wide level
+1 Make it legal at a state-wide level
+2 Make it legal at a federal level


I've started it off, but obviously there are many, many more issues that need to be included. It's now up to other people to create scales for other issues, argue with my weightings or categories and decide what score makes one a leftist or a centrist.

[Armstead]

24. My View -- Centrists ignore the issue of Power and Democracy

Just for comparative purposes, the opposite of a centrist is that fellow in my icon. Paul Wellstone. The Democrats should be a party of Wellstones.

The worst problem I have with centrists is that they ignore the basic problem facing the US at all levels. That is the increasing concentration of power and wealth, especially the domonance of corporate power at the expense of the genral population.

That includes the way that business values have crowded out all other values. Centrists ignore that and buy into the same basic worldview as the GOP.

Centrists will continue to weaken the Democratic Party as long as they continue to enable the growth of corporate power insetad of standing up for economic democracy and the real issue of values in that sense.

[Frumious B]

26. I'll take a stab.

I'm of the opinion that both the far left and far right offer equally simplistic and inaccurate world views. Centrists respect society's complexity and diversity. They attempt to offer practical, common sense, real world solutions to problems rather than purely ideologicaly driven ones.

[Armstead]

29. The world is complex but....

The right has gained power by boiling down those complexities into a coherent ideology that people can understand in shorthand. They apply that basic principle to issues that are complex -- and they are getting everything they want.

But centrist Democrats have lost sight of the forest for the trees because we DON't make those simple connections. The fact is that most political problems stem from a shift in power from broadly-based democracy into the hands of the elite. Corporations have beconme more powerful than government.

Most other issues flow from that. The media, for example, is no longer an honest broker of information. It is a corporate market-driven machine that has abandoned its responsibilities to at least attempt to provide objective news and diverse opinions as a public responsibility.

Health care is a mess because we have given it over to market forces so completely that the basic issue of life and death and health have been squeezed out of the equation by the profit motive.

Despite whatever complexities and shades of opinion are possible when you get down to specifics, that basic dynamic can't be ignored by Democrats.

[notadmblnd]

25. I've always connsidered myself just left of center

My big disagreement with people more on the left is with PC terminology and the gun issue. I'm prochoice and believe partners in life that happen to be gay should enjoy the same benefits as people in hetero marriages. I am anti-death penalty and anti-war. I was raised Southern Baptist but have pretty much come to the conclusion that religion (not money) is the root of all evil and that man created God not God created man.

[bemildred]

28. I would define them as:

Vague terms used in "divide and rule" political strategies against
populist and democratic political movements (in the USA anyway).

We ought to be united by our desire to run our own affairs
democratically and in the public interest, rather than divided
(prematurely) on speculative differences in what those democratically
determined policies might be.

[OutsourceBush]

30. A centrist can get elected a leftist can not

There are far more votes in the center of the political spectrum than either the right or the left.

Democrats are 'center to left' and repukes are 'center to right'. Since both parties can appeal to the center, it is the one who wins over the majority of the CENTER who will win the election.

On the far left you have Communists, Socialists, etc and one issue voters (gay marriage, tree hugs, animal rights). On the far right you have Christian fascists, Nazis, racists, one issue voters (guns, abortion, UN, lower taxes), etc.. (this is not all-inclusive but you get the idea) This is why we need to get back to being Big Tent Democrats.