Is the US destined to form a new middle party of centrists?

[WaffleTaco]

Now before we start saying that the Democratic Party is already quasi-centrist, let's remember that this is the left of the two current parties in American political society. Now onto the actual topic.

It seems as if the there is a schism happening in both the Republican and Democratic parties. With both of those schisms being brought forth by people within the party that want to push more left/right. We have the tea party movement that was widely successful in pushing the Republican Party more towards the right. We also have the progressive wing of the Democrat party achieve some big wins (albeit in mostly safe areas).

However, with the progressive side of the Dem party being mostly unsatisfied with how Reps AOC & Omar are being treated, along with the party still tolerating centrist views, it seems somewhat likely that if given the opportunity they would break away if they could. I think the same could be said for far right individuals. Their choice of strategy currently though is changing the party from within, but it's a tough fight against the more establishment candidates.

This brings me to my question. Is there a likelihood of moderate Democrats and Republicans forming their own centrist party if they believe they have the numbers for it? If so, where would this take place, what states/areas would this affect? Would you even consider voting for such a party? (I know I wouldn't, I'm pragmatic, but not a centrist). What are your thoughts Era?

 

[Xando]

Nah just like in britain the system is rigged to favour 2 parties.

 

[Deleted member 47700]

Needs a catchy name, like The Boogie Party.

 

[Daria]

the US will never have a viable 3rd party e.g. Independent. if you're a centrist, you don't need to switch from the dem or republican party. also, why would a centrist dem join the ranks of a party with far-right views?

 

[Biestmann]

The US political system would only gain from an additional big party. However, I don't think establishing that third party is feasible so easily.

 

[Inuhanyou]

I don't believe the neoliberal element of the democratic party will give up their power without kicking and screaming into oblivion, and they have already been doing a full court press on attempting to silence the progressive voices.

Howard Schultz is one of these people attempting to go off on his own, yet he will find no success being so blatantly not for anyting in particular.

Neoliberal democrats have to still pretend to have a veneer of progressive or populist cover to gain support at the grassroots but its crumbling fast.

 

[cupcakeunicorn]

First past the post says no. The system favours only having two large parties.

 

[BigWinnie1]

First past the post says no. The system favours only having two large parties.

Click to shrink...

Pretty much once a third party gets big enough it just crushes one of the other parties. Its how its been since the country started.

 

[How About No]

I would prefer the Dems to become the centrist party with a Progressive Left party. One can dream lol

 

[Trace]

It already has a centrist party, it's called the Democrats. What it needs is a left-wing party.

 

[cupcakeunicorn]

Pretty much once a third party gets big enough it just crushes one of the other parties. Its how its been since the country started.

Click to shrink...

Very true. But I don't believe that either the Republicans or Democrats are close to being at risk of collapsing or hemorrhaging enough support for that to be viable.

 

[DreadPirateRoberts]

Nah, until the electoral college is eliminated a three party system isn't really viable in the US

 

[SweetNicole]

No. First Past the Post Voting leads to a two party system, always.

 

[Sunster]

But centrists agree with everything republicans do. They just say they aren't republicans.

 

[Fudgepuppy]

Democrats will either pivot to be more socialist and leftist, depending on the newer generations, or the liberal elitists will continue to fund the status quo, keep the democrats as they are, with the leftists trying their best to further SocDem and Socialist parties.

 

[BringBackSonics]

the US will never have a viable 3rd party e.g. Independent. if you're a centrist, you don't need to switch from the dem or republican party. also, why would a centrist dem join the ranks of a party with far-right views?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, as a moderate leftist/centrist Dem, the party as a whole is fine, I've always voted blue, no reason to change now

 

[Kill3r7]

Nope.

Centrists are generally not interested in changing the status quo in any significant way which is exactly what a third party would do.

 

[collige]

I can see it happening, but the GOP would have to completely disintegrate on the national level for that to happen so not for a long time, if ever.

 

[BigWinnie1]

Very true. But I don't believe that either the Republicans or Democrats are close to being at risk of collapsing or hemorrhaging enough support for that to be viable.

Click to shrink...

Republicans are teetering on collapsr because their base is literally drying up while democratic bse is moving into old strongholds and making moves.

 

[nemoral]

No, there isn't room for a real third party in America. If a new party comes into existence, it's more likely to replace one of the existing ones. Much more likely that the Republicans are forced to move to the center and sideline their fringe, in the same way the Democratic party did during and after Reagan.

 

[thecouncil]

I don't get how someone who claims to be a centrist can lean one way or the other from election to election, especially these days. How does someone vote for Obama twice and then, in 2016, say, "Ehhh, I'm gonna lean pretty hard into shit now."

 

[Cryptosporidium]

No, your FPTP electoral system incentivizes a two party system.

Canada is a weird outlier but we are still basically a two party system given NDP have never won federally.

 

[kittens]

American centrism is just neoliberalism, and neoliberalism is a very literal dead end. We need anarcho socialism.

 

[Pwnz]

I feel like there would be a 3rd party to the left of dems if it didn't mean always losing to Republicans. I'd say 15% of people would be in that party.

 

[Dyle]

Not at all for several reasons. It's more likely that far right and far left parties would form, but that is also incredibly unlikely

1. First past the post makes it impossible for a third party to gain significant power without overcoming overwhelming odds against them.
2. Passion. People in the political center are apathetic, from guys like Michael Schultz to a voter who decides who they'll vote for on the day of the election. Without passion a political party has no reason to exist and no energy to keep it going
3. The political center is very diverse and no one party can really speak to it in broad strokes. A centrist Democrat and a centrist Republican are simultaneously close and far away, making it difficult for a potential party or candidate to please everyone enough to build a loyal following.
4. US politics is now national, even at the local level. Inevitably new parties arise from the local level first, but local politics are now divided on the same lines that national politics are, resulting in little money or interest in a third party in the places where they would be most likely to succeed.
5. Money. All of the above reasons give people good reason to invest their money elsewhere, which in turn ensures that a centrist party can't accomplish much.

 

[Dream Machine]

The Merkins

 

[Sordid Plebeian]

Democrats are the centrist party as far as this forum is concerned, but if polarization and party infighting continue to the point of separation it's the far left that would form their own.

 

[djplaeskool]

Our system would crush itself under the weight of trying to support a legitimate third party.

 

[maxxpower]

They'll just vote Republican.

 

[corasaur]

i think you're just feeling the strains within the leftward side of america because of era's demographics. any conversation on the democratic party here gets representation from center-left people reflective of the party on average, from people to the left of the party average who aren't quite ready to nuke the system, and from people with outright revolutionary desires.

First-past-the-post elections mean that if we saw a major third-party flare up, it would probably exist for one election, totally wreck the prospects of the major party closer to its platform, and then vanish as the major parties recalibrate themselves and a handful of the gullible protest voters switch back to mainstream parties after a painful civics lesson.

an attempt at a centrist party that goes "right-wing culture is ok as long as it maintains a veneer of plausible deniability over its hate, and left wing economics is ok as long as it doesn't fight for equality too aggressively" wouldn't be a stable electoral coalition because it'd mostly be pulling from the liberal side of the spectrum. it'd be so lopsided because Never-Trumpers have frequently fallen in line over the past few years. never-trumpers in power have mostly realized having a spine was electoral suicide with their primary base while the less virulently hateful loyal R voters tell themselves that the bad things are fake news and if they're not fake news the afflicted had it coming somehow.

so i guess a lingering centrist party would require a small but loaded donor base dedicated to burning a ton of money to sustain it, whether deliberately as a spoiler to defend the ultra-wealthy COUGH HOWARD SCHULTZ COUGH, deliberately as a spoiler to enable white nationalism, or out of a psycho desperate belief that they'll find a constituency one day.

but like so far most attempts at centrist organizations have boiled down to "we want to vote republican but not feel bad for enabling cruelty" like that no labels thing joe lieberman is affiliated with and they haven't taken off because for so many Trumpers, the cruelty is the point.

 

[Deleted member 11985]

That's what I thought would happen to the GOP when Trump won the primary to run for president, but then all the dumbass republicans still voted for him. So I think it's pretty safe to assume that the GOP party will never split up.

That only leaves the democrat party splitting up into something more progressive and something centrist, but I imagine an actual split up wouldn't happen. It would be more like the majority of the existing democrats would pretend to be more progressive than they actually are to keep getting elected, and a minority of democrats would drop all pretense and join the GOP.

 

[Commedieu]

No need. They vote republican when no one is looking. If you dont know who to believe when fascism is on the table, youre already a lost cause.

 

[Deleted member 22750]

1 hour passed and nobody posted the boogy centrist gif

disappointed

 

[Tom Nook Says...]

I think there will be a centrist party in the future based on our current idea of what constitutes centrism, but it won't be a new or 3rd party. It'll just be the Republicans. Trump is the loud, nasty death throes of the Southern Strategy era of the Republican party. After this they have to cut out the white nationalist shit and find a way to start winning more than just heterosexual white people. Or, in the darkest timeline, find a way to permanently subjugate democracy and make our elections more of a formality than anything else. But in all likelihood they'll just shift leftward once the next Dem is elected, just as Dems shifted rightward after Reagan.

In other words, the future of Republicanism 10 years from now is basically Joe Manchin.

 

[Digital Dinosaur]

If the pushback against far-right extremism and open fascism continues to grow and is successful, I kind of suspect that Republicans will try to rebrand themselves as a "new" "centrist" party.

In reality, there will still be two parties, it would be a trick of optics. The fascists who have latched onto Trumpism will be framed as the "old" republican party, while the new self-proclaimed centrists will act as if they're a separate party.

May depend on whether fresh blood can actually move Democrats to the left for a change, leaving a vacuum for nominally reformed Republicans to fill.

Edit: beaten to the same thought by ThomasJames. Nook is on top of this shit.

 

[iksenpets]

No. The incentives for two parties are too strong, and there isn't a serious voting bloc for Howard Schultz, let's-get-the-deficit-under-control centrism. If there were ever to be a major third party, it would probably look a lot more like a sort of welfare-state Trumpism, because I want healthcare but also hate minorities is a much more common political position than whatever a handful of moderate Dems breaking off and running some business dude for the presidency would look like. The moderate Dems and progressives are stuck together, because they're both genuinely closer to each other than they are to any other conceivable coalition partner who could get them over 50%.

 

[BWoog]

Yeah, they're called Democrats.

 

[jay]

People who are smarter than I am have explained to me that the way the system is set up will only ever really allow for two serious parties.

 

[Avinash117]

Moderate Democrats and Moderate Republicans are worlds apart on many different issues. They will never form together; one very good reasoning is that both have very different constituents that they have to satisfy. Additionally, like what others said, there is not much of a chance for 3rd party regardless of ideology to survive our system was setup to have a two party system and maintain it.

 

[Bedameister]

The whole system would have to change so no, I think the US will be stuck with this for a long time.

 

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

Democratic party as a whole is already far too centrist and right-leaning. Them being the "left" choice doesn't change that.

With that said, if another Centrist-Democratic party forms that syphons all the progressive-lites to it, then by all means let it happen.

 

[Fularu]

First past the post says no. The system favours only having two large parties.

Click to shrink...

Pretty much once a third party gets big enough it just crushes one of the other parties. Its how its been since the country started.

Click to shrink...

No. First Past the Post Voting leads to a two party system, always.

Click to shrink...

No

FPTP is in effect in both Canada and Québec and we have more than two parties. In Québec especially there are currently 4 viable parties

It has more to do with the unwillingness of the current party members to schism and go their own way in fear of forfeiting power to the opposite sides. Yet political coalitions have shown they work in many countries

 

[ZealousD]

It's not just First-Past-the-Post. The Electoral College only picks the president if a majority of the Electoral College (over 50%) picks that candidate. Otherwise it reverts to the House of Representatives to pick the president. You have to create a coalition that can reliably get a majority in the Electoral College and that also favors only two parties.

 

[gutter_trash]

??? isn't that what the Democratic Party already is and always was?

The question OP is, will the US ever have a Left Wing Party?

Democratic Party is a Centre-Right pro-corporate party

 

[Cocolina]

Nah just like in britain the system is rigged to favour 2 parties.

Click to shrink...

not really, it was only 10 years ago that Britain had a coalition made from liberal democrats and conservatives and it was because of the performance of the liberals during that time that has seen them fade into obscurity

the US system has been two parties for decades

 

[ZealousD]

FPTP is in effect in both Canada and Québec and we have more than two parties. In Québec especially there are currently 4 viable parties

Click to shrink...

Parliamentary systems create multiple viable parties because they create coalition governments that can pick the chief executive. In America we select the President via the Electoral College. We create those coalitions within one of two parties in order to elect the President.

 

[jett]

There's no chance for any other party to make any headroom. The system is completely rigged.

 

[You Are Viewtiful]

I read what you posted but you're wrong about the Dems. The Democratic Party is the centrist party. Hillary Clinton won the 2016 primaries in a landslide, not sure what more proof you need. Of course it's a big tent and you have Michael Bloomer and Naom Chomsky in the same party but the only way you do that is by being pragmatic, open to new ideas and pushing for more freedoms and that's what Democrats are.

 

[acheron_xl]

No. Not going to happen. Because, as has been said, we already have Democrats.

 

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

??? isn't that what the Democratic Party already is and always was?

The question OP is, will the US ever have a Left Wing Party?

Democratic Party is a Centre-Right pro-corporate party

Click to shrink...

This. Specifically, one that operates with success and is given the same weight as the current two parties as opposed to being treated like a silly, extreme, fringe party for daring to be progressive.