Every mainstream Democrat today would have been considered a Republican when I was a young man, except for the identity politics. So they’ve moved to the right, and then added a diversionary and divisive agenda to their overall party policy.
It recent years, moderate was always to speak about conservatives that are too ashamed to admit that they are conservative.
So it isn’t a surprise.
It doesn’t help that there are almost 0 conservatives left in the Republican Party. They either joined the Trump cult and gave up on conservatism or got exiled. And many of the latter were then welcomed by centrist democrats.
So the writer came to this conclusion after reading this other article that came to it’s conclusions from this:
I examined the data from the most recent World Values Survey (2010 to 2014) and European Values Survey(2008), two of the most comprehensive studies of public opinion carried out in over 100 countries. The survey asks respondents to place themselves on a spectrum from far left to center to far right. I then plotted the proportion of each group’s support for key democratic institutions. (A copy of my working paper, with a more detailed analysis of the survey data, can be found here.)
Basically two surveys from over a decade ago that survey people across the planet. Not in the US…
In other words the writer is trying to present their opinion as fact.
At least in my experience, their conclusion tracks correctly. If both sides of the aisle are so diametrically opposed, to be a moderate is to want nothing to change, which generally means you’re of a demographic that is unaffected by negative policy from either side, which leads to being low information and low engagement in democracy. The moderate is the position of the status quo, and at least in my experience means they will vote against any change in either direction because they don’t want to have to think about things changing, even if it means voting against someone that could help them in the long run.
In my experience moderates have a mix of stances from both left and right sides of the spectrum so they don’t fully identify with either ideology.
If both sides of the aisle are so diametrically opposed, to be a moderate is to want nothing to change.
This doesn’t make sense because it implies that 1) the current state of US government is exactly at equilibrium between right and left. 2) there is no nuance to political ideologies, as if all leftists agree on all topics and all right wingers agree on all topics.
Please link the shit out of that article!
Well, yeah… current democrats are far closer to republicans of 30-40 years ago than they are to someone like President Carter. Even back in the day the democrats were resistant to taking up LGBTQ causes. Republicans otoh are courting fascism and oligarchy openly. The Overton window has slid that far to the right.
American politics (and any post about) is like splitting in borderline personality disorder.
Seriously so much semantics.
I mean it’s pretty obvious that the Democrats are more in line with what the Republicans were 10-15 years ago.
I want to take that test, because I don’t know how my centrist ass can score “conservative” when I want things like free healthcare, free education, and UBI.
I mean you’re probably closer to a true moderate liberal than Joe Biden or other American Democrats that call themselves moderate liberals. You’re not left wing, since you still think capitalism can work if you just do enough state power, but Joe Biden would call you a far left communist out to destroy American values same as Trump or Nixon.
Hint: These stuff is not what most other “moderates” would support. You sound like a very confused progressive lib.
Wat? Why do you think I’m confused. Also, I’m not USAmerican.
Because things like UBI are not moderate propositions!
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So?
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UBI is absolutely not a moderate position in Europe. And the article is clearly about American moderates.
In my country, most of the right also support these things adamantly, just not as liberally as the centre or left.
You probably are more traditionally centre. But on the US spectrum, there’s some that would consider you more progressive or left. While in other countries, you could be more right—shrug. You need to realise the US Republican party, as far as popular parties go, is considered the most extreme right-wing party in the western world and the Democratic Party is perceived as right of centre. The US spectrum doesn’t recognise that because of the big right-shift in the domestic spectrum.
But I wouldn’t worry so much. People that invest everything into the 2D spectrum, let alone single points on it, aren’t really perceiving your true positions correctly anyway. Hence why you can say a thing and be put all over the place by these comments, depending on individuals’ ideas of it.
Don’t waste our time, please. Just use the standard American definitions when chatting about domestic American politics. It’s not so hard.
You’re on the internet. It’s not so hard to imagine that the US isn’t the only country in the world.
I’m a leftists and I get my information from screenshots of opinion article headlines that support my bias.
You are gold, worth to be cherished
