The Only 3 Differences That Matter Between Centrist Democrats and Republicans
Have you ever consider just. how. different. Republicans are from Centrist Democrats?
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Difference #1. The relationship between the politicians and their voters
The relationship that Republican politicians have with their base voters is fundamentally different than the relationship Centrist Democrat politicians have with their voter base.
Republicans and their base voters
It’s clearly the Republican voters who wield power in this relationship. When it comes to making demands of their candidates and politicians, Republican voters are like half-crazed pitbulls who haven’t been fed in a week. They’re not shy, they’re aggressive, and they are alternately driven by fear and anger.
Republican politicians are terrified of their base voters.
(See: “Republicans Play on Fears of ‘Great Replacement’ in Bid for Base Voters” NYT, 05/16/2022.)
Centrist Democrats and their base voters
They behave like well-trained puppy dogs who do whatever Hillary and Barack and Nancy and Michelle tell them to do. As a matter of fact, Centrist Democrat voters are so well trained at this point that the politicians don’t have to tell them very often what to do. These voters will make excuses all on their own for the failures, incompetence, and corruption of their politicians.
Centrist Democrat voters are terrified of their politicians and eager for their approval.
(See: “It’s time for Democrats to fear their own voters” The Guardian, July 24, 2022)
Difference #2. The language of each party
We’re not talking “love languages” here.
Republicans speak the language of fear-driven and anger-driven emotion.
Whether they’re amped up about illegal immigrants flooding across the borders, women who want to control their own bodies, the “far left, crazy liberal policies of Joe Biden,” or defending an ex-president who pretty clearly seems to have been trying to at least steal an election and perhaps also make a coup happen, the primary language with Republicans is driven by feelings of fear and anger.
And it goes without saying that Centrist Democrats look down upon that, because they have a “far superior way of understanding the world and communicating amongst themselves.”
Centrist Democrats speak the language of fear-driven, false-premise, patronizing logic.
They continually think that if they just explain logically to Republicans all the reasons why Donald Trump is a bad dude, the fever will break.
Call this the “Dem-splaining cocktail” — it’s a drink made from equal parts of condescension and half-baked, ignorance of facts mixed with a splash of unwarranted smugness.
The reality is that people from either side — Centrist Democrats and Republicans — are able to communicate with their own people just fine and within their own side just fine. But when it comes to communicating with the other side, it’s never going to happen.
Think about it this way.
Imagine that you have one group of people who only speak ancient Greek, and they are able to communicate amongst themselves perfectly fine and live life the way they want to.
Then there is a second group of people who only speak modern Japanese, and they, too, are able to communicate amongst themselves just fine.
But when you get someone speaking only ancient Greek sitting across the table from someone who only speaks modern Japanese, communication and conversation will at best be a train wreck.
The vocabulary, the cadence of speech, the grammatical structures, the slang . . . everything about the language for one side is profoundly different than it is for the other side.
Difference #3. Autocrats vs. Oligarchs
Donald Trump has — for most intents and purposes — become the Republican Party.
Republicans want an autocrat. Donald Trump is their guy for now . . . and perhaps he will be their strongman for quite some time into the future.
Centrist Democrats, by contrast, have already sold their souls to corporations and billionaires and the rest of the top 1%.
Centrist Democrats are all about the corporations and the oligarchs and are quite comfortable being told what to do by them. Bezos. Musk. Zuckerberg. Bloomberg. Gates. The S&P 500.
So . . . autocrats or oligarchs.
“Shoot me to death or stab me to death” — that’s quite a choice. I’ll go with Option C, “neither of the above.”
In closing, a few thoughts:
- We have massive problems in front of us, and solutions will require bold action. It is starkly apparent that neither of America’s two political parties is up to the task of dealing with these problems in the timeframes necessary.
- It says a lot that the percentage of eligible voters sitting out from elections — almost 34% of the 240 million people eligible to vote in 2020 — was a plurality of all U.S. adults eligible to vote until just the last few years. One reason for so many eligible adults not voting is that they don’t think it matters who they vote for — Republicans or Centrist Democrats. They believe that nothing material will change regardless of who is elected. BOTH parties have given these non-voters plenty of reason to believe that.
- For some things — like climate change — there really is so little time left to really deal with it there is no sense (1) trying to move either party in a productive direction or (2) starting a third party. Whatever solution there might be for climate change, it will have to be driven outside of traditional political processes here in the U.S.
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The Samuel L. Jackson Approach to Dealing with Centrist Democrats Post-Roe and Pre-2022 Midterms
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