To answer your question:
First, I know that I don’t know you. In that sense, I don’t have a “hard time” accepting what you want to call yourself, and accepting however you define it.
I know that being moderate doesn’t “mean compromise.” But politics does. Our voting choices are as much about what we’re willing to tolerate as what we actively vote to support. You and I seem to agree that people don’t fit into “neat little boxes with convenient labels,” though I’m assuming from how some of your responses focus on this point, you feel we also disagree somewhere on the details of it. With other political activity we can express more nuance. We only have one vote on a given person or issue—and until there is a serious grass roots effort to present a 3rd candidate that has a chance (not just disparate people saying “it could happen”), or a serious grass roots effort to put in place some form of rank choice voting, we have two choices for President.
We may in fact have more in common politically than not. I don’t have a problem with that idea. I don’t know for sure one way or another. But that’s also probably why I’m more stuck on this difference than I would be for someone who decided voting for Trump was a good idea, and has somehow continued buying into the idea that Trump is doing a fine job.
As far as holding moderate views, that’s where I’m not so sure. To answer your question, here are a few examples from this thread to show why I might doubt that:
- Trump is not moderate.
– Claiming the two presidential candidates both have dementia is not moderate.
– Saying that every “blue state” has fucked up its own economy is not moderate, nor is saying that anyone who is on the “blue” side of the red/blue divide will do the same with the country. (It’s actually a rather partisan statement).
– I find it consistently unclear who you consider “left” and “left wing” and “far left.” Sometimes it seems like you consider anyone left of the Republican party “left”—which is to dismiss a lot of the political landscape for the convenience of identifying a unified “other.”
(Note: I realize now I changed what you called “center leaning” to “moderate” in my head, though I think those two terms overlap enough that it doesn’t really change the meaning).
About Trump doing a “passable,” and “B-” job. I don’t think it’s remarkable that someone unfit for the office of President has avoided completely crippling a country whose government systems were originally designed to limit the ability a single person has to unilaterally cripple a country. But to use “the country is still moving just fine” as your metric is to miss the deforestation for the fact that the forest isn’t gone yet (to use an environmental metaphor). What I don’t understand is whether you don’t see it, choose not to see it, don’t care, or feel like it’s hopeless anyway.
In theory, if everyone voted for whatever was the “better” of the two options—not best, just better—we would see steady progress as a nation. I know that concept doesn’t work when people have differing opinions on what constitutes best, and on what constitutes the steps of “better” that will get there. But we all should agree that incompetence, corruption, and the eroding of democratic norms are bad, and that the more these things are prevelent, the worse off we are as a nation. Whataboutism doesn’t get us out of that. Pretending that everyone is equally incompetent, corrupt, and antagonistic to democratic norms doesn’t get us out of that. We need to be voting for the better option come elections, and then remain politically engaged citizens the rest of the time. And of course that is frustrating and hard and slow.
And I’ll stop now because I’m worried that it sounds like a lecture again, (still not my intention—just trying to explain my answer to your question), and I definitely didn’t mean to make such a long response to a conversation we’ve already been having for a while. Apologies on both counts.
