What does it really MEAN when people label themselves as political "moderates"?

[TheKentuckian]

213. I don't think you can have this conversation until "Centrists" are separated from moderate.

"Centrist" is an ideology and most "Centrists" are ideologues masquerading as the opposite chiefly by utilizing language, tone, and framing while remaining steadfast and even zealous in pursuit of their ambitions. Ambitions which are far more consistent and and they brook little more compromise than those "on both sides" they lament seemingly twenty four hours a day. Present day most of these folks identify as Democrats, though there are some swing district TeaPubliKlans that they provide cover for, least an actual Democrat be elected and skew power a little from those that hoard it now.

These folks are largely what comprises the middle of the politician spectrum, not the political spectrum as some confused both out of confusion willfully created by a complicit and nearly wholly owned media and these same politicians with the backing of "stakeholders" who always get the payoffs to the greater detriment.

Actual moderates are such a mixed bag that nearly everything said about them can be true and false because they are by definition not cut from the same cloth and since they arrive in a similar political place by very different paths they will carry different baskets of beliefs, goals and priorities to the table they cannot be reasonably addressed as one. Acceptance of this simple concept allows us to begin to filter a murky area as long as we realize that the nature of the subject dictates a journey without end.

The first group I will identify is one that both unfairly gets lumped I with the "Centrists" and consistently provide them with cover are folks who value consensus based progress.

I believe this group tends to be more sensitive to tone than some other segments of society and that provides an affinity for a packaging that steers clear of flamboyance and promises to disturb nothing, well other than cutting the safety nets incrementally generally under the guise of waste fraud and abuse that can always be sold as some middle ground as long as we have batshit Birchers and silly adherents to a stillborn economic theory that wasn't plausible in pre industrial, low population, easy resource times it was born in and is laughable as anything now can effectively be contrasted with state capitalism/communism as essentially a binary choice seen as polar opposites.

In that environment one would imagine that "the middle" would be a large sprawling country with as diverse locales as most would ever desire to see but instead we get very consistently corporate friendly, Reaganomics oriented, social progressive slow walkers, ever behind the general population who always happen to be Hawks on defense and doves on BIG Anything.

These folks are herded by limiting their spectrum of effective choices more than perhaps some others because doing so for all practical intents also limits their very thinking maybe to the point that they do not even know where they stand themselves because that option is not presented to them to consider.

There are people that would identify and be described as moderate because they are significantly bi conceptual and such don't fit the caricatures of the two major parties framed at the poles when of coat such is not a fit with reality.

There address people who are considered moderate because they have progressive aims but cautious approaches and those who have reactionary aims but are quite aggressive in pursuit of them though have no personal animus toward race or orientation.

There are all kind.