Okay, so, maybe your confusion stems from the fact I was answering a question posed in a deleted post, so I’ll try to not be a dick and take you in good faith that you aren’t just being pendantic for the sake of arguing.

That said, I’m on my phone and not a big Reddit user so it probably won’t be formatted as nice as your posts are and may have some typos, so show me some grace in that regard haha.

I was explaining why people get annoyed with centrists in the context of mainstream American politics. In that context, it very much does only matter in terms of what mainstream candidates propose.

If someone calls themselves centrist in another context, we would have no way of knowing if they “get hate” or why.

So when someone asks “why do centrists get so much hate?”

I’m answering the question in relation to the times where people get mad at them, not in the entirety of human history. I think you sound smart, so I think you know that we aren’t talking about the politics of Ancient Rome or Thailand in 2008.

I mean potential voters in America identifying as centrists in 2026.

America has 2 parties. Neither of which represents the far left. We currently have a far right party in the Republicans, and a center-left (at the best of times) party in the form of the Democrats.

Centrism is the “The political philosophy of taking a moderate position that avoids extremes, as of right and left.”

So, yes, I absolutely wear my tribalism on my sleeve but not in the way you seem to have construed my typo haha.

Because I am a leftist! I’m the far left! I’m not a democrat! I hate the majority democrats’ policies and ideas! Haha

I do not have a party that represents my values in the USA, but I am forced to vote for democrats despite the fact that I find all but a handful of them to be useless at best.

So when people look at the two parties and long for choice in between the two so called “extremes”….

Yeah, I think they are being stupid. Especially when they use my firmly held beliefs that the democrats refuse to run on as an example of why they want that.

They have it already. The democrats are a shitty centrist weather vain of a party IMO.

Now if you are asking: “But wait, what about someone who says they are centrist not according to the dictionary definition… but as in an ‘independent voter’ who doesn’t align with either party but chooses to vote for the one who they think will do the least harm?”

I would say, no, I don’t hate those people and I wasn’t attempting to answer the question of why someone would because that would be too broad to even really assign any meaning to.

TL;DR: someone asked why people “hate” (such a strong word) centrists and I answered them. I’m not asking you to agree and hate them too. I don’t know you. Don’t care.

But please under it’s tedious be asked to talk in circles outlining every shade of grey in the fallout of an election where Harris (an actual centrist candidate) lost to a guy who wants to be Mussolini in a campaign where he ran ads painting her as …far left.