These people are unhinged militant centrists.

It may seem paradoxical, but it is actually possible to be an extreme centrist. The hard truth of American politics is that there are no actual centrist voters. You won’t find any significant number of people whose views largely lie right between the platforms of the two parties. What you have instead are voters whose views simply don’t align well with the existing party coalitions. Their views may still be extremely strong. Think someone that is extremely pro-choice while also owning a dozen AR-15s. Maybe they have a home in the Libertarian Party, but they have no real home in either major party. They believe passionately on both subjects, they are anything but moderate for both their support of abortion choice and guns. But because their views don’t map cleanly to one side or the other’s arbitrary grab bag of chosen issues, this voter is called a centrist. But they’re not really a centrist. They just have weak partisan alignment.

But people like these? They are actual militant centrists. In many way these politicians are the only true centrists in America. They have formed a worldview that concludes that the right answer to any single issue must lie right in the middle between the two sides. One side wants to raise taxes on the rich while the other wants to cut them? The obviously correct answer must be to keep the taxes steady. Trump wants to turn millions of legal immigrants into illegal immigrants and then deport them, while progressives want to deport no law-abiding person? The correct answer must be to brutalize merely a few thousand innocent people. Progressives want to protect trans rights while Republicans want to liquidate trans people in ovens? The obvious answer must be some roll back of trans civil rights.

People like Schumer, Fetterman, etc. are militant centrists. They will obsessively tack to the very middle of any issue. And this is fundamentally a purely ideological position, the same as any extremist. A militant racist is so committed to theories of racial superiority that they’ll want to see racist policies enacted, even if they hurt the country, even if they hurt the racist themselves, regardless of even if white people are hurt. A militant socialist might demand state ownership of every type of business and enterprise, even if there’s no market failure and private companies can run those things just fine. You would have to be a pretty extreme socialist to think that the government should be running bars for example.

This is the defining feature of extremism and militancy - a willingness to put one’s own ideology above everything else. All that matters is the ideology. It is correct with a capital C. It is truth with a capital T. Any evidence against the ideology is dismissed or explained away.

These people are not moderate. They are militant centrists. Pick an issue, no matter the context or the evidence clear for all to see. They will always tack right in the middle between the two sides. They believe, in their heart of hearts, that the middle path is always the correct one. And they don’t care how many people have to die to keep their cherished view of centrism preserved. They are as extreme and militant as any far-right militia member. They just follow the ideology of centrism rather than conservatism.