If you define centrist as some sort of average between political parties, then no there will never be a successful centrist party because of math.
I agree. Upon reflection, I should have said “will we ever have a party that is totally OK with just making compromises and deals to get things done.” As someone pointed out, we might have had that for a while after Nixon, but it didn’t last very long.
Again, then democrats have been doing this, to their detriment from the start. It's why we have shitty Obamacare instead of single payer health care. He could have pretty easily done that his first two years in office. It's why we have a stacked conservative court. It's also why Roe vs. Wade and the Voter's Rights Act is gone. It's why we don't have any significant gun legislation. The Dems could have done all this and more the first two years of Biden's term, but they didn't because they continue to insist on trying to play ball with the republicans no matter how often they've been burned.
They continue to do these things to get mushed, exclusively to appear to centrist despite their actual platform, and despite republicans continued unwillingness to work with them. Republicans have moved right for electibility, dems have stayed in the middle for the same reason, they want to take advantage of the republicans who have supposedly been left behind. They've tried this since the Reagan Administration.