Is it stupidity, arrogance, or a fine balance of both that convinces these people to accept these TV appearances?

Third-rate sophists. That's a sort of silver lining.

The state of the world is leaving less and less space for satire!

It's even worse than this. Mainstream media is corporate media, and acts in accordance to its ownership structure (with some noise around the signal for added credibility). They criticize if convenient (see tariffs) and do not when it is not convenient (see genocide).

The San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce is opposing a proposed $25 minimum wage for the hospitality industry, claiming it will "kill jobs". Standard fare, but where's the evidence? Research does not support this assertion, much less the cataclysmic tone.

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

How far from reality is the following caricature? "Centrists are people who do not want to stray from any constellation of policies and conditions that secure their current, acceptable standard of living. They are policy agnostics."

Centrists, wittingly or not, misapply Aristotle’s notion of the golden mean - that virtue lies somewhere between two opposing vices characterized by deficiency and excess. But vices are categorically distinct from policies, parties, or general political philosophies.

I agree. I would only add that big donors on either side are unlikely to go against corporate interests or otherwise centrist positions. If I'm right, then what Democrats need is talent that can push working class policy (Obama had talent, but didn't really push working class policy once in office).

Working class policy platforms speak for themselves wherever they have room to breathe - even across our seemingly shattered political spectrum. Big donors, from D's and R's, suck up oxygen from platforms that oppose their interests. And we've seen that they are not needed to win major elections.

We give proponents of trickle down economics entirely too much credit. It's not that they are mistaken in promoting it, but that they are dishonest in promoting it. A lie is much worse than a mistake, and much harder to eradicate.

There are very few instances in the public sphere where critical thinking should not be the goal. Critical thinking is anathema to the illegitimate accumulation of power (access, money, resources), and therefore anathema to those who build dogmas around that accumulation.