Maybe, but a centrist will not actually address the underlying issues that make actors like AfD, and the Trump-wing of the Republican party, get bigger and bigger.
To put it differently: a Bill Clinton-type might manage to get elected and be popular, but he wouldn't do anything to keep inequality from rising even more.
This has no bearing on what I said, I'll repeat myself:
a centrist will not actually address the underlying issues that make actors like AfD, and the Trump-wing of the Republican party, get bigger and bigger.
Nobody is talking about completely eliminating inequality
We are where we are because we've allowed inequality to increase every year since the mid-'70s. Allowing that to continue - especially without establishing an actually leftist alternative (New Deal Democrat or democratic socialist at the least) - will just make the populist right bigger and more extreme.