Radical Center USA

By Al Stephenson

One thing is for sure, regardless of who wins the election, the percentage of people saying the country is “on the wrong track” or going “in the wrong direction” will continue to be elevated at high levels. This represents nearly two thirds of the public currently according to the polls.

According to most of the media and academia, the country is divided into two armed camps at each other’s throats currently while backing their favorite liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans. The country is hopelessly divided, supposedly. This just doesn’t reflect reality. Trump and Harris both have higher negatives than positives. And the “wrong track” numbers always stay elevated regardless of which party wins or controls.

The pollsters are obviously asking the wrong questions. Question one should be: Would you favor two other candidates instead of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris? The next one would be something like: Why is the US political system so dysfunctional it can only produce these two gems as candidates for the highest office in the land? If this were a Third World nation it might make sense. But for the world’s most technologically advanced superpower with around 340 million people it just defies logic.

Sure their are partisans and base voters who show up in large numbers. There is no evidence however of any growth in the number of people identifying as Democrats, Republicans, liberals, or conservatives. All the action is in the middle, with most people calling themselves independents, usually looking for pragmatic solutions to the basic problems affecting the nation, such as the national economy and stagnant/declining incomes. Yes, people may “lean right” or “lean left” based on their family history and the basket of issues they’re most interested in. That doesn’t mean they like the candidates they’re voting for or that they aren’t holding their noses as they make the vote.

Why do people vote at all if the candidates are so awful? Currently “extremist control” seems to be the most vital function influencing voting behavior. People vote for Republicans to block the liberal extremists and the Democrats to stop the conservative extremists. What’s not understood is the same individual voter may be opposed to BOTH sets of extremists and will have to adjust heir voting accordingly.

As far as analyzing the mess of American politics and how it got to be this way, there are different theories. One would be taking the the decline of the “big tent” concept multiplied by the money grubbing “greed is good” style unfortunately associated historically with American enterprise. Unknown to many people their used to be two species called “liberal Republicans” and “conservative Democrats” in the country, along with many moderates. Somewhere in the 1970s the parties decided to be either exclusively liberal or conservative. There was no vote or referendum on this, political insiders and more rabid base elements made the decision. This eliminated opportunities to cross the aisle and divided the country further geographically.

The money grubbing stuff most people understand. As a kind of subset of the overall US “service economy” the “political services industry” has grown into a billion dollar racket, with a lot of money blown on the simplistic sometimes childish “attack ads” everywhere. The contribution solicitations never end and the bigger donors are obviously going to have more influence than the “little people” with their five dollar donations. Not surprisingly, neither party has anything to say these days about “campaign finance reform.”

Though it isn’t likely to happen in a hundred years, one reform would be to mandate free advertising time for two months prior to the election. All of the networks would have to cough up free air time under this scheme. It would work politically because voters don’t care about the networks or media companies or their profitability, these companies have the same negatives as the politicians. This could be started on PBS immediately as it’s supposed to be public anyway. No one, however, is holding their breath on any kind of reforms or legislation in the near future, More gridlock based on the partisan split regardless of whoever wins is the most likely scenario.