We’re back! Sorry for the time gap since the last post.
Although we have a midterm election coming up in 2022, the real concern that we face is related to the presidential election coming up in 2024. Even though the election is still three years away, we are starting to get a taste of who the likely candidates will be.
President Biden will likely be too old to run which means that the Democrats will need another candidate. This is unfortunate because Biden is probably the most moderate politician in either party right now. And because of this we will likely end up with what is becoming the norm for elections – having to choose between either a far right-wing or a far left-wing candidate with nothing in between.
For the Democrats the front runner right now appears to be Pete Buttigieg. Even though you would think that V.P. Harris would be the logical candidate, that does not appear to be the case. Either way, both of these candidates are to the left of Biden.
On the Republican side the current front runner appears to be Florida governor Ron DeSantis. DeSantis was recently in the news for proposing the formation of a new Florida state military force consisting of trained civilians that he, rather that the Pentagon would control. From the moderate point of view, that is scary stuff.
With over 329 million people in our country, you would think that we could have at least one candidate that the cross section of American people can better relate to. But that’s what happens when almost half of the people in the country have no say in deciding who the presidential candidates will be. You can already see how difficult this coming presidential election will be for our country.
The reason this is happening is that we have a flawed paradigm in this country. The paradigm that I’m talking about is that only two major political parties are required to run our country because that is the way it has always been. However, the U.S. is one of only a few countries in the world to have a two-party political system and it is failing us.
Besides ripping our country apart, the gridlock which results from having our country split down the middle is causing all of our problems to go unsolved; problems such as our dying middle class, the out-of-control national debt, the slow pace of attacking climate change, and fixing our expensive, poorly rated healthcare system. We deserve so much more from our government.
According to recent polls, the Democrats represent about 31% of Americans and the Republicans represent about 25%. They sometimes refer to themselves as conservatives and liberals but these terms have become meaningless. After all, moderates and extremists in each group have little to nothing in common with each other. Independents, most of whom are moderate conservatives and moderate liberals, make up over 40% of Americans but we have no political party and little say in how our country is run.
In addition to these groups, we have the unrepresented middle class and millennials. As I used to say during my run for Congress, a country without a middle class is a third world country. Based on recent polling data, over 60 percent of Americans and over 70 percent of millennials agree that we need a third major centrist political party. There are several fledgling efforts out there to accomplish this such as the Alliance Party (theallianceparty.com), the Reform Party (reformparty.org), and Represent.Us but they need your support.