The election is now over and the results were closer than most pollsters had predicted. Luckily, it looks like the more moderate of the two presidential candidates has won. This is something to be extremely thankful for because starting in January we may be able to put more emphasis on slowing climate change and maybe even start reducing our national debt. And most importantly, we may even be able to start doing things that make sense based on science to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
But it also looks like both chambers of Congress will be split down the middle with a different party in control (barely) of each chamber. Can you say more gridlock? This means that our country will continue to fall further behind other developed countries in our quality of life.
But things will really not be much different than they have been for a while. Our new president will have his hands tied as neither side allows the other one to get anything done. There is, however, one solution that will solve this problem. But to implement this solution we have to get over a huge paradigm. We need to realize that having just two major political parties is not normal for a country. The U.S. is one of only a few countries in the world to have a two-party political system and it is destroying us.
The next several weeks, possibly even going into January, are still going to be a very stressful time for people in the U.S. There will likely be continuing legal challenges and allegations of fraud to try to get the outcome of the election changed. But luckily it looks like our democratic system will survive for at least another four years.
Moderates, centrists, or Independents, whatever you want to call us, make up about 40% of the population but have little to no representation in government. We make decisions based on facts and science-based logic, we love democracy because democracy is a moderate form of government (our Founding Fathers were moderates), we hate authoritarianism, we are not religious hypocrites, and we believe in the rule of law and the Constitution. Moderates ran our country for over two hundred years but we have slowly lost control to those with more extreme ideological beliefs.
We need to push for the formation of a third major centrist tiebreaker party to make sure that our democracy is never again threatened, to do things that make sense, and to end the gridlock that is holding us back. Join with others who understand that the problems that we are facing are due to our failing two-party political system.
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. Volunteer and support these organizations – nothing will happen without you. Moderates are not as passionate as those with more extreme ideological beliefs but this needs to change for the sake of all Americans.