Where's the Middle

One trend that has escalated in recent years is the polarization of American politics.  Now this is based purely on my observations, but not so long ago the two major parties agreed on quite a few things, to the point that critics argued there was no real difference between them.

There were differences but there was, at least to my view, a pretty broad consensus on important things like defense, immigration, crime, and other issues with a bit of variation in how to attack the problems.

Even issues that were divisive, like abortion rights or immigration were mostly civil in tone.

Then the fringe elements figured out how to hijack the parties using the primary system.

So progressives being more energized than most voted in the Democratic primaries.

Evangelicals and tea party activists voted in the Republican primaries.

The candidates produced in those votes were much more strident in their positions and less willing to compromise.

Further, the threat of primary challenges got many of the more moderate elected officials to move further left or right.

So we now have a Government where we appear to be deeply divided on almost everything and see legislation where no one from one of the parties will vote for it.

The parties themselves are further divided as the more extreme members exercise significant power because the moderates of both parties can't support each other.

George Washington actually warned us about this in his farewell address, that political factions were a great danger to our then young democracy, so this is not a new problem.  It just seems to keep getting worse.

The point though is that I am pretty confident that most American actually share a common set of values and beliefs and that the extreme positions taken are not reflective of what we really want.

I think the majority has lost their representation in Washington as it has become a reality TV show where we are tracking winners and losers.  The failures are not failures of the Republicans or the Democrats, they are a failure to govern, and we all are the losers.