Whether one watches Fox News or MSNBC, reads The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal, it has become difficult to view the United States as anything but a game of political dodgeball, with two opposing teams that loath one another trying to knock the other out by whistling partisan fastballs at any vulnerable opponent. Gone are the days of what Richard Nixon liked to call “the great silent majority” — a phrase he appropriated from Homer, who used it to describe the dead. There is not much silence in politics these days. Nor is there much reasonable discourse. Screeching has largely taken its place.
By all accounts, somewhere between 80 percent and 90 percent of the American electorate is frozen in ideology and party affiliation, with Democrats having a slight advantage, although that edge is often not reflected in voter turnout. That leaves roughly one tenth to one fifth of American voters who may be persuadable by either of the two parties. Not unlikely is that most of those in the middle find something both to like and to dislike about Democratic and Republican policies and those who represent them.
Regardless of how small this group of persuadables may be, they are the key to America’s future. They are the tie-breaking votes. It is these independents to whom the task of choosing between two political parties, whose imperfections are both glaring and ubiquitous, is entrusted. They will decide on which of two radically different paths the United States will follow, leaving the losing side furious and likely uncooperative in bending to the national will. But not only will they select who rules the nation in the short term and what policies are put in place — on them may well rest the very future of democracy in the United States.
