In the over five months of the Trump administration, I have felt a need to move further toward the center in order to work across the aisle and bridge the partisan divide. Unfortunately, this plan has been met with continual repulsion by both extremes of the right and the left. It occurs to me that both parties are diametrically opposed ideologically and they no longer seek responsible reasonable discourse. My ongoing research has suggested that the American people are sorting themselves, a process by which like-minded individuals tend to locate themselves with people of the same ideological or ethnic background. Democrats often blame gerrymandering for their continued losses. However, that doesn't explain the entire story. It does suggest the larger issue at work for the Democratic party.
Fundamentally, Democratic voters don't live in rural areas and Republicans don't live in cities, by and large. The Democratic party is made up of a loosely affiliated smattering of centrists, center-left and center-right politicians as well as a few neoliberal conservatives. The Republican party is made up of a more tightly wound mix of libertarians, conservatives, neocons and neoliberals. These two parties have a snake-like constricting stranglehold on the political will of the country. It has become readily apparent, especially in the last seventeen years that both parties cater to special interests and corporations. They no longer consider the voters that elected them to do their work. This relationship is somewhat reciprocal in that the voters don't trust the politicians as much as the politicians don't trust the people. At the current time, no officially recognized third parties have the political momentum or ability to actually win a local election let alone a national one. Not the Greens, the Libertarians, or any other third parties. However, I have begun researching the ill-fated 2016 campaign of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. In some of the documents detailing his potential 2016 run, it was suggested that Bloomberg could bring a new kind of centrism to the rest of the country. The consulting firm he hired to run polls and test messaging showed that Bloomberg's inclusion into the 2016 election would have actually led to a greater margin for a Trump victory than it did. Ultimately, Trump did win in the electoral college and thus, the presidency. There is another group of centrists that are trying their hand at possibly being the monkey wrench that halts the ongoing gridlock. They are The Centrist Project, founded by a man named Charlie Wheelan, author of the Centrist Manifesto. With the Manifesto, he proposes four to ten victories with Senate seats in the Northeast and Midwest which could act as a check on both parties and forcing their hand to actually get things done rather than dither and bicker with their partisan attitudes. This middle of the road approach may work in some parts of the country. I remain somewhat skeptical but still cautiously optimistic. I would like to get some Republicans and some Democrats on our side to form this movement with the bulk of the movement consisting of Independent voters. What I am calling for isn't just a movement of centrists, or leftists or right wingers. I'm calling for a movement formed out of the outcasts, the dreamers and the visionaries of tomorrow. I'm looking to build a new movement that seeks to create a new American identity for the 21st century and beyond. Join me, so that you can be apart of something that will not only make a difference but send a signal to the elites that the will of the people will not be ignored.
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