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(03-13-2019 09:19 AM)BroncoEngineer05 Wrote:  The remaining 80% is the exhausted-middle who just want things done in a manner that's beneficial to all of us without a care of which side comes up with the idea.

The more people who get their news from Twitter arguments and social media memes, the more that 80% is going to get whittled down.

My concern is the recent rise in populist "my way or the highway" hardliners who gain massive followings. On the one side, conservatives toss aside their limited government principles to rally behind uber-nationalist Trump and the toxic alt-right. On the other side, we're seeing the likes of tax-to-the-stone-age Bernie and now 'AOC' becoming media-driven rock stars.

There's really no viable third party. The Greens are even more socialist than the socialists, and the Libertarians get into too much law-of-the-jungle (although the LP's 2016 ticket of Johnson/Weld was fairly moderate by libertarian standards).

Now that doesn't mean even the "fringes" don't have valid ideas especially in the cases of social/civil liberties. Sometimes an idea that may seem radical or unprecedented, regardless of ideology, is the most valid and reasonable. But what 'made America great' (ahem) are leaders who didn't sway too far from the center and showed the ability to compromise and reach across the aisle, both domestically and internationally, and try representing all Americans instead of their own ilk or pushing identity politics. In other words, the adults in the room.

The best form of governance is that of a healthy mix of free-market capitalism blended with government protections, safety nets, and public services. You can't tax people back to the stone age, but you can't have taxes so low that important government services are jeopardized. You can't have so many regulations that it stifles business growth, but not have so few that it's a free-for-all prone to abuse. Those sorts of things... Stray too far off the path, you'll get Pinochet's Chile, or Putin's Russia, or Maduro's Venezuela.

If 2020 winds up being something like Trump vs. Sanders, it'll be landmark election, and not necessarily in a good way. I'll truly miss the days of McCain, both Clintons, Kasich, Obama, Flake, Romney, Biden, etc., even though each of them may have glaring faults of their own.