Moderates, having been "failing followers," must now be Radically Moderate

The problem with moderates in America? We’ve been content to allow polarized rhetoric to dominate election cycles and then spend our time grumbling as we try to clean up the mess. 

Here we are, the level-headed 3Ms (mushy middle moderates), holding the cards for a winning hand in the high-stakes game of presidential politics … yet always getting fooled by the bluff of the latest candidate promising, with a wink and a nod, to be a centrist who governs from the middle. 

Here’s the line we’ve fallen for with every candidate since Carter: “Hey, look … I have to say certain things to lock down the base. Then when I get in there, that’s when we’ll really pull it together.” 

In recent times, it just hasn't worked out that way. We moderates wasted valuable time allowing the shrill rhetoric of The Far Left ("Trust us! We're the smart ones!") and the angry rhetoric of The Far Right ("Down with the sissy elitists!") to dominate the political arena. 

I used to think that the ratio of liberal/moderate/conservative thinking was 20/60/20. But to hear the shrill voices of The Left and the angry voices of The Right, it sounds more like 45/10/45. 

Nevertheless, whether it’s our passion void or blind faith in a passive-aggressive strategy, we’re always left with a White House sweepstakes winner that we find wanting. We don’t muster enough strength to place the right candidates in the finals, so for decades we’ve been left with the task of adjusting the rudder, time after time. And as we executed that chore, we grumbled and groaned, sputtered and moaned. 

But we did our course-correcting duty, all the while muttering to ourselves, “Next time, we’ll show ‘em, by golly.” 

Regrettably, adjusting the rudder has shifted to a violent tug of war with each election cycle. The combatants on either end of the political rope are bigger, stronger and more intense now, so moderates, previously accustomed to applying modest tugs on either side of the flag in the middle, now must take longer leaps back and forth and use vicious yanks of the rope in an effort to establish any semblance of equilibrium. 

And the muscle strain is beginning to show, with moderate fatigue setting in. It isn’t that party politics isn’t working; it’s that party politics is working too effectively - against us. Can a third party in the middle - official or unofficial - figure out how to have a real voice in politics? In this generation, the moderate voice is barely audible, and when it's heard, it's condemned. 

We have only ourselves to blame unless we start listening more carefully and responding to reasonable leadership with much more energy and a much higher decibel level.