In the last 30-40 years of political discourse in the US ever more heat is being generated and ever less light. According to Paul Ray and others, the electorate is about evenly divided between traditionalists, businessmen and pluralists, each having about a third of the electorate. The job of someone running for office is and has been to capture one of the ends and some of the middle, and that has been the way it has been going. In normal parlance the job of each party is capture enough of the independents. I would say this is a dead end. What this approach ignores is that life in a democracy is not a win or lose game where the winner dominates and the loser sits it out -- but rather our democracy is a place we all live. The question arises: how is it possible to meet the needs of nearly 300 million Americans in a complex and interconnected global era where the needs and wants of 6-7 billion people must be addressed?

Read more