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Michael Bridgford campaigning
Eight cities in eight different counties, all in one week. When we talk about cities in Iowa’s First Congressional District, keep in mind most are county seats with populations that often don’t reach 7,000. In the closing months of a political campaign in southeastern Iowa, chatter in those towns and cities centers on the cost of living, farmers' struggles, and the hot-button issue of data centers.
Michael Bridgford is tireless, but the challenge is daunting. I met him over lunch last spring when he was first considering a run. A long-time friend met him at a conference and told Michael he would connect him to a guy who won a long-shot campaign. I’m that guy. Running as a Republican, I upset a 32-year incumbent in deep-blue Madison, Wisconsin.
If you were drafting a candidate with the right bio for the district, Michael fits the profile. Grew up on a family farm. Graduated from a high-school class of 88 students. He went on to earn his MBA at Northwestern. Worked at John Deere. Small business owner. And on the campaign trail, two young, cute daughters are often in tow.
The races in Iowa’s First have been oh so tight in recent years. The district has flipped back and forth between Democrats and Republicans.
Two years ago, after a recount, the incumbent won by just 798 votes.
This year is a rematch between the winning Republican and her Democratic challenger.
But here’s the punchline. Michael is running as an Independent.
National polls are staggering. CNN says 47% of voters now call themselves Independents. I woke up to a New York Times headline today asking, “Is an Independent Wave forming?
But calling yourself an Independent and voting for an independent candidate are two different things.
The fact is, most Independents still lean one way or the other. The numbers are almost perfectly split: 39% of Americans lean Democratic, 37% lean Republican, and 25% say they don’t lean either way.
Look at his campaign staff and volunteers to see the crest of that emerging surge. At this moment, 56% of voters under 29 are Independents. He leans on an army of college students to provide the energy to counter the infrastructure political parties provide.
“The parties, they just want to fight,” Bridgford said. “They’re not interested in actually solving the problem.”
Look at the tiny margins in the House and the Senate. If you could just get five House Members elected as Independents, you would control the most powerful wedge caucus in Congress.
"Right now, it's a record-tight margin in the House. You know, Speaker Mike Johnson was elected by two votes. Just one or two Independents could have a really outsized impact on day one," Bridgford told Channel 8 News in Des Moines.
Former West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin and a group of allies are devoted to that mission.
“First of all I’m living proof that one vote makes a difference”, said Manchin. “Both sides knew that I wasn’t going to go crazy and go far left or far right; we were able to get some things done.”
Manchin, a one-time Democrat turned Republican, has joined forces with similar-minded political operatives to form the Independent Leadership Council, which is providing strategic guidance and money to Michael and a handful of other candidates around the country.
His daughter, Heather, has helped raise $ 10 million to support candidates in Montana, Alaska, California, Nebraska, and Iowa.
“What made this moment feel different is this convergence of higher unaffiliated Independents. We now have 16 states, 106 districts, where unaffiliated or Independents outnumber Republicans or Democrats. I think you have a real hunger. We’re feeling it and seeing it.”
Bridgford’s core beliefs straddle the political divide.
“I believe we need a secure border. I think that’s a policy that Republicans support. I think with the trade wars, we need to step away from those. I think that’s a policy Democrats support,” Bridgford told the local newspaper Our Quad City. “At the end of the day, we’re at a moment where we need a lot of common sense.”
With the election just weeks away, cold, hard facts make his race a long shot. He has raised six figures, but the two major party candidates are both closing in on four million. Right now, the Democrat leads in polling, with Michael a distant third.
Looking for a breakout moment. He was excited when television stations in Dubuque and Cedar Rapids recently announced joint plans to hold a debate.
“I think a turning point in the race will come in the debate. Right now the other candidates have not accepted one. They are worried it will give me momentum. I can feel the support building at my campaign stops and fundraisers,” he told me.
But now with the debate scheduled for late October, he’s on the outside.
A spokesman for the stations says Michael has not met the fundraising threshold to qualify. The stations will not disclose that number, calling it “proprietary.”
Frustrated but not discouraged, he has not slowed down.
Not surprisingly, when we talked, he was on the road. Again.
I beat a 32-year incumbent. Every night there is an election surprise. Michael knows the odds, but this fall the zeitgeist feels right for an Independent to win somewhere.
Eight cities down. Eight more this week. One parade, one church picnic, one more high school football game ahead. And, with any luck, an invite to the debate in late October.
Scott Klug served in the House of Representatives from 1991 to 1999. He hosts the political podcast “ Lost in the Middle: America’s Political Orphans.”
For 250 years, U.S. elites have maintained supremacy by embedding self-interest into the nation’s foundational structures, translating economic power into political dominance. From the plantation economy and the Gilded Age to modern corporate lobbying, wealth consolidation has consistently undermined democratic equality to favor the ruling class.
This trajectory of elite control and self-interest unfolds across the following core eras:
The Founding Consensus and Property Rule (1776–1860s)
Constitutional Architecture: The framers of the U.S. Constitution, many of whom were large property owners and slaveholders, designed a republic with checks meant to dilute the popular majority's power. They restricted direct democracy in favor of institutions like the Electoral College and an appointed Senate.
The Slave Power: The antebellum Southern elite built immense wealth on the backs of enslaved labor. This faction dominated the federal government for decades, ensuring laws, judicial rulings (like the Dred Scott decision), and territorial expansion protected their human capital and economic hegemony.
The Gilded Age and Corporate Oligarchy (1870s–1920s)
Industrial Monopolies: Rapid expansion in the railroads, steel, and oil industries allowed "robber barons" to amass unprecedented private fortunes. These monopolies controlled markets and labor and routinely utilized state and federal troops to crush union strikes.
Capitalist Influence: Wealth was actively leveraged to influence elections and legislation. The era established a precedent of the judiciary striking down progressive labor laws and income taxes under the guise of "freedom of contract."
Powell Memo & Conservative Counter Revolution (1971-Pesent)
The Policy Network Backlash: Beginning in the 1970s, elites restructured their political dominance. The creation of corporate-funded think tanks and policy-planning networks (e.g., the Business Roundtable and the Heritage Foundation) laid the groundwork for decades of deregulation and privatization.
Wealth Polarization: The modern era has seen a massive upward transfer of wealth. Tax cuts for corporations and high-income earners, coupled with stagnant working-class wages, have returned economic inequality to Gilded Age levels.
Purchased Politics: Campaign finance deregulation and a system of corporate-funded lobbying have made political representation highly responsive to the interests of the wealthiest donors and multinational corporations. The result is a political economy in which elite self-interest often dictates both domestic legislation and foreign policy.
Periods of Relief
Over the last 250 years, relief from elite supremacy has occurred during periods of mass mobilization, institutional reform, and progressive legislation. These eras temporarily decentralized wealth and political power, giving the working class, marginalized groups, and broad coalitions greater influence.
Notable periods of relief over the last two-and-a-half centuries include:
The Progressive Era (~1890s–1920s): Driven by the immense inequality of the Industrial Revolution, grassroots movements and reform-minded politicians challenged the power of corporate monopolies (trusts). This era brought relief through antitrust laws, the federal income tax (16th Amendment), and the direct election of senators (17th Amendment).
The New Deal & World War II (~1933–1945):
Elite Concessions: Facing the existential threat of the Great Depression, the corporate elite were forced to accept the New Deal. This period featured the growth of the labor movement and the highest marginal tax rates in U.S. history, creating a robust middle class.
In response to the Great Depression and the threat of global fascism, the federal government enacted sweeping economic and labor reforms. Policies like Social Security, the Wagner Act, and wartime wage controls drastically reduced the wealth gap and strengthened labor unions.
The Post-WWII "Great Compression" (~1940s–1970s): Economically, this remains the most egalitarian time in American history. A highly progressive tax structure, a booming post-war manufacturing sector, and powerful labor unions created an era in which the middle class flourished, and the top one percent saw a historic low in wealth concentration.
The Civil Rights Movement & Great Society (~1950s–1960s): Massive social upheaval successfully challenged the supremacy of entrenched political elites. The resulting legislative achievements—most notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid—established vital legal and social egalitarianism.
Path Forward
The 1894 midterms marked a pivotal political realignment. The catastrophic conservative collapse, shattering the laissez-faire consensus of the Gilded Age. This massive voter shift forced the newly empowered progressives to adopt early interventionist policies, sparking a new nationwide era. The 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential elections provide similar opportunities.
Escaping the "Second Gilded Age" requires a modern-day equivalent to the Progressive Era. Overcoming extreme wealth concentration and corporate dominance relies on structural reforms, grassroots organizing, and building lasting institutions that prioritize the working class and restore democratic accountability.
The necessary steps forward involve:
Need for Electoral Reform to Precede Kitchen-Table Reform
To combat the extreme wealth inequality and entrenched corporate power defining the "second gilded age," electoral reform is a necessary precondition for kitchen-table reform. Because the current political system is financed and shaped by a billionaire class, foundational democracy must be fixed first to prevent vested interests from co-opting or blocking everyday economic relief.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, America's first Gilded Age was defined by monopoly capitalism and widespread political corruption. Meaningful economic changes only materialized after structural democratic reforms—such as secret ballots and direct election of senators—loosened the grip of political bosses.
Today’s second gilded age requires a parallel sequencing. Without structural changes to the political arena, efforts to legislate "kitchen table" issues like higher wages, fairer taxes, and lower living costs will continually face gridlock. Entrenched monied interests are incentivized to protect the status quo, utilizing lobbying power and campaign financing to block broadly popular economic reforms.
Targeted Electoral Solutions: To restore political equality, several structural electoral changes are vital:
Electoral Mechanisms: Mitigate the effects of the Winner-Take-All (WTA) Electoral College through a constitutional amendment or by adopting the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (NPVIC). Adopting reforms like open-primaries/ranked-choice voting or proportional representation to reduce polarization and elect lawmakers who are genuinely responsive to working-class economic struggles rather than donor class preferences.
Reducing/Eliminating the Effect of Gerrymandering: The combination of open primaries and ranked-choice voting (RCV) reduces the effects of gerrymandering by shifting the political incentive from appealing to partisan extremes to building broad, majority coalitions. In addition, implementing independent, non-partisan redistricting commissions to ensure congressional maps represent the populace rather than protect incumbent power.
Remove Money from Politics: Reversing the corrupting influence of wealth in elections by instituting public financing systems.
Hugh J. Campbell, Jr., CPA, is a Governance, Risk & Compliance (GRC) professional and a student of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician often credited as the catalyst for the Japanese economic miracle after WWII.
Picture of Checkmate contestants, Liberals VS Conservatives
On the set of YouTube’s newest game show, a fact-checker quit in the middle of taping. Her job was to referee the truth, and the rules gave her exactly two words to do it with: true or false. When she objected to a ruling she found indefensible, the director reminded her that fact-checkers are supposed to stay neutral. She stood up and walked off. The scoreboard did not so much as flicker, and the game continued without her.
The show is called Checkmate, the latest offering from Jubilee Media, the YouTube empire behind viral debate series like Surrounded and Middle Ground. The premise is simple: two opposing teams trade claims, live fact-checkers rule on them, and the verdicts convert into points. The premiere’s title announced the enterprise’s founding question: “Who Lies More? We Fact-Checked Liberals vs Conservatives.” Before a single claim was tested, American politics had been reduced to tribal scorekeeping.
- YouTube youtu.be
Every episode ends with a final score, a definitive number that is hard to argue with. What the format delivers is neither pure information nor mindless entertainment but the sensation of having gotten to the bottom of something, handed to viewers who have not. Ignorance, whatever else is wrong with it, is at least unstable. It has an itch that sends you looking. Closure doesn’t itch.
The perversity compounds at every stage of the format.
The referees are the first casualty. According to Nick Matau, a pro-Israel debater who competed on the most recent episode, the production runs on two fact-checkers, working with AI assistance, who get roughly four minutes per claim. Two researchers, a chatbot, and a shot clock. No caveats, no reasoning, no dissent; just the verdict.
What happens when four minutes is all you have to settle a genuinely hard question? In the premiere, the teams fought over whether El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele is a dictator. The ruling came back false, on the basis that no legal classification of dictator exists and Bukele was elected. By that standard Putin is a democrat with an unusually devoted electorate, and Mussolini, who took office at the lawful invitation of a king, was no dictator either. The modern despot gets himself elected first and dismantles the guardrails afterward. Bukele has had presidential term limits abolished so he can run indefinitely, and jailed roughly 90,000 people under a state of emergency now in its fifth year, which rights groups have tied to torture and deaths in custody. He calls himself the “world’s coolest dictator”—a troll that works precisely because the label remains contestable. Checkmate settled it in four minutes, on a technicality, and stamped the answer permanent. There is something fitting in a format that cannot hold a question open ruling on a man accused of closing them.
The Israel episode ran the identical error. A pro-Israel debater claimed the Hamas charter advocates the eradication of the Jewish people. False, the show ruled, because the 2017 charter frames the movement’s fight as one with Zionists rather than Jews. But the debater never said “current” charter, and the qualifier matters less than you’d think. The 1988 founding covenant quotes the hadith promising that the Day of Judgment will not arrive until Muslims fight the Jews and kill them—Hamas has never revoked it. Its own leadership called the 2017 text the movement’s position “for now,” a softening for Western ears rather than a repeal. In 2019 a member of the political bureau urged Palestinians abroad to attack Jews everywhere on earth. The show ignored all of that and returned a single word.
Here is what matters, whether or not the technicality convinces you. A real fact-check would lay the layers out: the founding covenant says this, the 2017 document says that, the leadership insists the second never replaced the first. You would walk away holding the actual state of the evidence, contested and ugly as it is. The binary forbids all of it. A second ruling that same episode, on how much of Gaza lies in rubble, fell into the identical trap. The honest figures swing wildly depending on the date, the method, and whether you are counting buildings destroyed or merely damaged.
Beneath the grand category errors sits a pettier one. Points swung in the premiere on a debater’s use of the passive voice, and on a contestant who said 40 percent when the answer sheet read 35. Welcome to debate-club pedantry with a scoreboard bolted on.
The endgame is the most revealing part. The final round is called Sudden Death. Each team picks a champion, a coin flip decides which side chooses the prompt, and the first debater to slap the button triggers the last fact-check, whose verdict doubles the winner’s points and docks the loser’s. Never mind the seventy minutes of claims and challenges and careful rulings that preceded it. They named the show for the one moment in chess that owes nothing to luck, and then they settled it with a coin.
Checkmate prices the gravest questions like trivia, the way a casino chip flattens a dollar and a life’s savings into the same little disc of clay. The show is only weeks old, and formats like this rarely stand still. They escalate, because audiences acclimate and the next episode has to hit harder than the last. If the founding covenant of a terrorist organization can be settled with a stamp, why stop there? Put “Does God exist” on the card. Put “Does the mind reduce to the brain.” The absurdity is not that Jubilee would ever run those episodes; it is that nothing in the format forbids them. Everything that enters comes out the same channel.
The obvious defense is that the show at least gets young people engaged with politics—better than playing video games and doomscrolling, right? There’s something to this. Jubilee has found a genuine hunger. Its audience is starving for unscripted disagreement in a media landscape where nearly everything else arrives pre-calibrated. The company has fed that hunger to the tune of 382 million views a month. The political class has noticed. Pete Buttigieg, Ro Khanna, and Governor Wes Moore have all walked into Jubilee’s formats, and Democratic strategists now call such appearances necessary to any serious communication plan. The stated goal is to host a presidential debate by 2028—coin flip presumably included. This is no longer a YouTube channel you can wave off; it is becoming large-scale civic infrastructure.
The old worry about political entertainment was that it informs people badly. Checkmate manages to do something worse. Plenty of people watch the Saturday Night Live version of a presidential debate having never watched the actual thing. They come away with something real, a rough semblance of who the candidates are and what they are selling. But the sketch tells you what it is in every frame, so whatever most people take from it arrives hedged. The viewer of Checkmate, on the contrary, walks away holding a verdict in green or red, having done none of the work that understanding actually asks of a person. Real understanding is the difference between the TikTok summary of a book and the hours you spend inside the book yourself, arguing in the margins, dog-earing the relevant pages. It cannot be won at the buzzer.
A public governs itself through a vast division of intellectual labor. You trust the chemist about your water and the historian about your wars. What that division cannot delegate is the judgment of who deserves to be read at all—a judgment that comes only from doing enough of the work yourself to recognize competence when you see it. Older arrangements demanded less of it by making the mediator answerable: the pastor and the small-town editor faced the people they guided, and the networks answered to a Fairness Doctrine and to the arithmetic of scarcity, which made the profitable audience the whole country. All of that is gone now. Checkmate doesn’t need to ask for the trust. The scoreboard is its own credential.
Democracy is the only arrangement that asks its citizens to live with questions that stay open. Whether a man is a dictator, what a nation’s founding document commits it to, how much collateral damage is acceptable in war—these are held, argued, revisited, and held again. Authoritarianism’s central offer has always been relief from that burden. Someone has decided. The file is closed. You may stop holding it; we’ll take it from here. A generation trained to expect that political disagreement terminates in a verdict, on a clock, with a winner and a loser, is being trained out of the one disposition self-government requires.
When she walked off, the cameras kept rolling and the scoreboard kept counting. That is the bargain Checkmate offers American discourse. Truth is welcome so long as it stays quiet and keeps to its two words. A few weeks ago it got up and left the room. The show never noticed.
Yaniv Regev studies democratic governance at Georgetown University and writes on the institutions, pathologies, and ideas that hold liberal democracy together—or don’t.
Last year, Congress established 530A tax-advantaged investment accounts for children under the age of 18. These accounts are now open and eligible children born between January 1, 2025 and December 31, 2028 receive a $1000 contribution from the federal government. This August, philanthropists Michael and Susan Dell gave $6.25 billion to supercharge these so-called Trump accounts, $250 goes into the accounts of the first 25 million children who have an account, are 10 and under and live in qualifying zip codes. Two hundred and fifty dollars was deposited into our children’s 530A Trump accounts.
However, as of July 2026, less than 10% of children eligible to open an account actually had an account. Too many of those who are economically worst off have not opened these 530a accounts. Research shows that families with higher incomes, older people, men and white people are more likely to be aware of this opportunity compared to families with lower incomes who are younger, women and Black and Latino. Given the historical, persistent racial and growing economic wealth gap, opportunities to build wealth should not be overlooked.
Regardless of how we feel about Trump, there are benefits to opening a federal investment account. For many of us, our instincts to most things Trump are eye rolls, deep sighs and gag reflexes. Like us, it might feel blasphemy to open this account. But, as researchers who study child development and stratification, we know that context matters and “it depends” is a legitimate scientific answer. While important questions remain about these accounts, it is possible to open a Trump account without adding any personal contributions. Thus, it makes sense to open one, so as not to leave money on the table.
In a world where the wealthiest among us are tied to investment accounts and investment in the stock market is highly stratified, expanding access is socially sustainable. Yes, a majority of Americans own some stock (62%), but stock ownership varies substantially by income, race and ethnicity. Lower-income adults are considerably less likely to own stocks (28%) compared to other income groups. And, while 70% of white adults own stock, only 53% of Black adults and 38% of Latino adults own stock.
Similar stark disparities also play out with 529 plans, one of the best known college savings plans that up to 54% of parents don’t even know exist. Most children do not have a 529 plan and family contribution varies by race and income with wealthy white families being the most invested. California’s ScholarShare 529 tracks its account owners by race and ethnicity. Black account owners make up 1% of their account owners, Latinos 8%.
As social and developmental scientists, we consider how factors such as race, ethnicity, and discrimination influence the development and economic circumstance of minoritized children and their families within US society. We understand that so many of these wealth building accounts were not created with Black and Latino families, women, or low-income people in mind, yet these populations have much to gain if these accounts remain stable and grow wealth.
To be sure, the outcome of these accounts is unpredictable. Beyond his actions which make him a social pariah to so many, such as the racism, the sexual abuse and his general animosity to anyone who doesn’t prefer and obey him, Trump’s uniquely long track record of failed ventures might be a deterrent. But, if Trump’s detractors are less likely to open an account than those who vote for and support him, then a pathway is set for a President to effectively grow the wealth of mainly his supporters. And, according to United States constitutional law, Trump will not be in office at the end of business January 20th, 2029. Perhaps instead of putting their names on buildings, landmarks, monuments, etc. the next President can change the name of these accounts to a more neutral one.
Until then, in these times of such extreme wealth inequity, social instability and racialization, we need to be willing to take what works for us, regardless of our feelings towards any given political actor. We may think Trump is abhorrent, that doesn’t mean we need to deny ourselves a broadly accessible public wealth-building program. It may mean we need to double down on any such crumb.
Love Him or Hate Him, Open a Trump Account was first published by Latino News Network and is republished with permission.
Megan Thiele Strong is a Sociology professor at San José State University and a Public Voices Fellow at the The OpEd Project and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
Sabrina Mendez-Escobar is a mom, Ambassador with The OpEd Project, researcher with an interest in empowering Latino families, and Child Development professor at City Colleges of Chicago.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home