Cherry is a member of the board of Independent Voting and president of the Leaders Network.
May 14 – Ten Black shoppers are shot to death at a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket.
May 24 – Nineteen children and two adults, most of them Latino, are gunned down at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Two mass shootings. Ten days apart.
In the nearly 10 years since the Sandy Hook massacre, we have seen 49 people from the LGBTQ community killed in Orlando in 2016; 60 people killed and 411 people wounded, most of them white, at a concert in Las Vegas; and 11 Jewish people killed at a synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. The victims are diverse and include every race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation in America.
There are too many more mass shootings to list in this space. All of the mass shootings follow a similar pattern:
- Shock and sadness at the first word of breaking news.
- Live coverage from the media to present the accurate number of casualties to their viewers.
- Calls for our elected officials to take action.
No. 3 never leads to action. Because it can’t. America’s politicians operate in a broken political system that rewards partisanship and punishes collaboration. Republicans running for office in closed Republican primaries can’t be “shamed” into changing their positions on gun safety legislation. In fact, supporting this type of legislation guarantees they will be defeated in a primary challenge.
What about the Democrats? Nearly all of their anti-violence proposals are less about actually saving lives and more about staking out positions that will help them stave off potential challengers in closed primaries.
Neither party wants to break the current political stalemate by opening more primaries, ending partisan gerrymandering, and opening the ballot and debates to independent candidates, which means neither party is seriously committed to ending the barbaric carnage in our stores, schools, places of worship, movie theaters, workplaces or concerts. To quote the late head coach of the Green Bay Packers, Vince Lombardi: “Winning isn’t everything; it’s the only thing.”
We are a nation of 350 million diverse people with two political parties who control how we respond – or don’t respond – to our nation’s gun violence, which claims over 20,000 lives a year.
Principled people must get together and collaborate to solve our problems – including our nation’s violence, poverty, the economy and everything else. Let’s begin organizing outside of the limitations and handcuffs of the two-party system and begin ending the political paralysis that leaves more and more Americans in mourning. It is why I am proud to be an independent, specifically a board member of Independent Voting. Whether or not you identify as an independent, take a moment to take our survey.
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner speaks to voters at a town hall at the Elks Lodge 188 on June 7, 2026, in Portland, Maine.
McConnell and Platner both feel entitled
The two men could not be more different. One, a Republican, octogenarian, seven-term Southern senator, the other a progressive, millennial Maine oysterman who’s never spent a day in elected office.
But Mitch McConnell, the senior senator from Kentucky who’s been MIA for the past few weeks and Graham Platner, the Maine Senate candidate who’s facing calls to drop out of his race against Sen. Susan Collins, apparently do have something in common: an outsized sense of entitlement.
McConnell, who is 84 and not running for reelection, has been hospitalized for three weeks, and yet we still don’t fully know what he was admitted for or what his condition is. Per CNN, “his office has not disclosed a medical reason for the hospitalization or provided specifics on his health status beyond saying last week that he ‘continues to improve’ and ‘is working closely with his staff on Kentucky and Senate matters.’ ”
While several legislators have said they’ve talked to him and insist he sounds strong, others have said they are completely in the dark. One MAGA influencer, Laura Loomer, posted ”High level source close to the White House tells me ‘Mitch McConnell is officially brain dead. He’s not coming back.’ ”
Meanwhile, up in Maine, Platner has been artfully dodging calls from his own party to drop out of his race after several allegations of misconduct from women, including a sexual assault allegation from a former girlfriend, came to light. While Platner, who has managed to survive a Nazi-tattoo scandal, a sexting scandal, and several old tweets scandals, denies the allegations, he has not quit.
High-profile Democrats including Sens. Bernie Sanders and Chuck Schumer, the latter of whom had unsuccessfully hand-selected Maine Gov. Janet Mills to face Collins instead of Platner, have urged Platner to drop out, while other Dems have accused him of trying to influence the picking of his replacement.
Maine Democratic Party Executive Director Devon Murphy-Anderson released a statement Tuesday, which said in part:
“Unfortunately, Graham Platner’s team has repeatedly reached out to us in an attempt to put their thumb on the scale of what this process looks like. We have repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate nor in determining what this process looks like.”
Both incidents show a deep lack of accountability to voters, who in one case deserve to know whether their senator is capable of performing his duties, and in another deserve a candidate who isn’t being accused of crimes, bigotry and deception.
The offensive and odious entitlement of both McConnell and Platner stands out not because it is particularly unique among today’s political class. Tom Kean, the New Jersey GOP congressman, missed more than 100 votes, only sharing after a three-month mystery absence that he was dealing with depression.
Former President Joe Biden’s Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin failed to disclose a hospitalization for prostate cancer surgery, flouting the established rules for Cabinet members and senior U.S. officials.
From Biden’s insistence on running for reelection despite his obvious cognitive and political weaknesses to Trump’s brazen flouting of laws and norms, few politicians seem to appreciate that their public service job comes with responsibilities to constituents, including transparency and honesty.
But both parties increasingly justify the chicanery, because the stakes of winning elections and keeping power are simply too high. But that’s no excuse. If we’ve learned anything over the past decade, it’s that character and accountability do, in fact, matter. And when we, the voters, stop caring about it, well, so do they.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.