Anderson edited Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
American political observers have a tendency to divide American politicians into progressives and conservatives, but they are more likely to divide American citizens into progressives, moderates and conservatives. This is so, presumably, because the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate are themselves pretty evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. And although there are factions within each party, there is still a tendency to leave the moderate category out of the analysis.
Polarization in Washington, therefore, is relatively easy to explain. We have two political parties that are at each other's throats. To the extent that there are factions, the factions tend to be between progressives and extreme progressives and conservatives and extreme conservatives. The Freedom Caucus in the House, for example, is a group of extreme or ultra conservatives. The rest of the House is not made up of many, if any moderates. On the Democratic Side, the Squad led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, makes up the ultra-progressives, which for some of them means democratic socialists.
In the country, on the other hand, go to Gallup or Pew and you will find a division which is roughly 30% liberal, 30% conservative and 40% either moderate or independent. Not all independents are moderate, but most of the citizens who do not identify with the two major parties are, broadly speaking, sympathetic to moderate or centrist solutions to policy debates. These citizens do not see politics or life in terms of either/or choices; they are more nuanced in their thinking, they favor compromise over conflict, and cooperation over confrontation.
The gap in our country between highly polarized and toxic Washington and a country with three major perspectives is in the Grand Canyon category. The mainstream media preserves the Grand Canyon gap by heightening the contrast between the Democrats and Republicans in Washington and, basically, ignoring the presence of 40% of the citizenry who do not identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans.
Stanford University's Morris Fiorina is the leading American scholar to have argued for decades that the Culture War is a myth. Emory's Alan Abramowitz is one of the leading political scientists to reject Fiorina's thesis and defend the thesis that America is plagued by polarization.
The truth probably lies somewhere in between the Fiorina and Abramowitz points of view. What seems undeniable is that there are tens of millions of Americans, maybe as many as one hundred million, who do not feel comfortable reflecting on our country in terms of a redcoat versus bluecoat mentality. Whether they are centrists, moderates, independents, or even ultra-conservatives or ultra-progressives, they do not pitch their tents with Speaker McCarthy or Senator Schumer. Many of these citizens are not very engaged in politics at all. Indeed, these citizens may have checked out of politics altogether; they may not even vote.
The race for president in both parties needs to address the Grand Canyon gap in our society. One way to close the gap is to have more proposals about policies that would close the gap. Certainly there needs to be discussion about policies that would empower independents, moderates and centrists, including open primaries, ranked-choice voting, and nonpartisan redistricting.
The truth is that campaigns like opinion pages in the print media have limited resources. Although we do need gap closing policies, we actually need fewer arguments about standard public policy issues, whether the issue is guns, climate change, energy, manufacturing, health care, transportation infrastructure, child-care, or the Ukraine-Russia war.
There are related problems to be discussed, including whether Mr. Trump should be disqualified from running for office by section 3 of the 14th Amendment and whether Mr. Biden is too old to be running for office for a second term. These are very important issues, and we should hear from all candidates for office, including Trump and Biden, on these issues.
As important as public policies are, the standard public policies actually get too much attention in our elections. The candidates, moreover, take positions that tend to fit in a progressive or conservative box, and this continues to alienate the potential voters who do not identify as Democrats or Republicans. The time is now to address the Grand Canyon gap in America and decrease attention to standard public policy in election campaigns. Voters want to hear more about closing the Grand Canyon gap, structural changes in the electoral process, what qualities and character traits we expect in our president, and narratives the candidates have about America's past and how it is connected to our present and the future.
Demonstrators rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices hear oral arguments on whether President Donald Trump can deny citizenship to children born to parents who are in the United States illegally or temporarily, on Capitol Hill, in Washington, Wednesday, April 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)
Luz Angela Nuñez with her daughter Aisha Quershi Nuñez at their home in College Point, Queens. Photo: Mia Anzalone for Documented.
Kimberly Alvarez, 25, with her daughter Evangeline and her husband John Alvarez in Medellin, Colombia. Photo courtesy of Kimberly Alvarez.Alvarez arrived in New York City in February 2024 with her husband John Alvarez as asylum seekers from Venezuela. In April 2025, Alvarez found out she was pregnant with her first child, a baby girl. Her first reaction, she said, was fear.“How am I going to keep her alive?” she said. “That’s what I was thinking. ‘How am I going to be able to take care of her?’”At the beginning of Alvarez’s pregnancy, she said she was aware of the immigration enforcement occurring around the country, but vowed not to let it deter her from showing up to her doctor’s appointments.“When you went out, you were always on alert because you didn’t know if [ICE] might be around. I never saw anything suspicious,” Alvarez said. “But of course, you feel scared.”In October, when Alvarez was six months pregnant, her husband was detained by ICE agents at 26 Federal Plaza. When the immediate shock wore off, she obsessively checked the Online Detainee Locator System to find out where her husband went. A day later, she discovered that he was being kept at Delaney Hall detention center in New Jersey. Alvarez quickly set up an account to pay for phone calls, and every two days, she would pay about $10 for a one-hour call, updating her husband about the baby, her appointments and how she was doing.“Crying was the only way for me to release the tension,” said Alvarez, who worried that her lack of sleep and bad diet were impacting her baby. “Crying was the only way for me to release the tension.”—Kimberly AlvarezThat tension built up day by day, week by week following her husband’s arrest. Alvarez had stopped her work as a cleaner in the neighborhood’s synagogues two weeks before her husband’s detention because of her pregnancy. The plan, she said, was to rely solely on his income as a maintenance worker for “the food, the rent, everything.” Left with few choices, Kimberley had to rely on her mother’s income as a cleaner. The older woman had moved to New York from North Carolina to assist with Alvarez’s pregnancy. “I feel like I’m supposed to help my mom, not the other way around,” Alvarez said. “I felt powerless because I couldn’t do anything.”On Dec. 9, Alvarez gave birth to a daughter, Evangeline. While her baby was healthy, Alvarez’s anxieties did not go away. While she returned to cleaning synagogues a few months after Evangeline’s birth to help make ends meet, Alvarez and her daughter rarely left home. Alvarez said she felt paralyzed, getting frequent alerts from a neighborhood WhatsApp group when ICE was spotted nearby. One day, she said, ICE arrested her friend’s husband in Sunset Park, in an area where she would sometimes take Evangeline for walks.“I’m so afraid that I’ll go out and run into one of them and that they’ll take her away from me,” Alvarez said. “That’s my biggest fear, that someone will take her away from me and I won’t know where my daughter is.”In March, her husband decided to voluntarily remove himself from the United States and move back to Colombia, where he is originally from. It was a family decision, but it was not a happy one — hiring immigration lawyers was too expensive, Alvarez said, adding that staying in the U.S. felt too uncertain. 
