• Home
  • Independent Voter News
  • Quizzes
  • Election Dissection
  • Sections
  • Events
  • Directory
  • About Us
  • Glossary
  • Opinion
  • Campaign Finance
  • Redistricting
  • Civic Ed
  • Voting
  • Fact Check
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Subscriptions
  • Log in
Leveraging Our Differences
  • news & opinion
    • Big Picture
      • Civic Ed
      • Ethics
      • Leadership
      • Leveraging big ideas
      • Media
    • Business & Democracy
      • Corporate Responsibility
      • Impact Investment
      • Innovation & Incubation
      • Small Businesses
      • Stakeholder Capitalism
    • Elections
      • Campaign Finance
      • Independent Voter News
      • Redistricting
      • Voting
    • Government
      • Balance of Power
      • Budgeting
      • Congress
      • Judicial
      • Local
      • State
      • White House
    • Justice
      • Accountability
      • Anti-corruption
      • Budget equity
    • Columns
      • Beyond Right and Left
      • Civic Soul
      • Congress at a Crossroads
      • Cross-Partisan Visions
      • Democracy Pie
      • Our Freedom
  • Pop Culture
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
      • American Heroes
      • Ask Joe
      • Celebrity News
      • Comedy
      • Dance, Theatre & Film
      • Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging
      • Faithful & Mindful Living
      • Music, Poetry & Arts
      • Sports
      • Technology
      • Your Take
  • events
  • About
      • Mission
      • Advisory Board
      • Staff
      • Contact Us
Sign Up
  1. Home>
  2. Big Picture>
  3. big picture>

Left, middle or right, The Fulcrum gives Americans a fresh chance to unite

Michael Golden
June 06, 2019
Left, middle or right, The Fulcrum gives Americans a fresh chance to unite
noipornpan/iStock via Getty Images

Golden is the author of "Unlock Congress" and a senior fellow at the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy, which seeks to improve democracy on a global scale. He is also a member of The Fulcrum's advisory board.

Several weeks ago, a political reformer named John Palmer composed a tweet urging people to check out an article about "unrigging" our flawed system of government and elections. He called it a "MUST MUST READ." Palmer tagged two organizations (@usapromise and @representus) that are already working to rid our politics of big money corruption and to make all votes count equally in our elections.


MUST MUST READ: One of THE best pieces I’ve read on democracy reform. #28thAmendment #RankedChoiceVoting… https://t.co/Z8oBNpdCVf
— John E. Palmer / End the Corrupt Two-Party Duopoly (@John E. Palmer / End the Corrupt Two-Party Duopoly) 1553699693.0


A few days ago, I noticed that Palmer's tweet had been liked and retweeted more than 1,000 times. The number seemed kind of high for a "good government" message, albeit not very meaningful on its own. But then my curiosity took me to some of the retweeters' profiles, and their self-descriptions were eye-poppingly diverse.


For example, the profile of Floridian @Rickfh4760 reads: TRUMP2020KAG Jesus is Lord! Pro-Trump, KAG, MAGA, Constitution!

Across the aisle, Kentuckian @ChristyCoston28 announces herself as: Political junkie, mom, progressive, proud member of #TheResistance #Equality #Resist #TrumpRussia #ImpeachTrump #NeverGop.

It's clear that Rick's and Christie's political poles are pretty far apart. Yet in an America where we feel like the level of political division has just about topped out, each of them favored Palmer's message about the need to repair our damaged system.

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

You can see where I'm going with this. And while I don't have the space here to include the profiles of hundreds of retweeters (viewable here), I can report that a fuller review only reinforced the point.

Americans' self-identification with the two major parties has been dwindling for a decade. The proportion of the electorate who identify as independents hit a record high of 43 percent in 2014, compared to 30 for Democrats and 26 for Republicans. Five years later it is virtually the same.

But beyond our distaste for the parties, we can't stand the flavor of the overall operation on Capitol Hill – no matter who's in charge of the chambers. Over a five-year period that began in 2014, Gallup pegged Americans' confidence in Congress in a range of 7 to 12 percent.

In the 2016 presidential election, two candidates who seemingly could not have been more politically opposite of one another, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, both railed on campaign cash as a major cause of a "rigged" system. That message resonated with millions of Americans regardless of political stripe — because it's true.

In a poll conducted right after the 2018 midterms, 75 percent of Americans said that "ending the culture of corruption in Washington" was a very important factor in their voting decision. That proportion was higher than for any other issue, including jobs, affordable health care and protecting Medicare and Medicaid.

This brings me to a delayed disclosure: It was I who wrote the article referenced in Palmer's tweet. And it was terrific to see folks from such diametrically opposed political camps — and all points in between — responding to it in such a positive fashion.

But it's not a total surprise. The fact is that more and more of us these days are talking, writing and working on the defective state of our political system and the ways in which we must take action to correct it, a critical subject.

Last year, the Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy convened a group of democratic reform organizations to talk about how we could all help each other in our work to strengthen the system. What would be the best way for us — and all Americans — to become better connected and more informed? Not just about the causes of the breakdown, but more importantly, the real work being done on the ground that is already generating real wins.

Just over a year later those discussions have helped spawn the birth of The Fulcrum. Thanks to assiduous work by Nick Penniman of Issue One and this site's growing crew, we now have "the only news organization focused exclusively on efforts to reverse the dysfunctions plaguing American governance."

It is undeniable that at this historical moment we're experiencing a ton of division in our political discourse. But at the very same time, a record high proportion of Americans agree that we have a corrupt system producing a defective product.

Let's report on it more. Debate about it more. Ideate on it more. Let's keep growing this army of volunteers across the country who are working to reform the rules — in order to restore the system.

This is the place. The Fulcrum. Let the leveraging begin.

From Your Site Articles
  • We are all political junkies - The Fulcrum ›
Related Articles Around the Web
  • Adlai Stevenson Center on Democracy ›
  • Is Government Corruption More Common, or Are We Just Better at ... ›
  • 5 Radical Solutions to Fix Our Busted Government | Time ›
  • Unrig the System Summit: Jennifer Lawrence Tackles Political ... ›
big picture
Get some Leverage Sign up for The Fulcrum Newsletter
Follow
Contributors

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Dave Anderson

Imperfection and perseverance

Jeff Clements

We’ve expanded the Supreme Court before. It’s time to do so again.

Anushka Sarkar

The ‘great replacement theory’ is nonsense

Debilyn Molineaux

Inflation will hit health of low-income Americans hardest

Robert Pearl

Caught in a draft

Lawrence Goldstone
latest News

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Our Staff
3h

The state of voting: May 23, 2022

Our Staff
21h

Trump looms large over Tuesday’s primaries

Richard Perrins
22h

Podcast: Abortion politics take center stage

Our Staff
23 May

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Our Staff
20 May

GOP split: Far right gains ground in East, while losing out West

Steven Rosenfeld
20 May
Videos

Video: Helping loved ones divided by politics

Our Staff

Video: What happened in Virginia?

Our Staff

Video: Infrastructure past, present, and future

Our Staff

Video: Beyond the headlines SCOTUS 2021 - 2022

Our Staff

Video: Should we even have a debt limit

Our Staff

Video: #ListenFirstFriday Yap Politics

Our Staff
Podcasts

Podcast: Did economists move the Democrats to the right?

Our Staff
02 May

Podcast: The future of depolarization

Our Staff
11 February

Podcast: Sore losers are bad for democracy

Our Staff
20 January

Deconstructed Podcast from IVN

Our Staff
08 November 2021
Recommended
Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Video: Will Trump run in 2024?

Elections
State of voting - election law changes

The state of voting: May 23, 2022

Voting
Mo Brooks and Donald Trump

Trump looms large over Tuesday’s primaries

Voting
Podcast: Abortion politics take center stage

Podcast: Abortion politics take center stage

Leadership
Theodore Roosevelt

The U.S. has been seeking the center since the days of Teddy Roosevelt

Leveraging big ideas
Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take: Inspiring sports memories

Your Take