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.
The ousting of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker, a topic that will be discussed for years to come by scholars, the media, politicians, and political consultants shows that a very small number of members of Congress in the majority party can foist their chamber and the country into a major crisis if they force a potential Speaker to change the rules about voting a Speaker out of office and then implement that change. Among Republicans, 202 voted not to oust McCarthy and eight voted to oust him. The Democrats stayed out of the internal fight within the Republican party. They all voted to oust McCarthy.
The removal of McCarthy from his post definitely does not show that the people of the United States are polarized. It points to the opposite conclusion. There is a stark contrast between the near 50/50 split in the Senate and the House, where there is extreme polarization, rancor, and manipulation and the country, where 40% to 44% of Americans over the last year have answered the monthly Gallup survey in almost every month by saying that they do not identify with either major party, even though the majority of them lean toward one party.
Leaning toward a party is not identifying with it. It is critical not to underestimate how significant is the fact that about 40 out of 100 Americans refuse to say that they are either Democrats or Republicans. This is like saying, "I am not a Christian" if you were raised as a Christian or saying, "I am not a man" if you have the biological features of a man but you feel like a woman or nonbinary. Political scientists can twist the facts as much as they like, but the bottom line is that a person who refuses to be associated with either political party is telling you something of paramount importance.
It is certainly true that there are extremists in our country, maybe ten percent in each party, who are fiercely opposed to the other party. Moreover, about 40 percent of the country, in addition to the 20 percent who are extremists, is polarized. But with 40 percent not even associating themselves with either party, we don't have any basis to say that the country is polarized.
The picture of the U.S. House of Representatives and the picture of the approximately 220 million adults who could vote if they were registered, is not a snapshot of the larger canvas of the whole country. The pictures are not even similar. The picture of the U.S. House of Representatives is one of total dysfunction. The picture of the country has about 40% of the people essentially sitting out a conflict between the other 60%, and only about one-third of those fighting are extremely angry and unhinged; and less than 1% of that one-third have been violent.
There can be no doubt that American democracy is under threat as more than a few notable scholars have pointed out in recent days, including Daniel Ziblatt, Professor of Government at Harvard University and co-author with Steven Levitsky of the landmark book, How Democracies Die. Yet it is of the first importance to appreciate that it is the nation's capital that is threatening the republic right now and not the vast majority of citizens of the United States. The nation's capital itself has become polarized and dysfunctional for many reasons, including gerrymandering; the outsized role of money in politics; the prevention of independents from having an opportunity to elect more moderate candidates as a result of living in any of the 30 states which prohibit Open Primaries; and the prevention of all voters from having their votes for moderate candidates really count as a result of living in virtually all of the 50 states and territories that do not have ranked-choice voting in their elections.
The fact that Washington and not the country is polarized and dysfunctional does not guarantee that American democracy will not suffer additional blows in the weeks and months ahead, even a mortal blow. Yet it should be reassuring that the people of the United States are not at war with each other and revolting. Most, rather, are revolted by what is happening in Washington in recent days.
Harnessing the decency and moral center of the vast majority of Americans, not only the 40% who do not identify as Democrats and Republicans but the majority of the 60% who do, can be done by the president, Congress, and pro-democracy organizations in the days ahead.
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. 
