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.
There is a conundrum at the center of American politics that is unresolvable on its face: according to Gallup, 40 percent of registered voters do not regard themselves as Democrats or Republicans, but they cannot express their deepest political commitments in electoral politics without voting for candidates who run as Democrats and Republicans.
Not voting at all is not much of a solution. Not voting is an indirect way of expressing your interests, but it will not get you very far. Indeed, if you lean toward one party, then not voting will make it impossible for you to cast a vote for a candidate who supports some of your interests. There is nothing wrong with voting for a third party or independent candidate, but the chances of your candidate winning are well under 5 percent.
The conundrum must be approached at its roots. But how? How do we get beyond dandelion solutions? Wisdom suggests that there is not one solution in the same way that there are a variety of ways to get rid of the roots of a patch of dandelions. You can get them all with a single shovel, some chemicals, dynamite or a bomb.
This is the starting point to resolving the conundrum of American electoral politics. We should not be trying to be the Newtonian genius who discovers the laws of motion -- or the Einsteinian genius who uproots them and rethinks the relationship between mass, energy and motion.
One approach restricts the scope of the problem by working on a part of the problem, whether it is elections in one state or only congressional elections or only presidential politics. So don't approach the problem by trying to change the system.
Given that the scope of the challenge can be restricted at the outset, what can be done?
It may be best for change agents to focus on being or backing independent candidates rather than third parties. The concept of third parties is a nonstarter for most Americans and most political scientists and sociologists. The concept of independents is different. Three U.S. Senators are independents, Bernie Sanders (Vermont), Angus King (Maine) and Kyrsten Sinema (Arizona). That is not an insignificant number. Nor are they the same kind of independents. Sanders is a democratic socialist, King is a New England moderate and Sinema is a creative, hard to pin down new centrist. Breaking out of the two party stranglehold thus may require more independent candidates who will speak to the interests of citizens who do not fall neatly into the Democratic or Republican categories.
The more independents who win, the more independents who will run.
That holds whether an independent wins a race for mayor or governor or president. The process of change, moreover, would presumably take five to ten years. So this strategy does not try to rip up the roots of the dandelions in 50 states all at once in one election. It rips up some roots at a time.
The most ambitious approach goes after the presidency with an independent candidate who appoints themself to lead an effort to force the two parties in Washington to work together. This can be done without the majority of votes, so long as 270 electoral votes were obtained. Lincoln, Wilson and Clinton all got the electoral votes with about 40 percent of the popular vote.
The independent strategy could also be worked from the state level, say in Minnesota or Wisconsin or Georgia. And states that sought to continue the effort to uproot the two party system could do so from a different ideological perspective. Minnesota might elect an independent for governor, as it did in 1999 when it chose Jesse Ventura to be its governor.
Avoiding third parties, encouraging independent candidates with diverse agendas, dismantling some gerrymandering, instituting ranked choice voting, and not tackling the systemic problem all at once provide some elements of a strategy for ultimately changing the system. By 2026, the 250th Anniversary of the United States, we should have a Declaration of Independents. This Declaration could include a flood of independents in the midterm elections.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.