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Middle America, the nation’s swing vote, keeps sending SOS signals to the politicians of both parties, but few, if any, are listening because the winners always believe that it was their personal charisma and partisan positions that carried them to victory. The truth is that Middle America is grasping at one lifeline and then another, hoping someone will be on the other end. 

What the majority of the public wants are solutions that work; for very good reasons they have lost faith in the government’s ability to provide them. So far they have not found an acceptable response, so they are likely to continue their frenetic search, swinging first one way than the other.

It was only a little over two years ago, after the Democratic victories of November 2012, that many partisan commentators were saying the Republican Party was dead and buried, never again to gain control of the entire Congress. According to them, America had finally seen the light – their light. The November 2014 election stood those results on their head leaving the Republicans in control of both the Senate and the House. Now some commentators were saying the Democratic Party is dead and buried, never again to gain control of Congress. According to them, America had finally seen the light – their light.

Are we really to believe that the public’s fundamental belief systems are so shallow that they have shifted 180 degrees in only two years in the absence of a defining event? 

While the hot-button issues of abortion, race, immigration, and taxes always drive partisans to the ballot box, the majority of the electorate merely want the potholes fixed – at a price they can afford and before they are too old to drive. For unfathomable reasons that is not an available option among the radical choices, which are: A) Kill a program in its entirety or B) Build a new one costing all the money in the world, taking forever, and failing to operate as advertised.

Unless and until the swing vote finds a political party that satisfies their basic needs and concerns and stops kowtowing to its inner partisan voice the voters will continue to gyrate from election to election like a cork bobbing in a rough sea.