The 80% in the Middle
Most Americans are not where the noise is.
The noise is at the edges. It is on the cable news panels and the social media feeds and the campaign rallies designed to provoke a reaction. The noise is loud and it is constant and it is very good at making itself feel like the whole story. It is not the whole story. The whole story is the 80 percent of Americans who describe themselves as politically in the middle, who want common sense solutions, who are exhausted by the performance of outrage, and who have been told for so long that their moderation is a character flaw that some of them have started to believe it.
They are not confused. They are not uninformed. They are not too timid to pick a side. They have looked at both sides and decided, correctly, that neither one has been doing the job. That is not apathy. That is an accurate assessment.
In January of this year, Gallup confirmed — a record-high — 45 percent of Americans now identify as political independents, the highest number since Gallup began measuring in 1988. Both parties dropped to just 27 percent each. In the same period, 62 percent of Americans said the two major parties do such a poor job that a third party is needed. The 80 percent are not the problem with American politics. They are telling us, in the clearest possible terms, that the current system is.
I know this because I have been listening to them for months. Door to door, town hall to town hall, conversation to conversation across this district. The young husband who switched parties not out of ideology but out of desperation, looking for someone who would actually address the cost of living. The woman in her mid-fifties who left a party she had given decades of loyalty to because what she watched unfold did not match the values she thought she was voting for. Jason, the lifetime Independent who has never trusted either party and has spent his whole voting life waiting for something to vote for instead of just against. They are all part of the 80 percent. They came from different directions and arrived at the same place.
The political system does not want to talk honestly about this group because the system is not built to serve them. It is built around the 10 to 15 percent on each end who donate, who organize, who turn out reliably, and who demand ideological purity in return. The 80 percent in the middle are treated as a problem to be managed, a demographic to be won over with the right message, turned out on election day and then ignored until the next cycle. A candidate who speaks to common sense and common ground does not generate the outrage that fills campaign coffers. A representative who compromises to get something done does not satisfy the base that wants a warrior. The system runs on division. The 80 percent are what stands in the way of it.
The result is a political class that speaks almost exclusively to its base while pretending to speak for everyone. The speeches are written for the true believers. The policies are designed to satisfy the donors. The rhetoric is calibrated to the most activated voters on each side. The 80 percent in the middle watch all of it and feel, correctly, that none of it is really for them. Then they are blamed for low turnout.
I want to say something directly to the 80 percent, because I think you have been gaslit for long enough. My own family spans the political spectrum — a Vietnamese Democratic nurse mother and an Irish Republican veteran stepfather. I grew up at a table where people on opposite sides of the aisle shared the same core values. I have been living in the 80 percent my whole life.
Your instinct that both parties have failed is correct. Your sense that most problems are complicated and that reasonable people can disagree about solutions is correct. Your belief that the person across the political aisle is not your enemy is correct. Your exhaustion with a system that profits from division rather than solving problems is correct. You have been told that these instincts make you naive, soft, or politically homeless. They do not. They make you the most honest constituency in American politics. The most durable policy solutions in this country’s history did not come from the edges. They came from people willing to find common ground, to compromise without surrendering their principles, and to measure success by whether something actually worked rather than whether it satisfied the base.
Being in the middle is not the absence of conviction. Some of the most deeply principled positions I hold would not fit neatly into either party’s platform. I believe in secure borders and human dignity. I believe in fiscal responsibility and a government that keeps its promises to seniors and veterans. I believe in personal freedom and community accountability. I believe in a strong national defense and an honest accounting of where the money goes. I believe that a child’s zip code should not determine the quality of her education, and that a working family should be able to afford a home and a doctor in the same lifetime. None of these positions are radical. All of them are, in the current environment, somehow controversial. That tells you more about the state of the two parties than it does about the positions themselves.
The 80 percent are not waiting for someone to move them left or right. They are waiting for someone to move forward. They are waiting for a representative who will walk into that building in Washington and ask the simple, honest question: what actually works, and who does it actually serve? They are waiting for someone whose first call after a vote is not to a party strategist or a major donor but to the people who sent them there. They are waiting for the conversation that the current system has been deliberately preventing.
That is the conversation I am running to have. Not on behalf of a party. Not in service of an ideology. On behalf of the 80 percent who have been waiting long enough. There is a saying that where there is a will, there is a way. The solutions to our problems are not mysteries. We know what working healthcare policy looks like. We know how to build housing. We know how to invest in education. We know how to balance a budget and keep promises to seniors and veterans. What has been missing is not the way. It is the will. Neither party has demonstrated the will to put people above politics long enough to actually get it done. That is what a New Way Forward means. Not a new ideology. A new commitment — to the people, to the truth, and to the work of governing instead of performing.
The primary is June 2nd. Early voting is open now.
For the majority that the system forgot --
Nina Linh
Independent Candidate, CA-40