Deep Dive with Shawn

The Politically Homeless Majority: How Independents Could Save Democracy (w/ Dr. Lura Forcum)

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America's political divisions seem insurmountable, yet beneath the surface lies a compelling counternarrative: the moderate middle hasn't disappeared—it's just been silenced. In this episode, Dr. Lura Forcum, president of the Independent Center, to discuss the surprising vitality of centrist politics (and centrist voters) in a polarized age.

The numbers tell an unexpected story. With 35% of Americans identifying as moderate (compared to 36% conservative and 26% liberal), and nearly half of voters calling themselves independents, the politically homeless constitute a sleeping giant in American politics. Research from the Independent Center reveals these voters often hold nuanced positions that transcend partisan binaries—typically leaning left on social issues while favoring conservative economic approaches.

We discuss the psychology driving our political dysfunction and Dr. Forcum explains how we've transformed political parties from governing partners into tribal identities—"in-groups" we cooperate with and "out-groups" we compete against. "Democracy wasn't designed for this kind of outgroup behavior," she says. When we view opposing parties as enemies rather than collaborators, we are attacking democracy's essential foundation.

Perhaps most hopeful is Dr. Forcum's observation that local politics still functions because it demands cooperation: "Trash needs collecting, roads need paving—these necessities force us to work together." This pragmatic approach to governance closely resembles what independent voters want nationally. By building a stronger independent identity and embracing political participation beyond partisan warfare, these moderate voters might hold the key to breaking America's political deadlock.

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Dr. Forcum:

So I think this explains so much of our political process right now, and I want people to be aware of this, because democracy really wasn't designed for this kind of outgroup behavior. Right, If you're going to look at the other party not as somebody that you need to work with and govern with, but as the other side and it's okay to take from them, it's okay to harm them. You don't need to cooperate with them. You's okay to harm them. You don't need to cooperate with them, you compete with them. That, to me, is a really serious problem.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. In an era dominated by extremes, trumpism pulling the Republican Party to the far right and a Democratic Party grappling with its identity amid progressive and centrist tensions, many Americans feel politically homeless. Nearly half of all voters now identify as independents, reflecting widespread disillusionment with the two-party system. Yet, as polarization deepens, moderates and centrists seem to be vanishing from the political stage, squeezed out by gerrymandering, primary battles, the dominance of ideological extremes and, frankly, just disgust with the whole process. In this Trump era, we are experiencing an asymmetric increase in extreme political attitudes among both elites and citizens, along with the rise of the alt-right movement. Political polarization in the United States has reached unprecedented levels, with the gap between Democrats and Republicans widening dramatically in recent years years. According to a 2023 Pew Research study, only 38% of Americans have a positive view of the Republican Party, which is down from 66% in 1994. And the Democrats fare pretty much just as poorly, with 39% of Americans having a positive view of the party. Meanwhile, surveys show that moderates remain a significant portion of the electorate 35% of Americans identify as moderate, compared to 36% conservative and 26% liberal. These moderate voters often hold nuanced views that defy partisan binaries, making them pivotal in tight elections.

Shawn:

My guest today is Dr Lura Forcum. She's a consumer psychologist and former marketing professor, and currently the president of the Independence Center, which focuses on researching the values and priorities of independent voters. Dr Forcum's research suggests that moderate and centrist voters tend to lean left on social issues and right on economic matters. By amplifying the voice of these moderate voters, dr Forcum and the Independence Center aim to turn down the temperature on heated political debates and promote more thoughtful, nuanced discussions about policy issues. Their work highlights that many Americans share common ground on various issues, despite the perception of deep divisions perpetuated by partisan rhetoric. But who are these centrist voters, what issues resonate with them, and can they still shape policy in a polarized nation?

Shawn:

We discuss this and also whether there's hope for bridging America's political divide and what it might take to appeal to this elusive middle ground. Could a new centrist movement emerge to challenge the status quo, or are we too far gone already? All right, if you like this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive, dr Forcum. Thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Forcum:

Great. Thank you so much for having me, Shawn Great Thank you so much for having me, Shawn .

Shawn:

So it's probably not too controversial to say that we're living through a political era in the United States in which it's really difficult to imagine that any moderation or any centrism exists.

Shawn:

You know, while centrism made up the backbone of American politics for decades, it really feels as if extremism on both the left and the right, but primarily on the right right now, is ascendant. And in that world it's really hard to imagine how we bring down the temperature, how we develop policies that are palatable to the majority of the population and, I guess, frankly, how we maintain some type of civic peace. And if you stretch that out, it feels like we're living through a very existential moment for the country. But the reality is that the populace, the voting public, is largely centrist. If we remove questions about party affiliation and ask about policy, we often do get clear majorities across the partisan aisle that agree on a lot of positions. So that suggests to me that there must be some I don't know, let's maybe call it a third way to do politics that might help us bridge the divide, and I know that this is some of the stuff that you study at the Independence Center, so I'm glad to have you here to talk about it.

Dr. Forcum:

Yes, absolutely. I totally agree with you. There's more space in the center than we really think about or hear about in the media or from politicians.

Shawn:

And I suppose you know. Building off of that, that is what we hear from the media and from politicians. It does seem like we are an extremely divided country, and not just that we are Republicans and Democrats, because, you know, in our modern political history that's what those are, the two parties that we have to choose from. It feels like we are diametrically opposed to each other, that we can't live together, but centrism must still exist. I think the research that you do suggests that it does so. Who is the political centrist in the United States, and what does he or she want?

Dr. Forcum:

So the Independence Center, where I work, we do quite a bit of polling and research and focus groups trying to understand people who are independents, who they may lean right or lean left, but they really say neither party is my home.

Dr. Forcum:

And what we saw in the last election was they're really concerned about issues like affordability and inflation and I think those drove a number of voters in the last election. I have other research I've worked on that is specifically designed to get at this issue of what are the real groups of voters within the American electorate. So that was a research project called Beyond Polarization, and the reason we named it that this is with my colleague, erin Norman. The reason we named it that was because we feel like political labels like right and left, republican and Democrat actually obscure a lot of areas where even within the same party, people view policy differently, right, and where, across party lines, there's surprising agreement. So I could go a little bit more deeply into that research. But the striking thing about that was, you know, if you believe, that the parties are made up of individuals who are just fundamentally different from each other in terms of their beliefs, their morals, their values. We expected we'd be able to find that empirically with data and we didn't.

Shawn:

Well, let's talk about a specific policy area, or, I guess, a basket of goods, of policies, so we can maybe kind of ground this in something that seems real to people. So that has you know. When I say Project 2025, that should mean something to a lot of people in the United States. Right, it's a basket of right wing extremist policies that have been embraced. They were embraced by Donald Trump when he was running for office and now seem to be embraced, or at least embodied in some of the proposals that he's pushing, and that trickles down to the Republican Party.

Shawn:

The fascinating thing about this is that, while Trump won the election, most voters have a negative view of the policies that are embodied in Project 2025. And so one of the things that I'm worried about is the influence that politicians that enjoy a wide populist appeal have over the electorate to sway the electorate, have over the electorate to sway the electorate right, such that people that may disagree with a particular policy, but, like the policymaker, can change their view. And so that would suggest then, or it would require, that there is a counterbalance to that, and so the question I have here is that if people actually do feel that some of the proposals are extreme and yet we live in a world in which politicians benefit from extremism and the media benefits from highlighting that extremism. How do you think that moderate politicians and a responsible media could better highlight the common ground? How would they go about doing that and how should they?

Dr. Forcum:

Oh well, you, just you. You're only asking me to solve the whole problem. That's no big deal. I want to just sort of talk about one aspect of what you're talking about, because I think we bring different frames with how we look at things, since we're trained differently.

Dr. Forcum:

And one of the things to me that's very interesting about Project 2025 and this sort of larger dynamic that you're noting with the ability of politicians to bring people along with them on certain policy positions, is that I see this in-group, out-group dynamic becoming increasingly influential and characteristic of the of US politics, and I don't know if this is something that people study within political science, but within social psychology, in-groups are. You know, these historically would have been our tribes, right, but now they're like our neighbors, our neighborhood, our community, our family and friends, right. That's our in group and our out groups are the people who are against us. They are the people who are not like us. So, you know, in recent history it's been people from rival nations, right, like at some point history it's been people from rival nations, right, like at some point Russia would have felt like a strong outgroup to a lot of Americans. And the problem, I see, is that now we have. The in-group is our political party and the out-group is the opposing party. And so when somebody is looking at Project 2025, if you're a Republican and that's your in-group, I think you look at that document and say, yeah, this is fine and it's because we trust within the in-group and we believe that the in-group is for people we cooperate with and we can trust them to look out for us. We can trust them that they're going to do the right thing. We trust them that we have the same values.

Dr. Forcum:

The out group is the total opposite of this. Right, we compete with out groups, we take from out groups. We don't owe them things and we don't trust them. And so when it's an out group that is proposing a bundle of policies like Project 2025, we can't understand why anybody would look at it and not be concerned.

Dr. Forcum:

And so I think this explains so much of our political process right now, and I want people to be aware of this, because democracy really wasn't designed for this kind of outgroup behavior. Right, if you're going to look at the other party not as somebody that you need to work with and govern with, but as the other side, and it's okay to take from them, it's okay to harm them. You don't need to cooperate with them, you compete with them. That, to me, is a really serious problem and I you know fixing the incentives of elected officials and media is really difficult. But I do think there's a really strong need for individual citizens to understand how this in-group, out-group dynamic creeps into our political process, because I think that's how we start to name it and say this is really unhealthy Right.

Shawn:

So let's stick with this idea of the lens that we see this through, or at least let me preface my next question by saying or acknowledging that I am seeing this through a very particular lens.

Shawn:

But I think this is a narrative that we hear, which is you know that both parties have their extremists that are probably dominant in the party and that, particularly on the right, that it's very difficult to find common ground, that it's very difficult to find moderates, people in the Republican Party that are willing to work with Democrats, and I'm sure there's a fair grievance on the other side that it's very difficult to find moderate Democrats that are willing to work with Republicans. But, assuming that those people exist, they seem to be kind of lost in the wilderness right now and it's hard to pinpoint who those folks are. So I guess this is a two-pronged question, specific to some of the work that you've done at the Independence Center with the research and the polling. What are some of the findings and policy preferences that you think might be ripe for common ground to build some type of a centrist coalition off of? And then, what advice would you give to the Democratic Party right now, which is the out party it's the opposition in trying to build and find that common ground.

Dr. Forcum:

So it's, you know, really interesting actually some recent polling that the Independence Center did just prior to Donald Trump's inauguration. We're trying to get a baseline as part of an effort to hold elected officials the president and Congress accountable. In order to do that, we thought, well, we need to understand what people are expecting, and we will go back and poll them later in the year or early next year and find out the extent to which those expectations were met. Expectations were met, but when we asked them about these kind of policy preferences, we saw, across the board, interest and support for fiscal responsibility and addressing the deficit, and so I think this is surprising, because that's not something that people typically associate really strongly with the democratic platform, but we find it, and so I think that you know we could do a lot more research to unpack what that means to people. When they say it, I don't think that what they are currently seeing the Trump administration pursue necessarily comports with financial or fiscal responsibility in the deficit, right? So I don't think that Democrats are looking at this and saying, hey, this is what we had in mind, but that is one of the issues, and I think it could be done much better, and my advice would be on both the left and right.

Dr. Forcum:

We need Congress to step in, retake the power of the purse. Need Congress to step in, retake the power of the purse and, instead of having the executive make executive order based changes that are supposedly in service of more fiscal responsibility, why have Congress do it right? We don't need a change that's going to bounce back and forth every four years when the administration changes hands. We need Congress to actually be looking at these programs and saying could some of these things be more efficient? Are they fair? Do they follow the law? And right now neither side is doing that.

Shawn:

So when we talk about building coalitions and making policy, there are two approaches at which there are at least two approaches at which this can be done. And one is externally, and that's really at the grassroots voter level, right? So the pressure that the voter can put on the government and on Congress and on the presidency to make change. And then the other is internal, that's the elite, so the, the electeds making the policy. And so I have two questions.

Shawn:

The first question is if we focus on the external. I could imagine that if we are interested in, or if we believe that a coalition of centrist and moderate voters managed to realize policy that speaks to a broad base within the electorate, realize policy that speaks to a broad base within the electorate, that that is good for democracy. I could imagine that in our current environment, this extreme hyper-polarized environment that we're living through, actually turns them off from participating, and I'm afraid that we might be living through a period like that. So how do you think we could actually encourage more moderate voters to engage in the political process in this period of time when it doesn't seem like there's much purchase in that?

Dr. Forcum:

Yeah, I totally agree with you that they are that likely a lot of centrist and independent voters are wanting to drop out of this. I think it's it's gotten sort of punishing to participate in politics, because it's like you can't even talk to people without being sure that they agree with you, right, like it's the third rail of a conversation, and so one of the things that the Independence Center is trying to do is sort of create this identity that says, hey, you might not feel like you are strongly a part of either one of these parties, but it's still. We want you to participate politically. And the other thing we're trying to say is you don't have to vote for a third party candidate to be an independent. You can be an independent and vote straight ticket Democrat. You can vote straight ticket Republican. But the thing that we think is really powerful about these independent voters is that they tend to swing vote, they tend to split ticket vote, and by doing that, they're keeping the parties accountable because you can't.

Dr. Forcum:

You actually, you know they delivered the election to Trump this time, but to Biden last time, and if you can't count on this, baked in support from your base, to me this seems like one of the few sort of pressure points that's even available to us, because this is accountability.

Dr. Forcum:

These are voters who care more about you addressing the issues that concern them than they care about a particular party holding power, and so, where we see independents being very concerned about affordability and inflation, our expectation is that they are going to turn out in the midterm and vote according to whether that was delivered or not.

Dr. Forcum:

So to me it seems like this is really the only thing that's available right, because if I want to to your earlier point if I want to change the motivations of people who have already been elected into office or change the incentives of the media, I mean these are massive projects that groups with incredible financial resources have been working on for years with little effect, so I can't. I'm not sure how available that is to us, but I do think trying to motivate people and saying like, yeah, I know politics kind of sucks right now, but but we think that you are an important part of making it better. And I'm not even telling you how to vote. I'm not saying get out there and vote third party. I'm saying like, get out there and vote for the things that you think are the difference, even if it's not along party lines.

Shawn:

So the flip side of this is the internal folks, so the elites, the elected officials. I think there's this general common knowledge or sense that moderates in the party have always played a very in both parties. The Republican and Democratic had always played a very important role in well moderating policies that come out of the party but also representing the country, even if they reside within one party or the other. By moderating, by embracing centrism, they're also embracing bipartisanship, which ostensibly means that ultimate policy is a balance and it's a negotiation that represents a wider swath of the population than just one party or the other could. Increasingly, we've seen moderates in Congress pushed out of office, either choosing to retire or pushed out by more extreme politicians, and the Republican Party has done a very good job, especially in the Trump era or we could even we could say that the Tea Party probably started this of primarying their own and then replacing some of the moderates with more extreme members. Democratic Party has seen some of this as well. But if we want to make this real in this last congressional election or it was also the presidential election, but in 2024, manchin and Sinema, two of the maybe last remaining centrists, whether or not you agree with them in the Democratic Party chose to retire as opposed to run again because they just didn't see themselves as having a chance retire as opposed to run again because they just didn't see themselves as having a chance.

Shawn:

But the reason I think this is important is because we have built our democracy on this principle that we need moderates in government, and we're losing them, and so I'm going to paint with a broad brush here and you can disagree if you want, but it does seem like at least right now, and if we agree that both parties are going through some type of a transition that the Republican Party seems to be firmly in the Trump camp right now.

Shawn:

The Democratic Party is also evolving right now, but they're relatively quiet, and so I personally feel as if we can't really expect to see much out of the Republican Party right now in the way of moderation, and the Democrats haven't figured out how to do that yet. So the question I have is how do you think that the Democrats if we were to expect them to be the responsible party here to do that how could they build an enduring coalition that attracts Trump voters in such a way that they could moderate future messaging that is appealing and, I suppose builds the Democratic base and provides some type of a balance to the policy that's coming out of DC now.

Dr. Forcum:

Yeah. So from the outside, it's very hard for me to see why they are sort of pursuing the line that I see them pursue, which is not to open their arms to disaffected Trump voters and say hey, thank you for your support. Like you know, you're welcome here, right. Like, what I hear Democrats say is we don't want those voters. If you ever voted for Trump, you're a bad person and we don't want you, and I don't see how they can build a coalition as long as that is the message, you know. I don't hear the same thing from Republicans, which I find really curious. For all their criticism of Democrats and the left, I don't ever hear them saying we don't want your votes. If you ever voted for a Democrat, we don't want you. And so I'm very curious about what it is internally within the Democratic Party that it makes it so hard to say you know, I don't even think I would say took you a while, but at least you're here.

Dr. Forcum:

But it seems like there should be a lot of potential responses to voters who no longer are aligned with the Trump message to come to come to a different party, sort of somebody who enjoys observing politics really truly from an independent vantage.

Dr. Forcum:

I don't have a team, I am a true independent. I am dissatisfied with both of them. What has surprised me from watching is that, rather than the Republican takeover by Trump being an opportunity for Democrats, it seems to really weaken the party. Being an opportunity for Democrats, it seems to really weaken the party, and that surprises me. Maybe it wouldn't surprise a political scientist, but it surprised me because and it seems like you know, what's happened is they've kind of gotten stuck in saying, well, we're not that guy, but they don't really have an argument about who they are and what they're offering. But they don't really have an argument about who they are and what they're offering, and I think until they have that, it's going to be really hard to win over not, you know disaffected Trump voters and to build the center coalition that we're talking about, even absent the issue that they seem to fundamentally not want to open their arms to people who who may have previously not supported them.

Shawn:

How much research have you done and, if you've done any, about how much independent and I suppose conservative or Republican voters really cared about some or do care about some of the culture war issues?

Dr. Forcum:

That is a great question and I don't have data on it. I really I wish I did, because I think it's a really important question. My read my personal read of the last election is that voters were giving Republicans in Congress and the White House a mandate that was about economics, right, because you know Republicans were the only one saying, hey, this wasn't great, it could be better or a very strong version of that. And Democrats message was no, the economy is fine, look at all these numbers which is just not persuasive to voters, right? That's like saying you know you feel financially stretched and we're saying you're wrong about your feelings. So I really think the mandate that they got was around affordability and inflation. I don't think it was one about social policy at all, but they certainly have interpreted it. It seems to me that Republicans have interpreted this as a social mandate around social policy, but unfortunately I don't have data that really can speak to that issue.

Shawn:

So the reason I ask is because I think this might be, this might touch on part of the reason that Democrats are really struggling with reaching out to Trump voters right now.

Shawn:

I think there's a schism within the Democratic Party wherein, you know, we all place, if policy preferences are a basket of goods, we have some that are more important to us than others, and I think there is a large segment of the Democratic Party that identifies, like human rights or civil rights issues as being crime, right, that it kind of that people have to clear that bar before they'll have a conversation about anything else related to policy, and that if people don't clear that bar, then it is not to pick on Hillary Clinton here, but it is somewhat deplorable, right.

Shawn:

And I think there is this contingent in the Democratic Party that is really struggling with this idea that Trump voters could embrace Trump for the economic policy per se, while also disagreeing with his culture war positions, like that Trump didn't clear that bar, the culture war bar, and so therefore he shouldn't you know, nobody should support him at all, and so therefore, I think Democrats are just struggling with seeing, I suppose, the humanity in Trump voters not necessarily Republican, but in Trump voters, and I think that's going to be a very difficult hurdle in the future.

Dr. Forcum:

Yeah, no, I definitely understand that, but I also want to kind of highlight that this is also really typical of outgroup thinking, right, which is to look at an outgroup and paint them with a very broad and negative brush. So one interpretation that you could make about Republican voters is, yeah, they care about their pocketbook more than the well-being of these groups that Democrats were vocally advocating to protect. But you could make a different attribution, right, and if you know and talk to Republicans, that's one thing that I suspect would make you make a different attribution, because you might talk to Republicans who say things like, um, you know, I, uh, I support these things, but I got to feed my family, right. Or I support these things, but I don't think that the, the way the Democrats are talking about them is a reasonable conversation, right. So, like you could imagine different ways to kind of attribute viewpoints to voters who disagree with you, and to me, it's sort of like I see democracy as being more effective when we're willing to entertain the possibility that people disagree with us for reasons that aren't really about character, right, that they could have good and decent reasons for making the decisions that they did, and I certainly have seen a lot of stuff on social media that is just like incredibly negative characterizations of Trump voters.

Dr. Forcum:

Like incredibly negative characterizations of Trump voters, and while, on one hand, I understand that tendency, on the other hand, you know, republicans are doing the same thing to Democrats, right, and it's just. It's not creating an environment where we can govern effectively and I think we need to stop even though it's highly bonding to get together with members of your own in-group and denigrate the out-group. We are social animals, but it's not leading us to a politics that's very productive and it's not the corrective that we need to the environment where we are right now and having two parties that are in just entrenched warfare with one another rather than governing right. Are we going to fail the CR this week? Are we going to shut down? The government Like this is absurd.

Shawn:

So one of the things, one of the areas in which your work and research touches on, is branding and rebranding. So this conversation is making me wonder if the Democratic Party needs a rebrand, if it needs a facelift, and if so, how do you think they should go about doing that? What would that look like?

Dr. Forcum:

I mean. So I'm sure you've been watching this too, but you know, for the past 10 years or so I've been looking at what I assume is a realignment of the two parties in ways that it's not clear to me how it's going to shake out. Republicans were the party of limited government, equality under the law and fiscal responsibility, and I don't see any of those as strong talking points right now, either as talking points or points of action, and so it's really hard for me to say where that process will ultimately end. And I think there's a lot of open space for Democrats right now if they would take it to say, hey, fiscal responsibility is really important. We can make wise decisions about what is fair and equitable use of our resources. We can do that. We don't have to just be the counterpoint to the Republican Party. We can have our own position about what fair use of our resources actually looks like.

Dr. Forcum:

And getting back to this point of in-groups and out-groups, one of the things that I wish I could say to every voter in America is it's very tempting to look at your own party and say that's the in group. They're looking out for me, they will take care of me, and I think that's what many of the base of both Republicans and Democrats have said. What I would say to you is you are not the in group. And Democrats have said what I would say to you is you are not the in-group. The in-group is people and corporations who are incredibly wealthy and making contributions and getting laws passed and not passed in their favor, and you are not included in that group. So I think that the Democratic Party to get back to your original question, no-transcript.

Shawn:

So every election has some type of a narrative, and one of the narratives in, I'm just calling it, the Trump era but these elections in which you know Trump has participated in so about 2015 on, probably more so from 2020 on one of the narratives is that we are engaged in some type of an existential battle in the United States between democracy and authoritarianism. I guess I'm wondering from you how much of this do you think is histrionic, how much do you think is this is politics and how much do you think this actually resonates with voters?

Dr. Forcum:

You know that's a great question, and I think about that a lot because I sort of have looked at the aftermath of this most recent election as being what I assume is really profoundly disorienting to Democrats.

Dr. Forcum:

If what you've been saying to people is this is an existential threat, this is the end of democracy, and people ignore you and elect this person into office anyway, right Like, I can imagine that you would just feel sort of lost.

Dr. Forcum:

And why doesn't anyone share your view of reality? And so this is where I suspect although I don't have evidence to support this, but I suspect that telling voters they are responsible for stopping the flow of authoritarianism and putting it into demagoguery and protecting democracy is just a little too much to ask of people to do at the ballot box, and I think they're going to have to offer a different message, because at this point I suspect they seem to many voters like the little boy who cried wolf, where you kept talking about awful stuff and it just hasn't materialized. And I'm not trying to downplay any of the negatives of the Trump administration. I think there are a number of things that are concerning and that I would like to see done differently, that I assume courts will step in to intervene and that I would like to see Congress step in to address. But I suspect most voters would tell you this is not actually having an effect on my daily life.

Shawn:

So in the green room we were talking a little bit about where the centrist experiment if we can call it that might be working and where it isn't. And you had said that you feel like it's succeeding a bit more at the local and state level and that actually where we're seeing some of the air on fire is at the federal level. And so I guess I'm wondering if you could flesh that out a little bit more like what you mean by that, and then, drawing on the work that you do at the Independent Center, what strategies do you think or do you recommend that centrist voices, both on the I suppose you know that lean left and lean right, or just our pure centrist, pure independence, could be employing to build this type of a coalition? And I'm just going to say, maybe bring us back to some type of sanity.

Dr. Forcum:

So, yeah, what we were talking about earlier is something that I've noticed quite a bit in my community and state, and maybe you have too, which is that you know, within my town, especially right within my county, we have certain needs that you just can't argue about, right, like the trash has to get picked up, kids have to be able to attend school, we have to pave roads, we have to hold elections, and that sort of forces us to work together and solve our local issues and business in a way that you don't see at the federal government level, right? So Congress has not as much to do with our daily lives. You know, there's commerce, there's national defense, and those are certainly big and important issues, but it's not the same thing as if my kid can't go to school. I am in major trouble because that's my childcare and also I'd like for my kids to be able to read, and so it's like, by forcing us to remain connected and cooperating with one another, it almost subsumes this political red blue divide, left, right divide, back into one in group right, where we're all residents of this town and we have overriding concerns and we have to figure out how to work together.

Dr. Forcum:

And, of course, in the federal level. It's very easy for it just to be a spectator sport and I think that that is the difference that we're seeing. I also think people are very tempted to feel like they're participating in politics by watching this spectacle and talking about it with each other, but that's not actually political engagement. It's kind of getting us all angry and combative with each other in a way that's not even productive. It's not even productive and you can certainly fundraise and get a lot of clicks and reshares and donations from people who are outraged with the other side, but what you can't do is solve the business of the country and this is like the really big problem that I see, that where I think, you know, maybe people would feel better if they did focus more on their state and local government and let's kind of take some of the take some of the energy and and heat away from the national issues.

Shawn:

So the state of play right now. If we were to look at the game board here, our economy is shaky right now. Not sure where that's going to go. The two parties are at complete loggerheads, right, and we're staring down, as you mentioned, and actually by the time that this episode releases, we may be deep into a government shutdown or it may have been avoided. Once again, we'll see. But that's kind of the state of play. And so, to a lot of partisans, we are in an existential situation right now, right, and it does feel very dire. But I have a feeling that you are a bit more hopeful. So that's my question Do you have faith that we weather this?

Dr. Forcum:

I do. Actually, I think that what happens when you have change that is too extreme or too drastic, right, you start to motivate people's behavior in ways you didn't anticipate. So when you're really far outside the lines, I think that's when you get a corrective, and it can come in lots of different forms. Right, it might be a huge groundswell of democratic support. It might be a huge groundswell of independence, running for office and winning. But I don't think within our system, which has a lot of processes and structures and institutions baked into it, precisely to moderate extremism, I don't think that we're going to be stuck with Republicans running amok and nothing that Democrats can do. I think that it might take us some time to sort out, but we're at the Independence Center.

Dr. Forcum:

We're trying to look past these four years and say you know, there are constructive things that you can do.

Dr. Forcum:

Don't just wring your hands, don't just drop out of politics. It actually matters more than ever that, even if you don't feel like a partisan, that you participate politically. And you know, I think it's really hard to predict when you're talking about the dynamics that we're looking at right now, where it seems like quite a bit of extremism, I think it's hard to predict how voters will respond when you are outside the normal lines, and so I guess I'm hopeful, not in the sense that I can predict what will happen, but in the sense that there are many mechanisms for people to respond to things that they don't like, and I'm confident that we will see responses. It might just be difficult for us to predict what those are. I really hope that what we're going to see is people who look at this extreme polarization that we're in right now and just say, like this is, you know, this is not. This doesn't feel good or healthy or productive to me, and I want to find a different way or better way to participate in politics. It doesn't have to be like this.

Shawn:

What are some projects that you are working on at the Independent Center right now?

Dr. Forcum:

Yeah, so we are in a phase of trying to grow our audience, because we want to be able to talk to and, more importantly, listen to independent voters to the largest extent that we can. So we have a weekly newsletter where we reach out to this community. We are regularly running things like focus groups or polls, where we're just trying to understand what is important to you as a voter, regardless of your political stripe, and what are the issues that matter to you. That's really one of our core activities right now.

Dr. Forcum:

In the future, we hope to have some local meetups, because the larger thing that we feel like it's important for us to do is create an identity where people feel like, hey, I'm not a neither I'm actually an independent, and I think feeling like you're just not part of either party isn't actually meaningful to most people and I don't think it will correlate to necessarily political engagement, right. So if we want people to feel like they belong to something meaningful that results in political participation, then we need to create the sense of identity, which I hope to do by getting people together in person just to meet each other and hear other people who want to question what a particular party or elected official is proposing and ask if things could be done better or differently, and so those are our big things that we're doing this year. We're a fairly new organization. We're just about a year old and we're very small, so we're very much in this building phase.

Shawn:

All right, final question you ready for it? Mm? Hmm, what's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, and it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Forcum:

Okay, I have tried to take up watercolor painting. Oh, this is. This is totally unrelated to politics, except that maybe there's some parallels in that watercolor is not very cooperative and it doesn't behave the way I expect it to much like voters. So I've got a book that I'm working through and I'm practicing and sometimes it's like, wow, this is amazing, I could be an artist. And sometimes it's like this is impossible and terrible. Why am I doing this in my spare time? But that's my new hobby. I'm like a month and a half into it and it's it's. It can be very relaxing, but I have a whole lot to learn.

Shawn:

Don't you think a lot of artists probably are in that space? Well, I suppose some of the most self reflective artists right they. You know, some days they feel like this is great and other days they feel like they're horrible.

Dr. Forcum:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think too that, like you know, as a culture we sort of massively underestimate how much practice goes into being an artist. I think that we're we assume that everybody must be a prodigy and they just picked up a brush and it was. It was magic, it was a Sistine Chapel, but this is making me appreciate just all of the practice and work that goes into all different kinds of arts. So it's been a good and a different way to use my brain, which I'm always looking for something, you know, something to stretch how I normally think and do things.

Shawn:

I think in a lot of ways we live in a zero sum society or a binary. In some ways it's an either or, and so one of those is you're either a scientist or you're an artist, and I've always wondered for the folks, that kind of blur, that line, if having their hands in both those areas makes it a little difficult sometimes to really find. You know, your tribe.

Dr. Forcum:

That's a great point, and actually, you're making me think of something that that you referred to earlier, that I didn't get to touch on, and that is that you know when you are proposing, when you're able to tell a policy story or political story. That's really extreme, right, like that is a zero sum story that you're telling. It's either close the borders or open them entirely, and in almost every case, policy conversations are so much more complex than that. It's so much more appealing to us, though, to hear a really simple story, and so I think that's why we like these binary accounts right, whether you're either a writer or you're a math person. Right, you're an artist or you're not, and so I understand the appeal of these binaries that we're just see everywhere, but I also think our politics would be so much more effective and so much more humane if we could step away from the binaries, and that's what independents are doing, but, you know, as individuals, we can do it too. You don't have to be one thing or the other.

Shawn:

Dr Forcum, thanks for taking the time. Thanks for the work that you're doing. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Forcum:

Thank you so much for having me.

Shawn:

When we take stock of the American political environment, it's clear that the path forward is complex, but complexity shouldn't lead to inaction. If you're feeling politically homeless, if neither party feels particularly comfortable to you or representative of your preferences particularly comfortable to you or representative of your preferences, remember that you're not alone. Engage with local politics, where nuanced views often find more traction. Consider supporting organizations that promote bipartisanship and electoral reform, like the Independence Center. Most importantly, keep the conversation going. We have to engage these ideas with friends and family across the political spectrum and challenge the notion that extremism is the only option. This across-the-aisle posturing is maybe the only way we can work towards a political landscape that truly represents the diverse views of all Americans and saves us from a really bleak future. Views of all Americans and saves us from a really bleak future. All right, check back next week for another episode of Deep Dive Chat soon, folks. Thank you, thank you.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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