Apparently, Senator Bayh is leaving because he sees the Senate becoming more stridently partisan – a trend others have also noted.

Consider this (reported on CNN): “Fifty-six percent of people questioned in an ABC News/Washington Post survey released this week said they are inclined to look around for someone else rather than re-elect their representative, with 36 percent saying they’re inclined to vote to re-elect their representative.”

Perhaps we centrists, which data shows constitute the majority of Americans (see http://www.independentnation.org/moderate_majority.htm), now have hope that the pendulum will swing like an axe in the coming mid-terms.

I believe the current anti-incumbent mood is really an anti-extremist mood. The irony is that the GOP and the Democrats are running and shoving each other far left and right while encouraging those in the middle to abandon ship. All the while, American voters are clearly sending warning shots over these far aft and stern elements of our ship of state and expressing deep disgust with partisanship.

The wonderful thing about democracy is that eventually our political “leaders” WILL get the message; when the myopic clusters of polarized of extremists are forced to walk the plank on election day. We can hold out hope they get a clue in advance, and start behaving like respectable pragmatists and cooperative congressmen, but if hope fails the ballot box won’t.

Bidding a terse bon-voyage to the ideological zealots can’t happen too soon.

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 @ 9:44 am Political Science, The American Experiment
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