Life is very hard for us Independents at the moment. "Fiscally conservative and socially liberal!" isn't a very effective rallying cry these days.
Assuming that there are two poles in politics – left and right, liberal and conservative, Democrat and Republican, etc. – I would like to still believe in the existence of a bell-curve in relation to Americans' relative association with either side. Unfortunately, it increasingly seems like what is emerging is more like a valley – people are piling up near each of the extremes, leaving as few individuals in the middle as there are on the bleeding edges.
My hope is that what is actually happening is what has been the case many times before, which is that the people near the extremes tend to be the ones who get the most attention; they scream the loudest, say the most outrageous things, and generally make themselves more of a spectacle then the majority of people. You don't generally tell your spouse about the 10,000 competent drivers you encountered on the way home from work, you tell them about the two jackasses who cut you off. The difficulty is trying to remember not to extrapolate that to "people around here drive like maniacs".
If there's one positive thing that could be said for the political atmosphere of the 80s and early 90s, it's that "Conservative Democrat" and "Liberal Republican" weren't immediately seen as oxymoronic.
