The 2020 presidential election was rife with corruption allegations, polarization and distrust. These sentiments culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection, which resulted in five deaths, 174 injured police officers and four police officer suicides soon after the attack. Not to mention the desecration of the Capitol Building, the nation’s most sacred pillar of democracy. A healthy country would learn from 2020, doing its best not to replicate the conditions that resulted in the Jan. 6 insurrection. However, nothing is farther from the truth; our nation is running headlong into another insurrection, if not something worse.
Despite significant pressure from his own party, President Joe Biden has refused to give up the Democratic nomination. Furthermore, in his typical domineering fashion, former President Donald Trump has taken control of the Republican nomination despite never attending a GOP debate. The 2024 election appears to be an exact replica of 2020’s.
In the past four years, both candidates have gotten older than they already were. Biden will be 82 years old if re-elected, and Trump will be 78 years old. Pew Research found that 35 percent of Americans believe Biden is mentally fit for office; similarly, 38 percent believe the same of Trump. When it comes to the most powerful position in the world, “mental fitness” should not be a question voters need to consider, yet both political parties have sacrificed what is best for the nation for political power.
Furthermore, both Trump and Biden are involved in serious legal and political scandals. Trump has 34 counts of fraud under campaign finance laws and four criminal counts that include conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and conspiracy against the rights of citizens. In Biden’s 52 years in politics, he has used his positions to gather millions of dollars from China, Russia, Ukraine and Romania. According to The US Committee on Oversight and Accountability, “Members of the Biden family have a pattern of peddling access to the highest levels of government to enrich themselves, often to the detriment of U.S. interests.” Specifically, Biden’s involvement in his son’s business affairs in Ukraine and China has been a recent concern.
Americans are not blind to the fact that both candidates are unfit and untrustworthy. According to Pew Research, 49 percent of registered voters indicated that if they had the ability, they would replace both Trump and Biden. To further support how unpopular both candidates are to the general public, 62 percent of Americans disapprove of Biden, and 56 percent disapprove of Trump.
If both candidates are so unpopular, then why do their respective parties let them run? It’s simple: both parties rely on an energetic base that votes for their candidate no matter what. Moderates within each party vote for their party’s candidate no matter how awful they are because the alternative is voting for the other party. Trump is in control of the Republican party’s political base, so the party had no choice but to let him run. For Biden, it is a bit more complicated because Biden does not have an energetic following. Democrats allowed Biden to run again because he is the incumbent president. Forcing Biden out of the party would be uncertain and risky in comparison to letting him serve his second term. Therefore, even though there are more popular candidates within the Democratic party, Biden was still chosen. The two parties have no incentive to represent moderates within the party because there is no threat party moderates will stop voting for whatever candidates their party chooses. The only incentive both parties have is to appeal to their own respective radical bases. It is no wonder that political polarization has become such a large issue in America when the parties actively promote it
Americans have a habit of resigning their vote to the two-party system. Moderate voters within a party often hesitate to support a third-party candidate, even if they align more closely with their views, due to concerns that it could inadvertently strengthen the opposition’s electoral prospects. Unfortunately, voting for a third-party candidate is the only way out of the rapid party radicalization that is currently occurring. If the two parties lost a significant amount of voters to third parties, they would be forced to make concessions to moderates to win votes back, solving radicalization.
Luckily, in the 2024 election there is a competitive independent candidate who stands a chance: Robert F. Kennedy. According to The Hill, currently in polls, Biden and Trump are tied at 41.3 percent support, with RFK following at 7.7 percent. Like any presidential candidate, RFK has his own problems. He is still 70 years old, which is younger than his running mates but by no means young. He has a voice defect that affects his speaking abilities. He has some controversial and radical stances on the COVID-19 vaccines that have been proven wrong. However, he is a more moderate candidate compared to Biden and Trump. Thus, RFK presents a moderate alternative to his radical, corrupt, and decrepit opponents.
The only way to significantly reduce the polarization of the major political parties is to threaten them with losing their moderate voting base. According to the National Institute of Health, 90 percent of Americans are anxious about polarization. If Americans are truly worried about political polarization, then they should vote like it. I know I will. If you are a moderate, both parties do not represent you, so what is lost if “your party” does not win the election because you voted for RFK?
