Nah. It's just a wish that the extremes on, yes, that's right, both sides, could finally be marginalized and stop dominating the headlines and stop functioning as useful boogeymen for each side to point at whenever anything happens that they don't like.
The Luger Center at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy has a good website that ranks how well the kids in Congress play together in the sandbox. The top 100 in the House are pretty much evenly split R and D. That's a good sign. And it shows that, contrary to the popular portrayal of our elected bodies as intractably gridlocked, it actually is still largely populated by sane grown-ups who want to work together, find common ground, figure out how to bridge their philosophical differences and move the country forward in something resembling a positive direction.
Then there's The Squad + what should we call them? The Bobos? The Greeney Meanies? Every one of them is in the Bottom 100. Essentially they are either incapable of or unwilling to work with anyone who has a different capital letter behind their name.
This link goes straight to the House scores from 2021 (the most recent they have). Again, a lot of good, well-meaning, hard-working elected officials on, yes there's that scary phrase again, BOTH SIDES who are willing and able to see value in each others' positions and perspectives and try to serve all of the American people.
And then there's...
Name - 2021 Bipartisanship Ranking
Ilhan Omar - 340
Ayanna Pressley - 373
Matt Gaetz - 380
Rashida Tlaib - 383
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - 401
Lauren Boebert - 433
Marjorie Taylor Greene - 434
George Santos - Not ranked because not yet elected. But c'mon, if he somehow manages to avoid prison, he'll be in this mix. At least until he gets demolished in the 2024 election.
The reality is, there's actually way more compromise and bipartisan cooperation happening than most are aware of. And the awareness of that is low because of the hyper focus on these folks. This forum is a perfect example. Loads of AOC and Bobo threads. Not a ton of threads started about people like Amy Klobuchar or Brian Fitzpatrick. There is no question the Republicans in particular have a major "Freedom Caucus" problem. But the system is not completely broken...yet. There is still a window of opportunity (rapidly closing though it may be) to throw out
some of the bathwater, without necessarily having to completely toss the baby.
