There would still be infighting. There will always be infighting. Human nature doesn't get reformed by better institutional design.

But more handshakes and less backstabbing is not a naive hope. It is what happens when you change the incentive structure. Right now the incentive is loyalty to one person. Change the incentive to competence in service of a shared agenda and the culture follows the incentive.

Not reform it. Not balance it. Remove the institutional infrastructure that makes it the only viable option. No party designations on ballots. No party primaries with public funding. No party based committee assignments in Congress.

Watch what happens to the PACs when there are no teams to back. Watch what happens to the dark money when the jersey colors disappear. Citizens United becomes considerably less useful when there is no party machinery to funnel the money into.

He will call it insurrection.

We will call it Tuesday.

That's it. That's the foundation.

Everything else — healthcare, infrastructure, justice, national security, the institutions we depend on daily without noticing — sits on top of that one simple principle. Remove it and nothing else holds. The walls crack. The roof comes down. The building that took two hundred and fifty years to construct becomes a very expensive pile of rubble with gold curtains.

That reality does not erase legitimate differences between left and right. It simply raises a different question: who benefits when citizens become so consumed by fighting one another that they stop paying attention to the people holding the matches?

Sorry Charlie, but you works for us, not the other way around.

Elect moderates. I don't care if they carry a D or an R. Get away from the extremes. Flush MAGA down the toilet. Dump the wokes in a landfill. Look for people who want a functional government — leaders who understand that America is a member of the world community, not its boss. We are powerful enough to guarantee mutual destruction. Why are we too weak to simply get along?

The only way independents and moderates get a checkbox is if we force it into existence. Not by waiting for permission. Not by hoping one of the two parties decides to represent us. By showing up, making noise, and refusing to be invisible any longer.

The President of the United States works for us. He has no reason to fear us — unless we are not on his agenda. Unless what he has been doing was never in the best interest of the Americans he swore to serve.

Maybe some reporter should just ask him directly. Why are you so afraid of us? What did you do that makes you need four inches of glass and snipers on the roof between yourself and the people you work for?