Summary

Does anyone remember the phrase “The Silent Majority” from the late 60s and 70s? It was used by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, quite successfully, to portray a group of citizen voters who, while relatively quiet, were fed up with, and by possession of larger numbers, could outvote the activists on the other side. Nixon won by a landslide in ‘72, winning 49 of 50 states

There are those who believe that Trump had a version of Nixon’s Silent Majority, with those “hidden” voters confounding almost all of the pundits, allowing him to win 30 states, and 306 of the available 538 electoral votes.

Let’s talk about what I see today as the Exhausted Majority.

Transcript

Does anyone remember the phrase “The Silent Majority” from the late 60s and 70s? It was used by Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, quite successfully, to portray a group of citizen voters who, while relatively quiet, were fed up with, and by possession of larger numbers, could outvote the activists on the other side. Nixon won by a landslide in ‘72, winning 49 of 50 states.

There are those who believe that Trump had a version of Nixon’s Silent Majority, with those “hidden” voters confounding almost all of the pundits, allowing him to win 30 states, and 306 of the available 538 electoral votes.

Let’s talk about what I see today as the Exhausted Majority.

We can start with the drawing below.

For those of you enjoying this on the podcast, it is pretty easy to imagine. We’ll get there quickly. The genesis for this drawing was me going slightly nuts trying to place myself politically on a left/right continuum. I was “left” on some things, and “right” on others. I was Politically Homeless.

The first crack in that linear, compartmentalized left/right thinking came when I heard Jimmy Carter say in 1976 that he was a fiscal conservative and a social liberal. I did not know you could do that. That reprieve from compartmentalized thinking fell apart when fiscal conservatives and social liberals started to segment themselves into differing--and warring--segments. Some fiscal conservatives insist that we go back on the gold standard, and other conservatives believe that to be insane. Some social liberals believe it is absolutely necessary to use a multitude of new pronouns, and others are certain that would be pandering to political correctness.

One one side of this drawing, I have put the folks who I see as “Disgusted and dropped out.” They have had it, and don’t want to play anymore. Somewhat understandably, they have lost faith in the process. On the other side (note the lack of terms like “left” and right”) are those for whom the system is working; I call them “Benefitting and dug in.” They really don’t care if things are right or wrong, serving the country well or not, moral or immoral; they are getting what they need. And that’s enough for them.

They rest of us I describe as “Frustrated and skeptical, but still wanting/hoping for a change.” Picture this with me, the two groups on either side, and the rest of us in the middle. For want of a better name, I call them The Exhausted Majority.

I am tempted to ask you where you see yourself, but I’d be falling into the label trap that I work so hard to avoid. Labels like LGBT, conservative, liberal, left, right and progressive put us all into frames of mind where we feel the need to attack and defend on general lines, to try to argue and debate with nothing more than cliches, sound bites and the very labels themselves as the tools of discussion. And we all know how that goes. No wonder that so many of us are exhausted.

Instead of labels, let’s try discussing our various positions on issues as conversation starters and ways of communicating thoughts and intentions. For example, instead of asking if someone is a Democrat or Republican as a wa...