American politics is growing more and more disconnected from American life. Problems get more complicated, promised solutions more simplistic. Times get tougher, the powers-that-be increasingly merciless, saying in effect “let them eat cake” before punting another political football.

One in four American households are living paycheck to paycheck, three-quarters of U.S. adults are feeling more anxious about the economy than at this time last year, over two-thirds are stressing more about health care, nearly as many are on edge about growing political tensions in the country. Another major source of worry is technology, with America leading the world in AI anxiety. Those in charge dismiss this working-class angst, insisting there’s no need for any course correction on economic policy and no cause to tap the brakes on AI.

With life and politics more and more disconnected, no wonder so many people are disillusioned and detaching from the democratic process. Curiously, as our society grows more diverse—racially, ethnically, culturally—the major parties in our country have become more homogenous. More flavors socially, far fewer politically.

Said it before, will say it again. There was a time long ago when the U.S. had a much wider variety of vibrant and impactful political parties, and that vibrancy brought about profound change when it was most needed.

Said it before, will say it again. There was a time not long ago when the major parties pitched considerably bigger tents than they do now. Seems like yesterday my home state of Wisconsin made the nation’s first gay rights law, signed by a Republican governor. Couldn’t happen today. There were Democrats opposed to abortion and Republicans favoring reproductive freedom. Not anymore. Dirt-road Democrats representing rural areas and big-city Republicans elected by urban voters. No longer.

Up until the last several decades, there were true-blue liberals like Nelson Rockefeller and Lowell Weicker in the GOP. In Wisconsin, Republican state lawmakers like John Manske were cut from this cloth. Progressives like Teddy Roosevelt and “Fighting” Bob La Follette once called the Republican Party home. As recently as the early 1980s, Wisconsin still had state legislators from this lineage like Clifford “Tiny” Krueger—a 425-pound one-time circus “fat boy” with a heart to match his girth.

There used to be Republican centrists. In the early 1980s, there was an abundance of them. Many were women who favored legal abortion and women’s rights, like Mary Panzer, Barb Lorman and Peggy Rosenzweig. Other middle-of-the-roaders were men like Dale Schultz and then-Governor Lee Dreyfus.

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These kinds of Republicans were in office at the time of my political baptism at the State Capitol. There were conservative Democrats, too. Nationally, they were known as Blue Dogs and Dixiecrats. In Wisconsin, right-leaning Democrats lacked a clever nickname, but their numbers were significant. Gervase Hephner of Chilton, Dale Bolle of New Holstein, staunch pro-lifer Joanne Duren of Cazenovia, malaprop master Lloyd Kincaid of Crandon. They had plenty of company in the state legislature. Other small-town Democrats included Tom Harnisch of Neillsville, Harvey Stower of Amery, Bill Rogers of Kaukauna and Bob Dueholm of Luck.

Their kind, long gone.

Northern abolitionists birthed the Republican Party and it became known far and wide as the party of Lincoln. Republicans abandoned that legacy in the 1960s and 1970s with their Southern strategy taking advantage of Democratic support for civil rights to flip the South from a Democratic stronghold to a rock-solid base of Republican support. This north-south political realignment pushed the GOP sharply to the right and set in motion ideological cleansing within both major parties.

Republicans purged liberals, progressives, and moderates from their ranks. Democrats parted company with conservatives in general and country folk in particular. Today’s GOP is a donut. No middle. The Democratic Party used to appeal to rural voters, but it sure doesn’t today. It has become solely an urban party.

Many a pundit now says liberalism in America is dying or already dead. Just as many or more say the same about conservativism. Any autopsy done on corpses lying around surely would rule these deaths by suicide.

All this is a telltale sign of a political system that is out of sync with American life. Something’s got to give. The system needs to be opened up, reconnected, made relevant to the masses again.

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