“When you choose your own comfort over trying to bring people together, and you’re a leader – either a civic leader or a faith leader – your days of relevance are numbered.” –Bréne Brown

With the Super Tuesday results in, the real political ugliness is about to ensue. Name calling, back stabbing, and “fake news” will dominate the headlines, and that’s just within each party. Never mind what’s going to happen across party lines.

I want to believe that this election will be different. That some decorum and civility will rule the race to be the leaders of this great nation. I’ve never been shy about my opinion of the incumbent (I still stand by everything I wrote about in March of 2016), but more than ever, I am interested in “reaching across the aisle” and trying to find common ground.

Here’s the thing – I’m not really on one side of the aisle or the other to begin with because in our current two-party system, no one is winning.

I think of myself firmly in the moderate middle – my political views are wildly diverse, not represented by any one candidate or party. And that’s ok. I’d like to claim “Independent,” but the truth is that I feel more like a political orphan.

What I’m hoping for then, is more intelligent discourse among us, the citizens, and some level of functional bipartisanship among our elected officials.

I love how Democratic majority leader Mike Mansfield appealed to his counterpart, Republican Senator Everett Dirksen during the debate over the Civil Rights Act in 1964. Mansfield’s own party had Southern Senators opposing his bill and causing a filibuster, so he asked Dirksen to step in, saying, “I appeal to the distinguished minority leader whose patriotism has always taken precedence over his partisanship, to join with me … in finding the Senate’s best contribution … to the resolution of this grave national issue.”

Patriotism over partisanship. Hey, we can have goals, right?

For now, the best I can do is keep the dialogue open, keep voting my conscious, and find other orphans to play with. Join me anytime!

[Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash]