If you ask anyone around the United States, they will agree that media outlets and candidates turn genuine crises into entertainment for “fans” to digest. Voters of all ages marvel at their screens, watching candidates such as Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis speak to the crowd, their mouths frothing and hanging onto every word they and other candidates say. Superstar Taylor Swift posed with Joe Biden cookies for his 2020 presidential run and the picture still circulates in  hopes of garnering some favor from her fans for the current president. 

It all feels tacky and out of touch. But who is to blame for this political trend? All fingers point to the party system.

Let’s face the facts: the Republican party is in danger of splitting in two, and not many seem mad about it. The Seattle Times reports that 63 percent of Americans favor a third major party being added to the mix. Younger voters are simply too left for the old-school Democrats — many people had thought before 2016 that they would be the first to split. 

However, the GOP currently battles internal extremism to the point that tensions are causing an implosion throughout lawmakers and voters. The article stated that nothing is being done in Congress to resolve fighting between Republicans on topics such as immigration and education. An example of an extreme Republican is  Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who according to Vanity Fair, made comments saying that he would shoot migrants coming into the country illegally if he could. 

While this may be the norm for GOP representatives, this is not the norm for a majority of voters. Most who identify with the Republican label are not rambling about shooting immigrants or discussing the dynamics of critical race theory, or maybe they are, who knows? Realistically, your run-of-the-mill “Republican” most likely is much more moderate than their House representatives. 

Because of this, there have been threats from what the Seattle Times calls “MAGA” conservatives to leave the Republican Party behind and take up that third space Americans are leaving open for a third major party. With the time that it’s taken (and still taking) to fix the tensions in the GOP, Democrats are hoping to use this as an advantage to clutch the 2024 presidential election, leaving many voters relieved but underwhelmed. 

This is both a good thing and a bad thing. Democrats are more united than ever, sure, but where are the people that are far too left than Joe Biden and his voters? Should there be another party made for them? Right now it does not look like it, many leftists are silencing their opinions and genuine dislike of the current President in order to ensure extremists are hanging high and dry at the polls. 

This means that those who are appalled by Biden’s funding of Israel and feel that he should be doing more when it comes to student loan forgiveness have nowhere to turn when it comes down to it. Those in a position of power will rarely lose it and now every vote for any candidate, especially independents, means that you are not with the Democrats but against them, and being against them is dangerous in a time like this. 

There is nothing worse than despising the leaders of both parties, but feeling like you have no choice but to deal with one of them. The current political climate leaves little choice but to vote with a deteriorating party due to fear of what the other side will do once in office. The demand for more voices and more political flexibility is needed now more than ever, lest voters have to wait for the candidates to back down or succumb to age before genuinely getting the representation wanted on a major scale.