Happy in the Middle

One of the things that inspired me to start writing this blog is the fact that none of the candidates running for president are a good fit for those of us in the mainstream. In today's society, it's not cool to be mainstream, but most of us are (otherwise it wouldn't be called "mainstream"). However, nobody seems to represent us. The high-profile candidates seem to pander to the extreme elements in their parties. I recently completed several of those on-line candidate calculators (questionnaires that show you which candidate you match the most), but the funny thing is that each one gave me a different answer. Once I got matched with Dennis Kucinich and another time I got matched with Mitt Romney. I realized that the reason for this was that my positions fall too close to the middle, and none of the candidates are there. Take gun control for instance. Most Americans, me included, can see some reason for having some common-sense limits on the availability of guns (someone fresh out of jail should not be able to walk in and buy an assault rifle without any restrictions). On the other hand, most of us would not be willing to say that the only Americans that should be allowed to possess weapons are the police and the military. I believe that most people in this country are in the middle of the road on this issue and many others, and that's OK. The middle of the road is a good place to be. We are happy here, and we want the candidates to realize that if they would only meet us in the middle, they would have a lot more success.