Oct 17, 2013 3 min read

If you spend a good deal of time paying attention to what members of Congress say, watching cable television or listening to talk radio, you might think the United States is deeply divided, between right and left, red and blue, conservative and liberal. We see and hear our elected representatives screaming insults at each other. And we are told by balance-seeking newscasters there are two sides to every issue; just two sides.

But if you are like the majority of Americans, you may be wondering why the labels don’t fit you; why you agree with one of these factions of politicians on some issues and with their adversaries on others; why you feel that the people who represent you in government don’t represent your values and interests.

It’s no wonder you have become so pessimistic about the economy, America’s role in the world and the future. You are a moderate, and moderates have become persona non grata in Congress.

According to a survey commissioned by NBC News and Esquire magazine released earlier this week, 51 percent of Americans fall into the ideological center, as defined by lead pollsters for President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney’s campaign. These are people who are not obsessed by politics but have deep and diverse concerns.

Of all of those surveyed, 44 percent feel their ideas are not represented by Republicans or Democrats.

These are the people (57 percent of the centrists, according to the survey) who support ending affirmative action in hiring and college admissions, and the people (52 percent) who favor legalizing marijuana. Most centrists (66 percent) think of the United States as the greatest nation in the world, but a vast majority (76 percent) of centrists “believe that the U.S. should no longer be the world’s policeman.”

Within this majority of Americans in the middle, nearly two-thirds support gay marriage and the right to an abortion for any reason in the first trimester.

Only 45 percent of these centrists favor background checks for gun purchases, but 54 percent “feel the Constitution cannot provide guidance to modern problems facing us now.”

If you are a person who worries about the widening gap between rich and poor but are also opposed to higher taxes and government spending, you probably fall within this great collection of voters ignored by Congress. If you think of yourself as pro-life but are also concerned about the environment and global warming, you are a centrist, and good luck finding a representative or senator who puts reflection ahead of re-election.

“People feel eroded,” Democratic pollster Daniel Franklin, who helped conduct the study, told Yahoo News. “They’ve seen the strength of the middle class wane, and correspondingly, the country as a whole begin to falter.”

On National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” Wednesday, correspondent Frank Langfitt described the puzzled reaction of ordinary Chinese citizens to Washington’s latest self-inflicted crisis: “The idea of a government shutdown is a foreign concept here in a one-party state. There was somebody on the Internet recently saying, you know, where are the riots? Why isn’t there more disorder?”

The answer is that although our elected officials are more than capable of disorder, the majority of Americans – the moderates – are not.

More of those moderates need to be casting ballots in order to offset the influence of the “true believers” on the fringe.