The country’s increasingly polarized electorate produces a highly charged and combative political climate, warns political editor and columnist A.B. Stoddard. Hope lies, she says, with the 70 percent of voters who occupy the political center.

Addressing the Hassenfeld Institute for Public Leadership conference on June 29, the keynote speaker urged the audience to seek out and support politicians who work to solve problems collaboratively, rather than those who “play the blame game.” The conference focused on the need for public leaders to be both responsive and responsible to the electorate and included a case study on a hypothetical school shooting.

“It’s really disruptive and damaging that people are so fed up with the media that they’re no longer engaged in the debate, and are not following the actual facts.”

Stoddard, Associate Editor and Columnist for RealClearPolitics, has covered Congress since 1994, including work at States News Service, The Hill newspaper, and ABC News. She has also been a commentator on CNN and Fox.

After 15 years of slow economic growth, she said a country bogged down in expensive wars and foreign interventions has left a nation of people “no longer sure they could put their kids through college, afford a home… pay their car notes or pay for their healthcare… and [seeing] that their wages would remain stagnant… for decades to come.”

This kind of situation leads to political upheaval, she pointed out. “We’re seeing the result of that now and will for a very long time.”

Hyper-partisanship threatens two-party system

“I believe that the duopoly – the two-party system – is really breaking, and is on its deathbed despite denials by those who are working hard to keep it alive,” Stoddard said.

The upcoming November election cycle is “not likely to be a wave,” she said, predicting that one or the other party “will hold by five or lose by three, or something like that.”

“I’m hoping that, depending on the results of the election, we’ll see some opportunity for cooperation there, simply because the party that is hanging on – or that has just breezed in – will likely be in a weakened state.”

The media, Stoddard said, have “a serious, sober responsibility” to help voters sort through the facts.

“It’s really disruptive and damaging that people are so fed up with the media that they’re no longer engaged in the debate, and are not following the actual facts. That’s frightening to me. The media is under a lot of pressure to keep it straight, and keep people coming back instead of tuning out.”