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There has been a ton of ink and air space consumed to explain the Republican/conservative dominance in the November elections.
In Virginia, Republicans won the trifecta -- governor, lieutenant governor and attorney general -- and assumed control of the House of Delegates, a stunning reversal in a "blue" state.
Nationwide, Republicans won key races for local councils, state legislatures and congressional seats. Outcomes in a host of initiatives went the way of conservatives.
Consultants make big dollars dissecting these outcomes, but there is a simple explanation.
According to Gallup, the country's premier polling group, Americans in 2020 identified as 36 percent conservative, 35 percent moderate and 25 percent liberal. Over the past 20 years, the numbers have not changed much, with 71 percent identifying as conservative or moderate, based on polling of 18,000 adults.
Among independents, 48 percent identify as moderate and 29 percent conservative, accounting for 77 percent of them, unchanged since 1994.
That view supersedes views people have regarding personality. In September of 2020, 56 percent of Americans polled said they were better off under President Trump, perhaps the most polarizing president in our history, than they were in 2016 under President Obama. That speaks to policy. But respondents' preference was to not give Trump the credit.
They punished Trump for his personality with a narrow, controversial defeat, but his policies did not die.
Hence, President Biden's approval rating dropped 13 percent since June to 43 percent, and is 37 percent among Independents, speaking to his failure to unite the country, almost certainly because of his leftward lean on almost every initiative. His approval rating was 38 percent this week according to a USA Today poll.
Democrat Joe Manchin, who has blocked many Biden initiatives, correctly identified the country last week as "moderate, maybe a little to the right."
Connect the dots -- the preferences to policies up for approval and the platforms of candidates -- and you get the ballot box results of Nov. 2.
In Seattle, City Council candidates who want to restore the city's police force defeated those less supportive of police. In Minneapolis, an initiative to defrock the traditional police setup was soundly defeated.
In Virginia, the governor's race turned when Democrat candidate and former Gov. Terry McAuliffe said parents should not be interfering with school curricula and denied Critical Race Theory is being taught in Virginia schools, despite written instructions and parental testimony in some school districts that indicate otherwise. The moderate/conservative view is to teach all of America's history but don't taint it with political spin and, by all means, leave values teaching to the parents.
The accusation that Virginia's outcome reflects racism makes no sense when voters are electing the first black woman lieutenant governor and the first Hispanic attorney general.
Democrats and those of a liberal to far left persuasion would do well to bury the wild accusations in favor of a more moderate stance, the same political gymnastics President Clinton pulled off when his policies were repudiated in midterms two years into his first term. He was easily re-elected two years later.
Both parties would do well to read the room that represents the predominant thinking of Americans on a host of issues.
They want police disciplined heavily for wrongdoing, but they also want them protecting communities with adequate numbers and sentencing that fit crimes, not bail measures that release hardened criminals in three hours.
They want laws and beefed up personnel that ease the path for legal immigrants, but they want a wall at our border and a stoppage of illegal drug trade and human smuggling and empowerment of our border security against illegal immigration.
We want respect for our environment, but we don't need to close a pipeline that has EPA approval, forfeiting energy independence and costing every American millions of dollars to heat homes and pump gas, especially when our carbon emissions have been dropping steadily over the past 30 years, especially since the advent of fracking for natural gas.
Most of us favor a vaccine against COVID, but police and firefighters and private sector employees should not lose jobs if they don't want one, when natural immunity or previous recovery from Covid may make them even more immune -- especially if the vaccine is more than six months old. A middle ground of testing at the job site for those who are not vaccinated is the moderate solution.
Just about all of us wanted out of Afghanistan, but not before our own people, weapons and Afghani partners were safely out. Most of us want good roads and bridges, but we need a better explanation than we have gotten for a 2,100-page, $4 trillion debt our children will be saddled with.
We want racial unity, and have come a long way in that regard, but we won't complete the mission with endless spin and policies that divide the country along racial lines. That's not a political strategy anyone should be proud of and the recent election showed evidence it no longer works.
As a country, we need to take a collective deep breath and remember who we are -- a moderate, perhaps slightly conservative, definitely reasonable people capable of compromise. And we should judge sternly political power brokers who want to play the divide-and-conquer card endlessly, majority preferences be damned.
David F. Troisi retired as editor of the Sun-Gazette. None of the opinions expressed necessarily represent the views of the Sun-Gazette.