Chapter 5: The Four Blocs
The American electorate is not two teams. It never has been. The party system forces it into a binary because the binary is the machine that produces the power. But underneath the binary, the country is organized around something older and more fundamental than party identity: economic interest, civic frustration, and the persistent sense that the system is not working for the people who do the work.
There are four overlapping blocs that the party structure forces into a binary. They are the majority. The two-party system is the minority position. But the church owns the building.
Bloc One: Workers with Common Economic Interests. One hundred and seventy million non-union workers. They span every party registration, every demographic, every region. The warehouse worker in Ohio and the hospitality worker in Nevada share the same economic interest: a wage that covers the cost of living, a job that can’t be taken away without due process, a system that doesn’t treat them as a cost to be minimized. They don’t know they share this interest because the party system has taught them to see each other as enemies. The Republican warehouse worker has been told that the Democratic hospitality worker wants to raise his taxes. The Democratic hospitality worker has been told that the Republican warehouse worker wants to take away her rights. Both are fighting the wrong enemy. Both have been robbed by the same people — the employers who suppress wages, the donors who fund both parties, the party system that converts shared economic interest into tribal conflict.
This is the largest bloc in American politics. It is also the most systematically misdirected. The party system’s entire purpose — its reason for existing, the function that justifies its capture of government — is to prevent these 170 million workers from recognizing their shared interest. Because the moment they recognize it, the party cartel is finished. Workers outnumber either party by more than two to one. They outnumber the donor class by thousands to one. They are the majority that the party system was designed to prevent from governing.
The economic data is not abstract. Workers earn twelve thousand dollars per year less than their union counterparts — not because they work less, but because they have no organized voice. The $12,000 gap is the price of not belonging to an institution that fights for your wage. And the party system ensures that no such institution will emerge. Democrats talk about unions, which cover 11 percent of workers. Republicans talk about “job creators,” which is a euphemism for the people who set your wage. Neither talks about the 89 percent. The unorganized worker is the party system’s ideal citizen: economically stressed, civically disengaged, and available to be mobilized by tribal signals rather than concrete interests.
Bloc Two: Party-Aligned but Disaffected. Fifty-five percent of Americans still identify with a major party. But identification is not loyalty. It is inertia. These are the faithful who know their church has failed them. They go to services — they vote — but they don’t believe anymore. They hold their nose. They split tickets. They watch their party leadership pursue policies that hurt their community and feel powerless to stop it. They know, in their bones, that the party they belong to does not represent them. But leaving feels impossible. Where would they go? The binary trap IS the church door. You’re either in or you’re out, and out means you don’t matter.
This bloc is the party’s greatest vulnerability, because it is the bloc that the party believes it owns. The party counts on these voters showing up every election, no matter how badly the party serves them. The party counts on tribal loyalty overcoming economic self-interest. The party counts on the fear of the other side being greater than the frustration with their own. And for decades, that calculus has worked. The faithful hold their nose and vote, because the alternative — the other church — is worse.
But the calculus is breaking down. Pew and Gallup find 58 to 59 percent unfavorable ratings for each party. That means a majority of the people who identify with each party view their own party unfavorably. They haven’t left yet. But they’ve stopped believing. They’re the congregants who sit in the back row, sing the hymns without conviction, and leave before the sermon. They’re one compelling alternative away from walking out the door.
The key to reaching this bloc is not to ask them to abandon their party. It’s to give them permission to punish their own party’s worst incumbents. The Clean Slate strategy doesn’t ask a disaffected Democrat to become a Republican or a frustrated Republican to become an independent. It asks them to do what the party fears most: vote for someone who will represent their district instead of the party line. Primary challenges are the mechanism. The disaffected partisan doesn’t have to leave the church. They just have to stop letting the clergy pick the candidates.
Bloc Three: The “What’s the Point?” Non-Voters. In 2024, approximately 154 million cast ballots out of 174 million registered — 20 million registered voters who didn’t show up. The broader pool of eligible but unengaged citizens is even larger. Tens of millions of Americans have concluded that participation is pointless. Not because they don’t care. Because they’ve observed the results of participation and found them indistinguishable from non-participation.
They’ve watched both parties promise change and deliver continuity. They’ve watched their wages stagnate regardless of who holds power. They’ve watched the same trade deals, the same donor priorities, the same legislative gridlock, under both Republican and Democratic control. They’ve drawn the logical conclusion: the system produces the same results no matter who wins, because the system — not the party, not the candidate — determines the outcomes. They’re not wrong. They are theologically correct. They have observed that both churches serve the same economic god, and they have chosen not to worship.
The party system counts on this. The capture doesn’t need a majority. It needs a majority that doesn’t show up. The system is designed to produce exactly the cynicism that drives non-voters away: two names on the ballot, both pre-approved by the same donors, both pursuing the same economic agenda with different cultural packaging. The non-voter sees this clearly — more clearly than the partisan who still believes their team will deliver. The non-voter has pierced the abstraction. They just haven’t found anything concrete to replace the abstraction with.
This bloc is the biggest untapped force in American politics. If even a fraction re-engaged around a structural reform message, they could swing any election. The margins are thin enough to flip with remarkably few votes. In 2024, California’s 13th Congressional District was decided by 187 votes. Iowa’s 1st District by 799. The Pennsylvania Senate race by 15,115 out of 7 million cast. These margins are not anomalies — they are the structural reality of a system where capture depends on suppressing participation. A few thousand votes, organized and directed, could flip a congressional district. A few hundred thousand, organized and directed, could flip a Senate seat. The non-voter bloc, if activated, is the margin of victory in every competitive race in the country.
The challenge: they’ve heard every promise before. They’ve been told “this time is different” by every candidate, every party, every movement that has ever sought their vote. They were told it by Obama. They were told it by Trump. They were told it by every centrist and every populist and every reformer who has ever promised to break the system. And every time, the system remained. The cynicism is earned. It cannot be overcome with better messaging. It can only be overcome with better evidence — visible, local, concrete wins that demonstrate that this movement is not another iteration of the same promise, but a structural challenge to the system that produces the same results.
Bloc Four: The 86 Percent. Eighty-six percent of Americans disapprove of Congress. This is not a partisan statistic. It cuts across every demographic, every party registration, every region. Republicans disapprove. Democrats disapprove. Independents disapprove. Young and old, rich and poor, urban and rural — the American people have reached a consensus: the institution that is supposed to represent them does not.
This is the bloc that contains all the others. The worker who can’t get a raise is in the 86 percent. The disaffected partisan who holds their nose is in the 86 percent. The non-voter who asked “what’s the point?” is in the 86 percent. They arrived at the same conclusion from different directions, but they share the same diagnosis: the government has failed. And they share the same question: what do we do about it?
The party system has an answer to that question: vote harder. Vote for our team instead of their team. Give us more money, more volunteers, more engagement, and we’ll fix it. They’ve been giving that answer for decades. The 86 percent have noticed that the answer has not produced results. Congressional approval has been below 30 percent for over a decade. It has been below 20 percent for most of that time. The people have been voting harder — turnout in 2024 was the highest in decades — and Congress still has 17 percent approval. Voting harder within the system does not change the system. The system determines the outcome regardless of who wins, because both names on the ballot were pre-selected by the same process.
The 86 percent is not a bloc that needs to be persuaded that something is wrong. They already know. They need to be shown what specifically is wrong — the party cartel that controls the ballot, the agenda, and the outcomes — and what specifically can be done about it. They need a diagnosis that matches their experience and a remedy they can see working. The diagnosis is in this book: parties became religion, and religion was disestablished. The remedy is in the next chapters: the same constitutional mechanism that separated church and state can separate party and state. The 86 percent is the constituency for that remedy. They don’t need to be convinced that Congress has failed. They need to be convinced that the failure has a cause and the cause has a cure.
These four blocs are the American majority. They overlap. A worker who can’t get a raise may also be a disaffected partisan who holds their nose and also part of the 86 percent who disapprove of Congress. A non-voter may also be a worker whose economic interest has never been represented. The blocs are not separate constituencies. They are the same constituency seen from different angles — the majority that the party system was designed to prevent from governing.
The party cartel survives by keeping these blocs from recognizing their shared interest. The worker is told to fear the other party. The disaffected partisan is told to fear the independent. The non-voter is told that participation is pointless. The 86 percent are told to vote harder. Each message prevents a different bloc from recognizing the same truth: the problem is not the other party. The problem is the party system. The problem is not that your team lost. The problem is that both teams serve the same owners. The problem is not that government is broken. The problem is that the machine that breaks it — the party cartel — is still running.
One hundred and seventy million workers. Fifty-five percent of partisans who no longer believe. Twenty million registered voters who didn’t show up. Eighty-six percent of the country that has given up on Congress. These are not fringe constituencies. These are the center of American life. And they have more in common with each other than any of them has with the party they’ve been told to support.
The church of Left or Right has two congregations. The country has four blocs that don’t fit in either pew. The church counts on them never figuring that out. The next three chapters introduce them properly: the workers without a church, the faithful who doubt, and the lapsed who’ve stopped showing up. They are the majority the church never wanted to meet.
