Hello and welcome to the political orphanage, a home for people who don't really fit in to the modern political landscape, but would like to make that landscape better, or at least have that landscape leave them alone.

I'm Andrew Heaton, independent, recantor, baritone.

Last week, I hung out with Joe Manchin in a basement, as well as several other former members of Congress,

Mark Sanford and Ken Buck, and a couple of others, plus the president of the forward party and a handful

of disaffected political movements wanting to shake up Washington, break up the duopoly, all those good things.

I looked magnificent. All linen like a young guy who will one day own Jurassic Park.

But enough about me.

Let's talk about Joe Manchin and the other political exiles in that basement for a moment.

The subterranean Washington Bar that they were addressing was a room full of independence who feel alienated

from the red team versus blue team slap fight. And there are definitely a lot of those people.

Around 50% of registered voters are now independents. It varies. We'll talk about that. But

about half the country are now registered

independence. Admittedly, most of those independents will reliably vote Republican or Democrat,

but even if they're just partisans in duress, they're functional Republicans or Democrats who

refuse to register with their actual party because they're so irritated with it,

even if that's the cynical interpretation of what's going on, at the very least, it signifies

some real umbrage with the two major parties. That is an interesting data point that even if

Republicans and Democrats who claim to be

independents will come home to roost every two years, the fact that they don't want to

identify as such indicates that the parties are on some fundamental level unpopular.

And the polls back this up. The Democratic Party is at its lowest ebb of popularity in the last

30 years. A Wall Street Journal poll that came out the day before I recorded this episode found

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