Will The Center Rise Up?

The center hasn’t shown up yet. That was the unspoken premise threading through Tuesday night’s Banner and Backbone livestream. Nick Paro assembled organizers, journalists, and commentators to address what happens when the people who should be defending democratic norms—moderate Republicans, establishment Democrats, the mythical “reasonable middle”—refuse to sustain the kind of relentless organizing the moment demands.

Here’s the report we compiled about sustainable action. I’ve lifted the paywall of 12 hours.

Dean Blundell called in from Florida with a ground report. “They don’t like this guy either,” he said about conversations with Americans throughout the week. The sentiment exists. The question is whether sentiment converts to sustained action before the window closes.

Shane Urich from the Firebrand Project framed the strategic challenge. Target weak Republicans in purple districts facing reelection pressure. Primary Democrats who calculate that hedging beats leading. The machinery exists—constituent calls, email campaigns, organized pressure on congressional offices. But physical presence matters most. Real protesters in central locations—at district offices, town halls, state capitals—can’t be dismissed as bots or trolls. You can’t fake bodies in space. What’s missing is sustained coordination that puts people in front of elected officials repeatedly. The center knows what to do. It hasn’t committed to doing it day after day after day.

Sherrod Sweeney and Gavin from Centered America are building coalitions that outlast news cycles. MoveOn petitions. Email templates. District-organized contact information. But they emphasized getting people to central locations—congressional offices, state houses, public squares. During the livestream, they put a QR code on screen. Eighty signatures came in while we talked. Small-scale proof that organizing works. But signatures convert to power when they become bodies at town halls, constituents at office hours. You can’t bot real protesters. You can’t troll people standing in a representative’s district office. The question remains whether the center can sustain that physical engagement through the next election cycle and beyond.

Melissa Corrigan from Counter Story Media tracks investigative threads through Norfolk’s surveillance technology contracts and the Letitia James case. Strategic, sustained documentation of patterns that should alarm centrist voters concerned about government overreach. The audience for deep investigative journalism stays smaller than the audience for outrage content. That gap measures how the center engages episodically rather than strategically.

Dean and I built The FiveStack as a daily news countdown that demonstrates what sustained engagement looks like—showing up every single day to cut signal from noise. The center needs that same relentless consistency.

Nick Paro pressed the conversation toward sustained practical action. Veterans and people managing chronic health conditions understand effort without guaranteed outcomes. You show up daily. You manage systems that don’t resolve. You build resilience through consistent practice. Democracy requires the same discipline. The center keeps waiting for a crisis dramatic enough to justify engagement. Every crisis passes. The organizing stops. The erosion continues.

Eighty livestream signatures demonstrated achievable velocity when coalitions coordinate. The MoveOn algorithm elevates petitions showing momentum. That elevation drives visibility, which generates more signatures, which creates measurable pressure on targeted representatives. The feedback loop works. The center needs to feed it relentlessly instead of sporadically.

Banner and Backbone, Firebrand Project, Centered America, Counter Story Media, The FiveStack, Narativ—tWe’re building networks that can’t be easily dismantled because we show up consistently. These are workarounds, not solutions. The center could match this with strategic, sustained organizing around specific issues. It hasn’t.

The conversation kept circling back to sustainability. One side organizes relentlessly around strategic goals. The other side organizes episodically, then retreats into normal life until the next crisis. Sustained engagement beats reactive outrage. Building coalitions that last requires showing up consistently, even when the news cycle moves elsewhere.

Will the center rise up? The sentiment exists. The vulnerabilities in the authoritarian project exist. What’s missing is the centrist voter who recognizes that normal political behavior no longer matches the threat level. Voting isn’t enough. Sharing articles isn’t enough. Hoping for correction isn’t enough.

Flood the zone with democracy, Paro said at the close. That requires the center to match the relentless organizing that authoritarians bring to flooding the zone with propaganda. The comparison isn’t flattering.

The answer remains unwritten. Tuesday night’s livestream documented people building coalitions through sustained effort. Whether enough centrist voters engage that same relentless organizing before the next election determines whether American democracy stabilizes or slides further toward authoritarian capture.

The work continues tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after that. The center can join anytime—as long as they stay.

Thank you

Ellie Leonard

,

Stephanie G Wilson, PhD

,

Noble Blend

,

john king (MY HUMBLE OPINION)

,

Jeanne Elbe

, and many others for tuning into my live video with

Dean Blundell

,

Nick Paro

,

Centered America

,

Shane Yirak

, and

Banner & Backbone

! Join me for my next live video in the app.