I’m looking for a political party to represent my interests in the coming decade. The successful candidate will be moderately conservative, but with a demonstrated commitment to the working and middle class electorate. That party will exhibit fiscal responsibility, but recognize education and healthcare are American rights, climate change is an existential threat to humanity, extreme economic inequality is bad national tax policy, and political compromise is a cornerstone of any healthy democracy.

The Trump Party meets none of my criteria; its stock-in-trade is exploiting hatred and division; it demonstrates a thoroughly authoritarian character in its contempt for truth, the rule of law, and democratic institutions as sacred as the right to vote. At the same time as best I can tell the traditional Republican Party, of which I was a proud and loyal member for most of my adult life, has ceased to exist except as a historical brand name. Regardless, neither entity offers consistent, coherent, or even fact-based policy proposals.

Only the Democratic Party under President Biden’s leadership currently comes close to meeting my views of rational US governance in the 21st century. But we need a healthy political counterbalance to challenge any governing majority and help keep extreme ideology in check. Our democracy cannot survive with only one fully functional political party; we must have another, or better yet, two other viable parties actively participating in the political process offering well considered alternative visions and ideas; otherwise political excesses and chaos are inevitable.

If someone is considering starting a new political party that generally endorses my criteria, but can add some counterbalance to and compromise with the Democrats, count me in.