Former US President Bill Clinton had a lot of faults, but he did something most politicians don’t: he kept away from the fringe vote and went to Independents, creating something known as Dead-Center Democrats.

This was a stroke of genius, and why the Republicans had a hate for him. He didn’t court the fringe; so the Democrats couldn’t be turned into caricatures. They tried to impeach him, and failed.

In modern US politics, Left and Right, the trend has been fringe-courting, which has done nothing but widened the chasm and made disagreements increasingly bitter, violent, and hostile.

Courting the fringe is a recipe for disaster.

Courting the independents, on the other hand, is how you hold on to power. Keep the independents happy, and they reward you by voting for you again.

Court the fringe, and they will turn on you.

Neither group have enough to form their own political party; so why are independents the better political investment?

There are a lot of reasons if you know the psychology of both.

The fringe will always be a vocal minority who work the echo chamber. They are extreme and define themselves by their labels and narrative, meaning the narrative will never change, no matter how much you capitulate to their demands. It will never be enough. There will always be a narrative of hardship, as if no one else has ever had trauma in their lives.

It will never be enough. There will be demands for radical changes and new rigs, which, of course, will set off the moderates, and those on the other side of the political spectrum, and there will always be more of them than there are of you. They will want to either dismantle a system or take over it at the expense of everyone else.

Worst of all, these are not people with experience. They have fantasies and theories. Neither of these actually work in the real world, but they will always blame everyone else for the failure: if everyone would just march lockstep and brainlessly submit to their every whim, then utopia can be achieved.

The narcissism blinds them, but the political party who indulged them will pay the price when the next election happens.

There is no benefit from courting a fringe group. Any gains are fleeting and the net loss wipes out any gains made in the first place.

Independents are a different breed.

They have gone through traumas just like everyone else, but they are not defined by it. They look at the bottom line. They like freedom and independence, and that means they don’t want a daddy government, but they do want upward mobility and economic freedom by means of disposable income. So long as they are not impeded by boneheaded policies, they will vote for the party that has an actual policy and follows the mandate.

They can vote left or right in multiple elections if there is stability. They are not asking for big, sweeping changes. They are preserving their autonomy. So long as no one is lording over them, they stick to the political party who can deliver it. They don’t go for labels or narratives.

They look at how their lives have been going: if your party has made life pleasant, they will come and vote for you again.

If you ignore that mandate and exploit their vote to appease a fringe group, you will be wiped out in the next election.

Campaign success relies on two things: 1. Making the right promise to Independents, and 2. Seeing it through. Do not take this group for granted. Do not think you have forever snookered them into voting for your party.

If US politicians remembered that golden rule, the political landscape would be more stable. Instead, it erroneously believes courting a fringe group is the answer because fringe groups do nothing but shout to get attention, and Independents are quiet by nature. If you can ignore the noise and finding the quiet voters and listen to them, your chances of election success increase greatly.

Smash and grab politics is short-term gain for long-term pain. The fringe are all too ready to give you a script of a self-serving narrative. Independents don’t live in a fantasy world where they need a script. They want a solid policy because they live in the real world and are not looking for villains to justify their personal slumps.

Giving people choice, freedom, and independence allows people to succeed and fail without providing villains. Giving people the chance to live a life worth living without fear or anger doesn’t just benefit independents: it benefits every other group, too. Independents are not the jealous sort: they are just fine if people who think differently than they do are doing well, too.

It is not a hard calculation to make. Donald Trump chose to appease the fringe, but this is not just a Republican thing. Political wipe outs on both sides happen precisely because a party decided to take a shortcut without realizing there are consequences for doing so. You might get a coalition to vote for you, sure, but that’s just one day, and everyday, for the next several years, you still have to deal with whole, and that includes people who did not vote for you or think you’re something special.

You may choose to stand on one side of the dividing line, but your mandate is to look after the whole, no matter what.