Election 2024 is a full-bore train wreck in the making:

Competing freighters shakin’ and quakin’ at full speed, collision course be damned.

Boxcars loaded with ammunition, explosives and rhetorical bombshells.

Stockcars packed with the oblivious and the faithful.

Aging engines afire, it’s full throttle ahead.

And here we are, the voters, tied to the tracks.

Who said politics aren’t exciting?

Or, at times, wretchedly melodramatic.

This is one of those times.

Fortunately, we, the voters, are loosely bound.

We, the voters, have the ability to throw off the shackles of partisan politics as they currently exist.

We, the voters, have the power to shed the colors of “team” loyalty when warranted.

For it is the precepts of us-against-them, win-by-any-means, party-first politics that have set both trains on the track.

We, the voters, have the responsibility to demand better of both candidates and their respective sides of the aisle.

We, the voters, have an obligation, a duty — a constitutional duty — to focus on the man, the message and the mission no matter whether he wears a lapel pin of the red or the blue.

For in our constitutional republic, our loyalty is to our system of government with its balances of power, its adherence to law and its guarantee of individual rights.

To that end, we, the silent appalled majority, must demand campaigns of honor and commitment to the core principles upon which our country was built.

We, the silent appalled majority, must demand campaigns that focus less on demagoguery and more on facts.

We, the silent appalled majority, must eschew hyperbole, grandiose promises and raging rhetoric and concentrate on policy, platform, past performance and future potential.

We, the silent appalled majority, must pull the brake cord and demand leadership and full presidential presence on the campaign trail by those who seek our vote.

We each must then cast our ballot accordingly.

Or we must accept that we, the people, are the fuel that is powering the current off-the-rails political engine of America.

Breeze editorial