Some of the frustrations and disappointments that American Indendent Voters feel are, but are not limited to:
1. The undue and unstoppable power of incumbancy. In our own state, we have the fewest unopposed races in any state and this is because of the power of incumbancy in a state where our legislature and executive are not subject to either Open Meetings Laws or FOIA.
2. The Republican Party’s merger with a hate-filled agenda from the far right, and certain evangelical groups, so that the Republican Party now excludes gays, nonChristians (remember the federal attorney firing scandals), and uses a strict and limiting litmus test. The fact that Mitt Romney cut off his fingers and toes to be seen as a Republican and still could not whittle himself down small enough is a fine example. Would Mitt run better as an Indendent? Would Colin Powell run better as an independent. Hmnn.
3. The fact that the average voter is fed up with the apparent influence of special interests upon both democrats and republicans.
4. The bailout of the fat cats by bipartisan action, while leaving Mr. & Mrs. Main Street to gasp and die like fish out of water.
Could Mayor Bloomberg and certain others call a convention of the Independent Party? What would happen if they did so?
The Independent or unenrolled American voter has always had an ornery, individualist, dare I say it, “Independent” streak.
We Democrats ignore that reality at our own risk.
But I think the GOP will endure. It’s down, but far from out.
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…”independent” and “party” were mutually exclusive. I do think a realignment is in order. I would like to see a solidly progressive Democratic Party that can communicate a coherent message, and a reasonably conservative GOP where Blue Dogs would also feel at home, with the wingnuts relegated to the fringe and without a mainstream party.
We’re witnessing the Republican party fracture into two parts 1) the social moderate-fiscal conservatives and
2) the ideologically-pure right of Newt social conservative/fiscal conservatives. Got all that?
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p>If we’re lucky, neither will lay claim to the middle.
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p>People like Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and blue dogs (as opposed to people like New Gingrich) could comfortably form a very large centrist party without much friction over ideology but there are no incentives to do it becuase corporate campaign finance drives the whole process and there are unlikely to role the dice on their careers (well, Chaffee might but not Snowe and not the blue dogs… unless they start getting voted out by teabaggers.)
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p>From my personal point of view, if an independent party made corporate campaign finance reform their main goal, so that corporate interests did not have such an overwhelming influence over legislation, I would join it until the deed was done. In order to compete, Dems have learned to play the game of corporate campaign finance equally as well as their Republican counterparts and now we have two parties that take their marching orders from corporations.
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p>Some of the worst influence on government policy is the self-serving policy of corporate interests. Obama’s loaf-splitting with corporate interests is not really the change I had in mind when I voted for the change we can believe in. That said, he is two orders of magnitude better than Bush and Cheney. I’ve come to realize that perhaps the worst thing about Bush was Cheney.
If it wasn’t for the threat of global terrorism taking the place of the threat of global communism then the crackup would have happened sooner.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F…
Every time one of the two major parties has a big loss, there’s talk of that party “dying” and something replacing it. But it never happens (at least not since 1856), and it won’t happen now.
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p>Indeed, the two examples you gave (Bloomberg and Cahill) show about the only ways (or at least the most prominent ways) that independents have some success — either you are a billionaire who spends millions on your own behalf (Bloomberg, Perot), or you piggy-back on a party until you already have state- or nation-wide name recognition (Cahill, Teddy Roosevelt in his later years).
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p>What will happen, and what has already largely happened, is that voters will continue to move away from the Republicans until they get their act together (which they eventually will). But in the meantime they are (and have been) much more likely to gravitate to the Democrats or “non-voting status” than to some third independent party with little institutional support except for a billionaire’s cash.
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p>Logically, one may think that Republicans will just get their act together, but look at the party now. It’s being dominated by a lunatic fringe that has all the muscle and energy on their side — and with the internet around, is finally starting to gain the access to media and fundaising tools to be relevant on their own, beyond their corporate masters. They’re rebelling.
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p>A rational person, if he or she were a Tea Bagger, would look at the Republican Tent and see a party that couldn’t exist, successfully, without either the corporate elements or the crazy winger element, but Tea Baggers aren’t rational. Tea Baggers are tribal. They don’t care about facts, they just care about how they feel. They’re the kind of people who watch the Colbert Report and don’t think it’s parody. They’re the kinds of people who think people and dinosaurs walked on the Earth at the same time and that there’s “no evidence” that evolution existed.
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p>Liberal people need to start to realize that facts and science have no meaning to these people. They’re going to believe what they want to believe. The more facts you throw at them, the more they think you’re trying to trick them, or something. If the corporate element tries in a last-ditch attempt to convince Tea Baggers not to revolt, because they’ll both be unelectable, they’re going to get one of two answers: 1) So What? or 2) No, You’re Wrong (without any evidence to back their claims up).
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p>Right now, the split is almost inevitable. The only question becomes “how many people” and “how long?” If it’s a lot of people who bolt, the split may be permanent, or at least for decades. It’s what I’m hoping for, but probably not what ultimately happens.
the country I mean. More and more experts in their various fields are starting to agree with scenarios like Prof Panarin, veteran KGB analyst.
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p>The rapid fire multiple disasters far exceed statistical random chance events, they are driven, calculated, planned.
We are going to have an economic melt down…..now.
After that we are not going to talk about it anymore and move on to wrecking the health care industry.
Then just in time for Christmas the civilian draft is going to be the next issue.
typing posting pessimistic, paranoid rants
are you Glenn Beck broadcasting them on the radio and FOxNews?
because he has marginalized the global 911 truth movement. Beck is a paid disinformation artist, what we call a “right” gatekeeper. Markos of dailykos is a “left” gatekeeper. Commercial mainstream news now openly confirms what we knew six months ago would unfold as “news”. Not specifics mind you but the plans were reported on months ago.
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p>No, I delve way into all of the US news blacklisted topics and it don’t look promising. Hard to discern truth but far more entertaining.
It seems to me that all this talk about the demise of either party is way off the mark. The Democrats trace their lineage back to Thomas Jefferson, the Republicans came to be in 1856. I think that these parties are entrenched and are not going anywhere. Bull Moose, John Anderson, H. Ross Perot, Know Nothing, Eugene Debs really amounted to nothing.
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p>The parties can change though and they have over our history. After the American Civil War many viewed the Democratic Party as the party that killed Lincoln, gave comfort to the enemy, etc. As a result, the Republicans dominated the presidency for the next century. At one time the Democratic Party was the haven of southern bigotry and the Republican Party was the progressive party. The roles are now reversed and hate permeates through a segment of the Republican spectrum. That does not mean that they will be abandoned for some other party.
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p>Some day the Republican Party will attract the center again. Just like in the movie Terminator, it will survive the most extreme damage (Watergate, Iran Contra, Teapot Dome etc.) and keep on coming. That’s what it does, that’s all it does.
In terms of the political industry, the Republicans are the AIG of American politics — too misguided to have any impact, too big to fail. They’ll adapt eventually.
Story from today’s New York Times:
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p>The political equivalent would be if a heavyweight in either party defected, formed a new party, and were successful in recruiting a non-trivial number of already-elected officials. Not that I think it’s going to happen – it was just coincidence that I read this story this morning and you wrote this shortly afterward.
Another story from the NYTimes Republican cannibals eating each other. (yuk)
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The past few election cycles have seen a rise in the percentage of voters registered as “independent” or “un-enrolled”, and the media periodically speculates that this “bloc” of independents will form a new, centrist party. However, registration numbers don’t tell an accurate story, and looking deeper shows that these voters will not form their own party, displacing either one of the current major parties.
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p>While there are many voters who register as independents or un-enrolled, the truth is most of these voters consistently vote with either the Dems or GOP. They may not be as strongly affiliated with either party as those registered in those parties, but when it comes to actual voting, their behavior is the same. Taking this into account, the actual number of true “independents” (those who switch between voting for the Dems and GOP or vote for third-party candidates) is fairly low, roughly 10-20%. These voters also tend to be less engaged than those registered with the major parties. I can’t remember the exact data that shows this but I studied it fairly recently and generally this is accurate.
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p>Also, to consider these registered independents a “bloc” assumes they have something politically in common besides the fact that they did not register with one of the two major parties – that they share some political or ideological beliefs, just as the Dems and GOP generally do. While surely parts of this independent group are similar, I think it’s pretty certain that this group is not anywhere close to being as politically homogeneous as either major party, and in fact the independents are made up of many factions of voters that generally tend toward one of the major parties.
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p>In recent history, third parties that have attained any sort of success have generally formed around a powerful individual personality, not a new political ideology. When that personality goes away, the party generally takes a dive electorally or ceases to exist (see: Green Party post-Nader, TR’s Bull Moose party, La Follete’s Progressive Party, Perot’s Reform Party). The rise of a consistent third party is nearly impossible in our electoral system – a party would have to replace one the existing major parties, and thus include much of that party’s constituency and ideological persuasion.
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p>Yes, the Republican Party has taken a hit over the past few cycles and is in a period of soul-searching, but I don’t see the party fading away completely. Independents will continue to play the role of kingmakers between the two parties as they hold the key to reaching 50% plus one. I think many of the frustrations of the “independent voter” listed above are valid and are shared by many voters, including this Democrat. The power of the voters who share these values, as with any voting bloc, is to make themselves a large and invaluable part of one party’s “big tent” so that their interests are represented.
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p>Great discussion topic btw!
…and make people take a side. It sounds like most wouldn’t have difficulty deciding. Parties get a bad rap and many are independent because they like to feel above the fray.
The open primary protects both entrenched parties by allowing the unenrolled to migrate to either party for primaries. If the vast middle could not so migrate they would be more likely to coalesce into a formal party, which would probably cause the more moderate Dems and Repubs to gravitate toward the more centrist party.
but I don’t think it’s going to come from the likes of Bloomberg and Cahill. Quite the opposite, in fact. The Tea Partiers hate Democrats and Republicans alike, even some pretty conservative Republicans who may — occasionally — just be polite to Democrats (ie Charlie Christ). There are several arms sparking primary challenges and, even more telling in terms of potential for a fairly sizable third-party, major third-party contests, like the one in NY-23 right now. The party will be far more like France’s racist National Front than the Bloomberg/Cahill post-partisanship bullshit.
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p>Some other major factors of why this could happen:
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p>1. They have some champions of their cause in people like Sarah Palin, Rubin from Florida, the Governor of Texas, Michelle Bachman, Ron Paul, etc. That keeps them in the news, keeps them active and keeps them raising money.
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p>2. The bulk of their membership was the base of the Republican Party and its energy. It became so powerful that it has been, perhaps for the first time ever, able to overcome the old GOP establishment in many states across the country.
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p>3. It detests the many elements in the GOP to the point where it doesn’t even just want to take over the GOP, it wants to be identified as some new-fangled thing (The “Tea Party?”).
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p>4. The corporate element and neo-con elements of the GOP will never accept them, especially as the dominant force of the GOP, which is increasingly becoming the case. They won’t want the Teabaggers in the party anymore than the Teabaggers want them now.
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p>If this happens, I see some corpoatist DINOs hopping over to the GOP, just as the GOP splits. This will, probably, be a good thing — because finally we’d at least be able to have parties that people can easily identify with, instead of picking the lesser of two evils. I still think it’s a long shot that GOP split occurs, but there’s certainly a sporting chance. I doubt we’ll see America become a 3 party system, but enough of these Tea Baggers will bolt to damage the GOP tremendously over the coming years.
I voted “none of the above”
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p>because, yes, I do think there will be a split, but no, I don’t think the GOP will die — and I’m entirely unsure how widespread that split will be, whether it’s just the worst of the worst of the lunatic fringe, or their brothers and sisters, too.
The Republican one, the Democratic one or both?
One lunatic fringe is a lot larger than the other — and they bring guns to political rallies and presidential events.
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p>Which do you think I’m talking about?
I took your post to imply that there was ONE fringe and I just wanted to say that both ends of the spectrum consist of fringe, sort of like the scarves we will soon be wearing. Have a nice weekend Ryan.