In this wacky-tobaccy world of 21st Century politics, if you can't parboil an idea down to a sound byte then you might as well chug it raw. We the people like our politics plain and simple, like meat and potatoes: Democrats and Republicans, Liberals and Conservatives, good guys and bad girls -- with nothing much in between.
The problem for pols, pundits, and poobahs is that the world doesn't work that way here on Lifeboat America. A black-and-white world nowadays is vacuous and often insulting, with all nuance lost in the rigidity of pre-sharpened saws and crackpot sound bytes presented like precious family gew-gaws.
And guess what? Voters have noticed: in state after state they're simply not buying. We're not talking about Ralph Nader or John Anderson or Ross Perot or even Bob Barr -- third-party candidates who now and again arrive on the Presidential stage with a megaphone for disenfranchised citizens and license to scream bloody murder because they just can't win.
This third party is like no other in the history of politics -- with no leader, no agenda, and no way to measure the profound and growing influence it already has over our national politics.
Think of it, for lack of a better, as The Independence Party -- independent voters without party affiliation, and independent thinkers who only reluctantly hang their hat on the door of Republicans and Dems. The Newsweek cover story this week had it bassackwards: this is not America the conservative, but America the independent.
There is no dearth of chatter about independents on the cable news networks: even so, the punditocracy has almost completely missed the point by not asking a simple question: what do independent voters believe in? Writing in the Wall Street Journal Monday, John P. Avlon, author of "Independent Nation: How Centrists Can Change American Politics," says independents outnumber both registered Republicans and Democrats in six states: Colorado, Iowa, New Hampshire as well as New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts." He put it this way:
"Professional partisans in Washington try to ignore this shift, perpetuating the myth that the independent movement is a chaotic grab bag. In fact, the movement has a coherent set of underlying beliefs: independents tend to be fiscally conservative, socially progressive and strong on national security. They believe in putting patriotism over partisanship and the national interest over special interests."
That just might be the most important paragraph about politics you'll read this season.
Couple Avlon's evidence with an earlier analysis about the breakdown of the party system in the Wall Street Journal by historian Alan Brinkley, provost of Columbia University. Anyone can see there is a sea change percolating in American politics -- one all but overlooked in all the discussions of independent American voters and their clout in the 2008 Primary and Presidential elections.
This might not be obvious to the congoscenti because there are no independent cognoscenti to speak of or about -- no independent know-it-alls, no sound-byte spouters among the talk show talking heads. But the spontaneous combustion of "fiscally conservative, socially progressive" independents lights the way to a recipe the two parties ignore at their own peril.
If Democrats don't change their ways and stop spending, they will ultimately lose the independent voter; if Republicans don't wake up and smell the 21st Century on social issues, they can kiss their elephantiasis goodbye.
So welcome to the real third party. What's not to like a movement with no pols, no pundits, and no bull?
However, I have always stood up for Nadar when Dems call him a spoiler of the Gore/Bush election. I fully support the third party and think we would see more moderation in our politics is we seriously had 3 parties to represent us.
I am a social liberal and fiscal conservative. I am hoping that we can pressure President Obama to be more fiscally conservative than Republicans have been in my adult life. I think there is a good chance he will be. The Democratic Party can evolve and is evolving.
In the meantime, I think supporting a third party takes money long before election years and it takes citizen involvement to force laws to be passed that make an Independant Party candidate equal to the R/D candidates from the primaries thru the debates. Federal funding should be made available to them as if the Indpendant Party was equal to the other parties rather than only if they win 30% of the vote after the election. This would take serious pressure from American voters for many, many years....but is not impossible.
Gwen
www.independentvoting.org
I can not sleep thinking that this women might have to face these challenges and the million other that presidents face, I much rather have the top person in Harvard law and at least a calm well thought out man even in his worst critics eyes. Hopefully he will govern more to the center as Bill Clinton learned to
The sub prime mortgage defaults have just begun. They will triple in 2009. 2010 will have as many ARMs reset as 2008, then it dwindles.....but not before many, many people lose their homes.
If the banks are in as serious trouble as they allege because of all the bad mortgages they have written, we are in for a long couple of years and then we have to pull our country out of the hole it's in.
This is going to take a New New Deal....and a Democratic controlled government so that they can patch things back together without wasting time scabbling amongst themselves. In my opinion, it's imperative to our future.
The difference we see today in party eforts against independent voters is that they are trying to stop independent voters because they now see them as a threat, owing to the fact that people continue to register independent no matter what political parties do.
In my home state of Arizona party politicians suddenly discovered that illegal aliens could register illegal aliens to vote, a condition they had created in the early 1990's by doing away with the position of deputy registrar when they were caught passing legislation to dismiss all independent deputy registrars. They stirred the news media and talk radio into a frenzy over illegal aliens registering to vote and then circulated a petition called Proposition 200 which would require a new voter registration form. A party spokesman boasted about the real reason for Proposition 200 .
"The independent growth trend, in my opinion, is not as large as it would appear.... This huge growth of the independent voters occurred from the time that (previous) voter registration form was issued until four months ago when a new form was created. ...It's likely those numbers aren't going to continue to grow like they had for the previous three or four years. (Maricopa Monitor, 15 Nov 2005)
The effect of the new voter registration form can be seen in statistics for independent voter registration.
2000-2002 105,715
2002-2004 165,771
2004-2006 26,384
This sort of setback is only temporary.
Robert B. Winn
We also think that if you say it you need to live it.
We are upset after every election because of the
Say/promise one thing and do another program
that is so popular with both parties.
Both Dems and Repubs care more about
winning than leading by example.
This two party system is ruining my country
They ALL agreed on these principles:
non-intervention foreign policy
ending the federal reserve
restoring civil liberties
process change
First time in history the far right and far left true independent thinkers agreed on such a broad spectrum of sovereign, American principles. This is how bad it has become....that our very core of constitutional tenets are what is at threat - and not being discussed by the front-runners.
When polled on these issues, it represented the majority. So, voting for a third party is not a wasted vote. Even if the ballots tip towards a third party that represents several platforms from different candidates, it will give attention to third parties. Then people will be able to see the validity of uniting behind one of the non-plutocratic candidates.
a goal of both major parties is precisely this- to discourage intelligent and politically attuned people- like many of the readers of this blog- from bothering to cast a vote. It has worked with young people year after year, if polls are correct. In 2004 the effort to keep anti-war candidate Nader off of the ballot of contested and uncontested states was not about Nader, but directed at keeping anti-war voters at home.
Censorship of third parties and independents by the main stream media, paid so richly by both major party campaigns to focus on them, has the same goal. Small third parties and independents are dangerous because they attract new voters to the polls, not because they "siphon" voters from the major parties. The "spoiler" myth is just that. Nader's grassroots campaigns- and others- turn
cynics and stay-at-homes- into the activists of tomorrow through their toughening up process. Think about it.
They create silly wedge issues to divide us, use their media to fan the flames of this division, and they conquer us. They vote together for war, for Wall street, to greatly reduce our freedoms, to spy on us and they create the entirely fake spectacle known as our election process.
Pdubyas point about the so called extremes of the left and right coming together is also true and interesting.
Though they have many differences in ideals, goals and policy, they stand for the people and for truth. They can easily unite in opposing our corrupt status quo, because this Republican/Democrat unholy alliance is so dirty so criminal, that it is impossible not to.
We just need more people to understand reality and we can change it. So how the hell do we do that?
The movement needs to get organized. We need more people screaming it from the rooftops.
It's hard to get started. When someone you know professionally says, "I'm scared of Obama. What if he really is secretly a muslim terrorist?"
Where do you even begin there? That person is so ignorant that even after reading "Blinded by the Right" they wouldn't have a clue as to what the book's point was.
So too, on the far left, you just can't convince people that throwing money into bad government systems doesn't help anything! They won't listen to sound business sense.
I'm trying, but these far left and right people can only do government and politics in sound bites they heard on MSNBC and FOX.
There is no breaking through. We, the independent thinkers (emphasis on thinkers) are going to need a voice. We have to get funded, start our own news network, start talking about these things.
Anyone have a few million lying around?
www.campaignforliberty.com
www.votepact.org
http://www.endthefed.us/
Lets all get active, together.
from there...thousands of leads to liberty for whatever avenue fits your thinking.