Follow on TwitterGallup Poll: More Americans Identify As ‘Independent’ Than At Any Time In Over Sixty Years
A new Gallup poll helps to quantify the American electorate’s increasing disenchantment with the nation’s two-party electoral system.
Gallup has been polling Americans’ political identification for over 60 years, and for the first time a staggering 40% of all Americans now identify as Independent, versus 31% who identify as Democrat, and 27% who identify as Republican.
Fourteen percent of those who identify as independents reported leaning to the Left, whereas eighteen percent reported leaning to the right.
At a time of near-unprecedented economic turbulence, and when more Americans feel negative towards their government than at any other time in history, there appears to be a real opportunity for a Third Party to enter the fold and to offer the country real solutions that neither of the two major parties appear capable of delivering.
The Most Effective Way To Protest At The Ballot Box
Are you disgusted with the Democrats, and their cynical attempts at impeding the very ‘change’ they promised us in 2008? We ushered them in with a clear mandate to make good on their promises, and once given complete control of the government, they’ve taken every opportunity to legislate the status-quo — all under the guise of ‘bipartisanship’. As if voters are too dumb to understand that reconciliation has remained a tool available to them to actually legislate their promises into law. When Republicans previously held a smaller majority in both houses, they used reconciliation repeatedly to enact all three of Bush’s major tax cuts which added trillions of dollars to our national debt.
That’s the kind of conviction we believed we were getting in 2008, when we put Obama in the White House and gave Democrats majorities in both houses. Boy were we fools!
Ever since its passage, the Democratic Party has cited Health Care Reform as its greatest accomplishment. Back in May, Speaker Nancy Pelosi ecstatically claimed:
“Healthcare reform is my proudest achievement in Congress,” she said. “But it would not have been possible without the leadership of President Obama.”
However, with the President’s job approval ratings plummeting, Deputy White House Press Secretary Bill Burton complained recently that they aren’t getting their due credit from their base (whom his boss had previously referred to as the ‘professional left’):
there is some “frustration” in the White House that activists on the left are criticizing President Barack Obama for not being liberal enough instead of giving credit for his accomplishments, including health care reform. Still, Burton said the administration will continue pushing its agenda even if liberals don’t give them credit.
It is a bit ironic that what the Democratic Party feels to be its greatest achievement, Health Care Reform, essentially sent its own base packing. And they feign feelings of ‘hurt’ and ‘frustration’ by it all. As if they don’t already know:
Candidate Obama promised his supporters a robust public option without a mandate. Once elected, he immediately embarked on cutting back door deals with hospital groups (where he secretly promised them there would be no public option in the final bill), and with Big Pharma (where he secretly promised to oppose Congressional efforts to use the government’s leverage to negotiate drug prices downwards. He also agreed to prohibit US citizen’s from re-importing drugs from Canada). He then lobbied the Senate to drop the public option and any expansion of Medicare.
As if this weren’t bad enough, he additionally imposed a mandate on all American citizens, who would now be forced — or suffer financial penalty — to purchase expensive and crappy insurance policies (often with unaffordable deductibles and premiums) from the ‘for profit’ health insurance industry. A HUGE gift to the very industry most Americans hold responsible for creating the worst and most expensive health care system in the world.
It’s clear that the Democratic Party is out-of-step with its own base. The party shrewdly believed they could promise us what we demanded, meaningful change, and then ignore us once elected. They used the straw men available to them, obstructionist Republicans and their Blue Dog cousins, to evade ‘Change’. And President Obama’s call for ‘Change’ suddenly transformed overnight to a call for ‘Bipartisanship’ (his excuse for not using reconciliation to fulfill his campaign promises). Obama supporters, they figured, would just blame the obstructionist Republicans for Obama’s abandonment of the platform he ran on. Well, now they’ve discovered that in this new internet era, the blogosphere has made triangulation and political shell games very difficult for politicians to pull off.
Morale is low on the left, and many have concluded that Democrats no longer represent their interests. So for those of you wondering what to do at election time this November, here are your options, along with my two cents on each:
1. Vote Democratic — reward them for screwing you over. Nothing reinforces bad behavior quite like an unjust reward. Result: Democrats get reelected and continue to screw us over, as clearly there are no repercussions for anything they do.
2. Stay home / don’t vote — Perfect! Then the main stream media can interpret all the Republican victories as an indicator that the electorate wants Obama to move even further to the right. Hypothetical headlines: “Americans Reject Obama’s Big Government Policies”. Result: Obama and Democrats in Congress move even further to the right.
3. Vote for a Green/Independent left candidate on the ticket — Even if (s)he has a slim chance for victory, this is by far the most ideal method of sending a message. Result: It’s a vote for the Left (the message can’t be misconstrued by the MSM), and it helps to strengthen (build momentum) for third party candidates. The defeated Democratic candidate will view that third party candidate as a ‘spoiler’ and the party will realize that for the next election in that state, they better move to the Left or lose even more detractors to independent parties.
4. Write-in ‘PUBLIC OPTION’. Assuming you ONLY have Republicans and Democrats on your ballot, and you’ve realized that option 2 (above) is not going to accomplish anything, what should you do? Cast your vote for a ‘public option’ as if you are treating this election as a referendum. Remind the party that is parading this HCR bill around like a trophy wife, that you are not voting for them BECAUSE of that very bill. Result: If the MSM sees that the Republican candidate won 200k votes, the Democrat won 185k votes, and ‘PUBLIC OPTION’ won 16k votes, that sends a clear message that the Left protested this election. It provides indisputable clarity that the Left abandoned the Democratic candidate, and instead wrote-in a HUGE Democratic betrayal in its place. Imagine if the press were to report that the Democrat would have won this race had he won all the votes cast for ‘PUBLIC OPTION’ .
5. Write in whatever you want. Some commenters made the suggestion on TheMalcontent’s FDL diary (which introduced this ‘write in’ idea) — that voters should just write in whatever they want. For example, if the wars are your main problem with the Democrats then write-in ‘Iraq’ or ‘Afghanistan’. If you are out of work, and pissed about it, then write in ‘job creation’. Or if you’d prefer ‘Medicare for all’ then just write that in, instead of ‘public option’. Result: You may potentially get more write-ins, but you will most certainly muddle the message, possibly to the detriment of the entire effort.
When the press gets ballot box results they aren’t going to report seemingly insignificant numbers. For instance, if the Republican won 200k, Democrat 185k, public option 25, Iraq 4, Ralph Nader 1, medicare for all 7, Guantanamo Bay 6, Bush war crimes accountability 1, … They’ll only report the bigger numbers. The more numbers any single write-in gets the more you ensure it gets reported, and brought to the media’s attention.
For those of you who have reservations about writing-in ‘PUBLIC OPTION’, I’ll just say this: whatever the write-in is, please pick something that the Left, and specifically the Left, is furious about so that the MSM will disseminate the message correctly. It’s crucial that if you decide to protest this election with a write-in, and get others to do the same, that you send a clear, simple, distinct message that can’t be spun into a victory for the Republicans or Glenn Beck. For instance, ‘Obama must resign’ may be a popular write-in for some on the Left, but I suspect Tea Partiers who might hate the Republican incumbent option on their ballot, will take full credit for it, if it were to be successful. Glenn Beck will be doing victory dances all week long.
We are striving for headlines the morning after which read something akin to, “The Left Abandons Democrats For Their Betrayal On The Public Option”, AND NOT, “Americans Reject Obama’s ‘Big Government’ policies”. Essentially, we want this message to be one that makes Democrats feel the wrath of their base; the same ones they routinely call names, like ‘fucking retards‘. We want Democrats to begin to govern to the Left, and fear the very ones who elected them.
We either control the message, or the media will happily create its own narrative for the Republican victories. And as always, it will be a call for the Obama administration to move further to the right. So if you were already planning on sitting out this election, please consider option #3 above, and if that’s not an option in your district/state then please consider option #4. These are the two best strategies for insuring that the main stream media disseminates correctly that the Left played a huge role in Democratic defeats.
Gubernatorial Election Result Spin And The Mythical Independent Voter
In virtually every election where the Republican Party under-performs, the beltway pundits always attribute their defeats to an unenergized base. In contrast, anytime Democrats under-perform, those same pundits tend to assert that Democrats have moved too far to the left to appease the middle — the Independents.
Here’s neo-clown Michael Gerson’s spin on the Gubernatorial election results, with some advice to Obama:
Last night, a message was sent. Now a question remains: Is Barack Obama capable of listening? All his amazing talent and skill come packaged with arrogance. Shifting his approach in a more centrist direction on health care or any other issue will not come easily. But it needs to come.
Here’s Joel Achenbach of the Post’s take:
Elections are won in the middle. Yeah, it helps to motivate the base. It’s important to get out new voters. But the numbers are clear, year after year: You go over the top when you win the middle. And that means that party leaders have to govern in the middle, or at least within screaming distance of the middle.
Michael Barone seems to believe this Democratic defeat is somehow related to what he calls the Democrats’ “controversial and unpopular” health care reform:
what will be the impact of these elections on forthcoming votes in Congress on the Democratic leadership’s controversial and unpopular health legislation? … The 2009 election results are certainly not going to make it easy for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to round up the needed 218 votes for Democrats’ health care bills.
In other words, many in the Beltway punditry interpret these election results as a voter repudiation of the federal government’s move to the left, and in particular on health care reform. Well, as far as health care reform is concerned, the polls say something entirely different. Here’s the latest Washington Post / ABC News Poll on the “Oh so controversial” public option:
57 percent of all Americans now favor a public insurance option, while 40 percent oppose it. Support has risen since mid-August, when a bare majority, 52 percent, said they favored it. (In a June Post-ABC poll, support was 62 percent.)
Now consider the fact that the VA Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate R. Creigh Deeds stated that, if elected Governor, he would seriously consider opting out of the public option for his state. He added, “I’m not afraid of going against my fellow Democrats when they’re wrong. A public option isn’t required in my view.” So, considering that Deeds sided with the Republicans on obstructing real health care reform, then how the hell can anyone make the point that the Democratic Party’s “controversial” health care reform legislation — the reform which a majority of Americans favor — led to their defeat?
As far as moving too far to the left: when the hell did Obama make any movement, whatsoever, to the left? They must be referring to all the Communist Czars, or student marxist indoctrination fantasies that the Fox News clowns keep spewing on about. The reality of the last nine months is that Obama has done nothing to move this country to the left. He’s pretty much kept all the Bush initiatives and wars and illegal detentions and lack of oversight and the cover-ups of past illegalities and the deregulated financial industry right in place. Before health care negotiations even began he cut back-room deals to water down health care reform to the point that it’s nothing, but a gift to the health industry. Where’s the leftward movement?
The Gubernatorial upset in Virginia was due to a weak Democratic candidate who was on the wrong side of health care — the Republican side — which likely contributed to the no-show from a progressive base. Huffington Post reported, “More than 3 million voters who cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election – many of them minorities – failed to show up at the polls in either [VA or NJ].” Many of the no-shows, it revealed, were young voters. Many progressives have just become disenchanted with the Democratic Party for not delivering on any of their key promises they made during the 2008 elections.
One thing you hear over and over is how the Independents bailed out on the Democratic candidates last night. First of all the Independents are not this homogeneous “conservative middle” as the media punditry loves to portray them. They are nothing more than progressives and conservatives who don’t affiliate with one of the two parties. That’s it, nothing more. The beltway pundits would have you believe they are these perpetually confused people — so malleable, so scatterbrained — that they could swing between George W. Bush and Barack Obama on a sheer whim.
The Beltway punditry seems so intent on keeping American politicians legislating to the right of center, that this false narrative on the ever-growing Independent voter has become their new gospel. And they conveniently position this caricatured voter slightly to the right of all Democratic initiatives.
However, if you actually look at the evidence from the polls, they show the Independent Voter to be something entirely different:
The latest Washington Post / ABC News Poll found that 42% of all Americans consider themselves to be Independent — of which 48% lean Democratic versus 45% who lean Republican. That means MORE Independents (including myself, incidentally) consider themselves to be Progressive, than those who consider themselves to be Conservative.
The fact of the matter is MANY Independents were former Democrats, who became disenchanted with the party’s steady movement to the right, and their complicity in and cover-up of the crimes committed by the Bush Administration. Some are just turned off by party politics, so they won’t carry a party’s card. But that doesn’t change their core ideological beliefs. They certainly aren’t devoid of ideological leanings. In many cases their beliefs are to the right of the Republican Party or to the left of the Democratic Party.
Most likely, a majority of Independent votes were cast for Republicans during the Gubernatorial races, because the 45% conservative Independents who tend to vote Republican were energized, whereas the 48% of the progressive Independents who tend to vote Democratic were unenergized, and stayed home. But you can certainly see how the Beltway punditry would try and push this ‘mythical middle’ storyline as they’re always inclined to push Democrats to the middle — where the status-quo exists. Not to mention, it makes better copy.
Dan Balz from The Post falls back on the ‘mythical’ Independent voter portrayal and how their homogeneous priorities contributed to the democratic defeats:
For months, polls have shown that independents were increasingly disaffected with some of Obama’s domestic policies. They have expressed reservations about the president’s health-care efforts and have shown concerns about the growth in government spending and the federal deficit under his leadership.
From this we’re lead to believe Independents have reservations about health care reform, and are worried about government spending, so the reader would naturally construe that Independents are fearful of government intervention in health care — again, the insinuation that things have moved too far to the left.
First, as I mentioned before, the VA Democratic Gubernatorial Candidate was against the public option, and stated he would likely opt out if it were passed. Second, NOTHING could be further from the truth as far as the Independent ‘reservations’ on health care reform. As Dan Balz himself, reported just over a week ago, a majority of Independents FAVOR a public option:
Obama’s approval ratings on health-care reform are slipping among his fellow Democrats even as they are solidifying among independents and seniors. [...]
Republicans and Democrats are on opposite sides of this question, while independents prefer a bill that includes a public option but does not have Republican support, by 52 percent to 35 percent.
Let’s hope The President and our representatives in Congress don’t fall for this beltway media spin, and use it as an excuse to abandon real change, once and for all.
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