Today is primary day and 3.5 million Flori

Sunday, November 19, 2006

National: Parties are strong, but who's controlling the action?

David W. Rohde argues in the New York Times in Political Command and Control that "The midterm elections have been widely viewed as a sudden change of direction, with Democrats seizing the wheel from Republicans. While that may be true, the big electoral news — news that has gone largely unnoticed — is this: After decades of weakness, after sideswipes from independent candidates, the two major parties are back. Indeed, they are more potent and influential than at any time in the past century....."

That the two political parties are out of sinq with the American people is not surprising. The question now is what will the independents do.

For Fred Newman's comments see last week's Talk/Talk: Independents are Controlling the Action: Newman: I’d take off the agenda as the dominant question Are we going to run an independent for president? Or, Can we elect an independent for president? The answer to the latter is Probably not. The answer to the former is We don’t know, unless someone has a hell of a lot of money. But there are things to be done. Independents can participate in this process at every level. We can try to influence the issues around which these candidates run, as we did with the war, and candidates like Howard Dean, to some extent with Al Sharpton, and Ralph Nader. We have to participate in the political process without thinking there’s going to be anything resembling immediate electoral gains for independents. Because elections just cost too much money. But that doesn’t mean you can’t influence a process.

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