David Anderson, an African American blogger at Stop overTaxing Our People, continues to stump for black voters joining the Repubs, but he's not encouraged lately: "A growing number of African Americans, particularly those of us under 40, are independent voters who are not satisfied with the Democrats...."
Indeed more than 40% of the American electorate considers themselves independent. Partisan politics is not the answer to the abandonment of 20% of the New Orleans population, black and poor, or to the Jena 6 outrage, or to any of our continuing racialist policies, put in place and kept there by a deal between the Dems and Repubs. I'm glad Mike Huckabee is reaching out. But I'm putting my faith in the grassroots and increasingly organized independent movement.
And Dave Lindorff writes about Cynthia McKinney's quitting the Dems on Philadelphia Front Page News: Time for Mass Resignation From the Democratic Party; QUIT THE PARTY: "I'm talking about mass resignations from the Democratic Party, with every person who resigns and becomes an independent or who changes their registration to a third party sending a message to the DNC explaining why he or she is quitting. It starts small with a few people here and a few people there, but as Arlo Guthrie once put it, pretty soon we're talking about a movement, and you can join it right here!..." There's a follow-up here on This Can't Be Happening about some complaints from progressive Democrats that it risks handing the 2008 election to the Republicans....They still harbor the illusion that unaffiliated voters are middle-of-the-road or conservative-leaning people who only care about so-called wedge issues, not the big issues of our day. In fact, my travels across this country have taught me that the unaffiliated voter is usually someone who is cynical about politics, believes that there is little difference between the two parties, and that he or she is being screwed, by corporations, by government, and by his or her own political leaders."
The Hankster couldn't agree more with Dave on this! And regardless of calls to disenroll from the Dems, people are doing it...
From The Dr. No! Zone blog (a Ron Paul supporter), in New Hampshire, Ron Paul drew a good-sized, spirited crowd along with accompanying regional media to kick off Saturday's New Hampshire Family walk....
You can read in the Examiner "Independent voters will be barred from casting ballots in the Libertarian Party primary under a ruling issued by a Tucson federal court judge this week, a case that could eventually affect the statewide open primary system...."
By the way, Marcia Ford on Postmodern Misfit announces that her new book We the Purple, about her political and religious crisis of faith, will be published in March. Congrats, Marcia. [Be sure to look for this, The Hankster gets some very nice quotes!]
P.S. -- LEFT is RIGHT (blogging against the Bush-war), Left Coaster, and This Can't Be Happening are now all linked to The Hankster sidebar!
2 comments:
Ralph Nader ran in 2000 to "send a message" to "the Democrats." It didn't send a message and got maybe half a million Iraqis killed.
The reason it did not "send a message" was that the Democratic Party is not a top-down organization. It is a bottom-up organization. IT IS US. You don't "send a message" to yourself, you ACT. The way to act on this is to show up at party meetings, vote, run for office and take over the party. It is also to fund outside organiztions like Commonweal Institute so they can reach the public and turn them around from this nightmare we're living under.
Dave J -- if the Dem Party is so open, then what's the problem? If I recall 80% of the delegates to the 2006 presidential nominating convention were opposed to the war, however Kerry didn't follow this "advice".... Now people in the country are questioning the reliability of the Dems' carrying out an anti-war agenda....
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