Pew Research: Partisan Ideology (A Philosophical Shell Game)

Moderate. Liberal. Conservative. Republican. Democrat. Independent.  With choices like these, who's to say what the Pew Research poll means! What does it mean to say you are a liberal or a conservative? What does it mean to say you are a Republican, Democrat or independent? And what does it mean to derive meaning from polls?

THE PARTIES
More Now See GOP as Very Conservative - Views of Parties' Ideologies (Pew Research) Nearly half of independents (47%) say their political views are moderate, about the same as last year. The remainder tilt conservative, with 33% saying they are either conservative (29%) or very conservative (4%); 17% say their views are either liberal (14%) or very liberal (3%).

Recommended chaser:
Whereas modernist conversation required a grounding in epistemological claims about why we think and feel the way we do when we try to influence each other, Newman and Holzman see that view of language as a kind of "aboutness" and as limiting. In contrast, they propose a view of language as something we perform in relationships, and they take readers beyond John Shotter's position that all meaning-making conversation occurs in a context of justification and argumentation. They suggest, instead, that new meaning is best created in a shared performance of meaning, and they discourage recitations or negotiation of meanings that we bring from our prior forms of "knowing". --  A Review of Fred Newman and Lois Holzman's The End of Knowing, By Tom Strong, Division of Applied Psychology at the University of Calgary

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS 10/30/09

Hi everyone!

I'm on the stump for electing the first independent mayor of NYC on Column C the Independence Party line (no surprise there!) and will keep you up to date as best as I can. Lots happening! Note the majority of voters in New Jersey are independent. New Jersey is one of my (many) home states (and my first home state out of the South) so I'm especially proud of us Garden Staters, whoever you decide to elect for Gov!...

Here in my current home state (and more accurately, my home town of the Big Apple) Mike Bloomberg, in coalition with the NYC Independence Party, carries out an independent nonpartisan race for the future of New York City. See the photo from last night's phone shift in Jamaica Queens -- a coming together of a long-time coalition between Imam Charles Bilal (that's organizer Martha Oliver (r) in the picture) the Queens County Committee of the New York Independence Party, and Bloomberg's local operation (that's Etoy Tharpe, second from left here)

And in LAST WORD(S) -- I hope you'll take a peek at the left/right Dem/Repub dialogue that permeates the print media and the blogosphere. As a long-time leftist and still true Marxist (I got my bonafides in the 1970s in the labor and new left party-building movement and never gave up...), I'm always happy to see progressives take on the right wingers as in Radical? Not! (By Eugene Debs, New Majority) below.
-NH


NJ GOV RACE

• Bergen County a key factor in governor's race (By Cynthia Burton, Philadelphia Inquirer) Democrats outnumber Republicans there, 169,000 to 111,200. But the biggest voting group, as it is everywhere else in the state, consists of unaffiliated voters, who number 250,300. Unaffiliated voters have recently been voting with the Democrats.
• Election not a big draw to Gloucester County voters (By Jessica Landolfi, NJ News-Star Ledger, Trenton Times) Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 with 70,744 registered Democrats, 35,637 Republicans and 82,607 unaffiliated.

BLOOMBERG 09

• Thompson Endorsed by Cuomo (By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE, NY Times)

NY SPECIAL ELECTION UPSTATE

• Hoffman and Owens in a Tie for New York Special Election (CQ Politics/PollTracker)
• A GOP Civil War in Upstate New York (By KATE PICKERT, Time) But then, the race in the 23rd is no longer about local issues. It's about a Republican Party with little current power inside the Beltway searching for a way out of the wilderness. And it's about conservative Republicans sending a message — the future of the party is the conservative base. (It's also, incidentally, about money; according to the Federal Election Commission, more than $650,000 has flowed to the candidates from independent groups just since Oct. 24.) "The 23rd has as little significance as Gettysburg. It's just where the Armies met," says Bob Gorman, managing editor of the Times and my old boss. "Everybody was looking for a fight and that's where they found each other."

WORKING FAMILIES PARTY

• ACORN: Vann, go (By DAVID SEIFMAN, NY Post)
• Court of Appeals won’t hear Bethlehem WFP case (by Jordan Carleo-Evangelist, Albany Times Union/Local Politics)

LAST WORD(S)

• Radical? Not! (By Eugene Debs, New Majority)
• Our Heritage  Newt Gingrich weighs in on events current and Founding-era. (interview by Robert Costa, National Review Online)
• Are the Tea Partiers good or bad for the GOP? A round table discussion of whether the revolt of the conservative base is a blessing or curse for the Republicans (BY THOMAS SCHALLER, Salon)  EXCERPT: Agne: What we found was that even as these independents have started to pull back from Obama and the Democrats in Congress a bit -- some concern about healthcare, some concern about spending, a few other things -- they still fundamentally want them to succeed. They want to see the edges come off some of these policies, but they want to see it go through. They want the change that Obama promised them in the election, they're just not quite sure what that change should look like. The Republican base voters fundamentally want Obama to fail. They believe that he is intentionally trying to lead the country into a ditch, essentially, that he is trying to lead the country to failure, and thus to socialism. And so they see it as a moral responsibility to oppose every single step of his agenda. There's no sense of compromise. There is a clear moral obligation to stand firm and oppose him, no matter what. And that's really the fundamental dilemma that we were just discussing.
• Self-Image and Party Politics (By DAVID BROOKS AND BOB HERBERT, NY Times/The Conversation) Is it possible for both parties to lose at the same time?
• More Signs of Trouble for 2010 (William Galston, The New Republic)

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS 8/12/09

Independent Voters

• NOTE: Without much fanfare, the WaPo introduced a new blog just about around a year ago. Funny, this is the first mention of "independent voters"...in an article about Sarah Palin's "downright evil" comment about President Obama's healthcare plan. Sarah Palin Calls for...Restraint? (Stephen Stromberg, Washington Post/Post Partisan)
• IMHO Marc Ambinder is one of the more anti-independent pundits around. However, he does write about independents, even if his understanding of independent voters is based on partisan conservatism. How Conservatives Are Blowing Their Chance (The Atlantic/Politics, Marc Ambinder)
• Is corruption a problem? (By WALLY EDGE, NJ Politicker) More than nine out of then (93%) of New Jerseyans say government corruption is a "somewhat serious" or "very serious" problem and 65% of voters say the recent wave of corruption arrests embarrasses them as New Jersey residents.
• N.J. Voters Say Corruption Major Issue, Poll Finds (By Stacie Servetah, Bloomberg) Voters say 50 percent to 15 percent, with 34 percent undecided, that they associate Democrats more than Republicans with political corruption in New Jersey. Independent voters blame Democrats 56 percent to 9 percent, while 28 percent of Democrats blame their own party, the poll found.
• Poll finds Corzine closing on Christie in governor's race (New Jersey News Room) In the two-way face-off, Corzine leads 83-10 percent among Democratic likely voters, compared to 76-19 percent in July. Christie leads 89-7 percent among Republicans and 64-29 percent among independent voters, both unchanged.
• Garden State Gubernatorial: Three reasons that Republican Chris Christie can win in New Jersey. (By Jennifer Marsico, National Review Online)
• Playing It Safe (By Charlie Cook, National Journal via Government Executive) The public's go-slower attitude is coming through not just in surveys but also in focus groups, such as one that Democratic pollster Peter Hart conducted in Towson, Md., recently for the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Columnist Mark Shields, who watched that focus group of a dozen independent voters from behind the glass, notes, "Even those who are rooting for Obama think that he is moving too fast. They feel the nation needs a time-out. They urge him to slow down." Shields quoted one participant as saying, "I hope he has learned that everything does not work at the speed of light," and another as advising that the president "needs to develop a bit of patience."

BLOOMBERG 09

NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, registered as unaffiliated, is running as an independent for a third term on the Independence Party line in November. PS -- Mike twittered today! http://twitter.com/mikebloomberg

• Indys Defend Bloomberg As One Of Their Own (NY Daily News/Daily Politics/Liz Benjami)
• Working The Jewish Vote For Bloomberg ‘09 - Mark Botnick: Mayor’s liaison grew up in political family. (by Adam Dickter, The Jewish Week) At 24, Mark Botnick is in charge of outreach to the Jewish community for Mike Bloomberg’s third mayoral campaign. The Yonkers native, an alumnus of Westchester Day School and Westchester Hebrew High School, worked on Bloomberg’s last campaign while still at Queens College and afterward went to work at the city’s Community Assistance Unit until this year. A Democrat, he lives on the Upper West Side.
• Special Election: NY Democrats Go With Rookie (By Emily Cadei, CQ Politics)