Harry Kresky: America's Democracy Deficit

S&P DOWNGRADE

• America's Other Deficit (Harry Kresky, Huffington Post) Partisanship is not a psychological illness. It is imbedded in the very structure of our political system. When times are good and the economy is growing, short term compromise (if not long term planning) can be achieved. When they are not, the ability of the political system to navigate tricky waters becomes less and less stable, more and more partisan.
• Mayor Michael Bloomberg: 'We Have to Get Behind the President' (George Stephanopoulos, ABC News/George's Bottom Line) “And there can always be a third party candidate. But in the end if you take a look at what happened in the last election, and when people talk about third party candidates and say ‘Well they don’t have a chance so I got to go and pick the lesser of two evils of the major parties.’”
• Johnston: Michael Bloomberg is a real cure for what ails us (By James Johnston, Milford Daily News - MA) In the 1960s, I was young and idealistic as was most of the rest of my generation. We knew what was going on and changed most of the things we didn't like in our society. Maybe we could not do the whole job of saving our world, but at least we made ourselves heard and did a substantial job of real reform. We ended a war, removed a corrupt president from office and secured civil rights for all of the citizens of this nation against awful opposition from the entrenched forces of the conservative right... Are there no idealistic and practical leaders around today? Yes there is at least one, and as mayor of New York, he is in plain sight...

Independents in the Age of Alienation

Discussion of who independents are continues:

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Towering Wave of Alienation Threatens Both GOP, Dems in 2012 (By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal) In the shadow of the bitterly fought agreement to raise the federal debt ceiling, the independent voters who usually hold the balance of power in American politics are expressing astronomical levels of discontent with President Obama, Congress, and the Washington system itself.
• The Cook Report: Whole Foods versus Cracker Barrel: How Americans Are Self-Sorting -- More and more, politically like-minded Americans are living next to each other. Polarization is one result. (Charlie Cook, National Journal/ The Cook Report)
• Do Independent Voters Matter? (Robert de Neufville, Big Think)
• What if Obama's Debt Compromise Doesn't Impress Independents? (By David Corn, Mother Jones) As Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post and others note, the most interesting aspect of the initial polls taken after the denouement of Debtageddon is that indies are not keen on the compromise.
• Obama’s Wrong on Independents And reporters shouldn’t be saying he’s right (By Greg Marx, Columbia Journalism Review) So, to sum up: most “independents” aren’t independent. The ones who are care most about the economy, not displays of bipartisanship. And winning independents doesn’t guarantee you’ll win the popular vote.
• Obama's big drags (By: Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen, Politico) Even in good times, Obama would have a tough reelection. The 2008 election — featuring a weak GOP candidate, in a terrible political environment for Republicans — obscured the inescapable fact of modern politics: This is a 50-50 nation, controlled at the presidential level by independents.

The Misreading of Independent Voters

According to the MSM, President Obama's efforts to bring about a bi-partisan deal on the deficit were meant to appeal to independent voters. The drop-off, according to the polls, among independents is even more dramatic since the deal. What went wrong? Independents don't like political deals. They want a fair non-partisan government that responds to the American people, not the desperate machinations of political parties.

OBAMA

• Debt Fight Over, Obama Promises Action on Jobs (By MARK LANDLER and JEFF ZELENY, NY Times) The relief in the corridors of the West Wing that an economic calamity had been averted was palpable. But few officials disputed that the deadlock had been a costly distraction from the administration’s agenda. Party surveys show that Mr. Obama has been sullied — along with all politicians in Washington — with independent voters.
• Obama loses Jon Stewart (By Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post/Right Turn)
• The Daily Show
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• AUGUST 4, 2011 - DEBT DEAL DOESN'T RESCUE OBAMA FROM FLORIDA CRASH, QUINNIPIAC UNIVERSITY POLL FINDS; ROMNEY CLOSES GAP IN 2012 PRESIDENTIAL RACE (Quinnipiac) The post-debt deal poll shows little change in Obama's May approval among Republicans and Democrats. But among independent voters he plummets from a 47 - 45 percent split.
• Debt Deal May Erode Independent Support For Obama (by Don Gonyea, NPR) "It's independent voters that elected him to office. That's their game. That's how they win, and right now the polling trends show that independent voters are polling more like Republicans than they are like Democrats," Selzer said. "They've got to win them back; they've got to raise those numbers if they expect to win the White House again."

TMV: CNN's Don Lemon Brings Back Independent Analyst Panel to React to Debt Ceiling Limit Crisis (VIDEO)

From The Moderate Voice

On Sunday CNN’s Don Lemon brought back his independent analyst panel to get their reactions to the debt ceiling limit crisis. He has had this panel composed of TMV’s Joe Gandelman, Dr. Omar Ali, and Nicole Kurokawa Neily on approximately seven times since November 2009 — often tracking members down when they were traveling.

Independent Voters Discuss the Issues

Don Lemon's CNN panel of independents Dr. Omar H. Ali, Joe Gandelman, and Nicole Neily discuss the debt:


INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Can Independent Voters Fix Our Broken Political System? (By Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic) Roughly 100 people showed up at Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, Monday evening to hear the editors of Reason magazine, Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie, talk about their new book, The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America.
• South Carolina Democrats Attack Gov. Haley Over 2001 Claim She is 'White' (Saul Relative, Yahoo! Contributor Network) It is just such petty incidents or non-issues that have caused a general outpouring of overall exasperation among the American electorate. It is why -- albeit one of the many small "whys" -- many voters have aligned themselves with neither party over the past couple decades.
• Millennial Independents to Washington: You do not reflect our interests (by Tina Korbe, Hot Air) Among independent voters aged 18 to 29, 55 percent agree that if taxes on business profits were reduced, companies would be more likely to hire. That’s according to a poll recently commissioned by Generation Opportunity, a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that seeks to engage young adults in a discussion about the immediate and long-term economic challenges that face the nation.

Cutting Through the Democrat/Republican Reality Fog-Machine

2012
How Obama Can Be a Non-Partisan President (Jacqueline Salit, Huffington Post) Both President Obama and the Republican-led Congress seem to be grappling with this very tension in the budget negotiations going on now. Republicans won control of the House in 2010 because independent voters put them there. Obama won the White House in 2008 because independents chose him. Yet the budget negotiations -- both in their form and in their content -- are thoroughly rooted in a Democrat/Republican reality.
President Pushover (Paul Krugman, NY Times/The Conscience of a Liberal) Even people who are supposedly well informed believe that there was a vast expansion of government under Obama, when in fact there wasn’t. So we’re supposed to believe that independent voters will actually be able to cut through the fog — the deliberate fog of Fox, the he-said-she-said of most other media organizations — and give him credit for spending cuts?
Is Obama seizing the political center? (By Julian E. Zelizer, CNN) Obama has aggressively moved forward on an issue that has caused concern for many moderate and independent voters. By allying with some Senate Republicans, he has made the House GOP look like extremists who are more interested in tying up Congress than in reducing the deficit.
Report: On Debt, Democrats Rebel Against Compromiser-in-Chief (Ari Melber, The Nation) Obama has made Republicans "look bad," Drew concludes, but he is not actually getting much for it.  I'd go even further. By fully caving on this stand-off, where the White House is backed by the general public and large swaths of the GOP (the financial community and the well-informed), Obama would not only fail to impress independent voters, he'd ensure a drubbing on a series of future fights, large and small, with his unreasonable opponents.
Obama takes political, policy gamble on ‘big deal’ (By Zachary A. Goldfarb, Washington Post/Business) Unlike congressional Republicans and Democrats, who have to worry about what primary voters think of a deal when they’re up for reelection next year, Obama is focused on the views of independent voters in the general election. In polls, independents still show support for Obama, but his numbers have come down significantly since he took office.
Matthews Panelist Predicts Obama Will Use the ‘Politics of Fear’ to win re-Election (Fox Nation) New York magazine’s John Heilemann warned Matthews that this time around in 2012, the “hope” is very much gone and Obama’s strategy will be the “politics of fear.”