TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

ELECTION REFORM
Reform Institute Applauds Historic Redistricting Reform Victory in California (The Reform Institute PRESS RELEASE)

ELECTION REFORM POLITICS

• Dems seek to centralize elections (THE COLORADO STATESMAN) Some Republicans think it’s more than a coincidence that statehouse Democrats are preparing legislation for the upcoming session designed to take key electoral duties away from county clerks and put them under the control of the yet-to-be-named secretary of state.
• Republicans look to pass election reform (The Vindicator - Youngstown OH) legislation was introduced in the Ohio Senate to prohibit same-day voter registration and absentee voting.

OBAMA BASE-BUILDING
Obama calls on his Internet campaign army to march again (Idaho Statesman) Campaign manager David Plouffe, in a mass e-mail sent Wednesday to former workers, asked how much time they can spare for four missions integral to Obama's effort to transform his victory into a broader political movement.

FROM THE LEFT

• The Inappropriateness of Using a Left-Right Spectrum on Foreign Policy (Democracy Arsenal/NY) I think the last 8 years would indicate that hawks have made us weaker, while doves would have made us stronger.
• techPresident's Daily Digest But as Politico's Ben Smith points out, that's really nothing new: "[I]f there was ever a campaign that took the complaints of liberal bloggers seriously, it was ... well, not Obama's." So where does that leave the netroots? With the right roots, likely, attempting to navigate this new political landscape.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

POST ELECTION ANALYSIS

• GOP must reinvent itself after trouncing (Hendersonville Times News/BlueRidgeNow - NC) So what is to be done? Lenin said, “in order to make an omelet you have to break eggs.”
• The Christian Party (by Jeffrey Hart, The Daily Beast) George W. Bush transformed the center-right party of Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and his father, George H.W. Bush, into the political instrument of the religious right, tying the party to the evangelical protestants and to such Catholics as made the culture war central to their politics.
• AT LARGE: Hume says U.S. is still ‘center right country’ (Tuscaloosa News) In his jumbled syntax, Hume, the most pontifical of the television pundits, was trying to advance some sort of theory about how despite the election of Barack Obama, who you will remember was branded as the “most liberal senator in Congress” by the Republicans, we are still a “center right country.”
• A Shift In Direction (The Tampa Tribune) Nonetheless, many people are now advising Barack Obama to "govern from the center."
• Mark Green: 7 Days: FDR = Obama? Alter, Huffington, vanden Heuvel & Green Discuss and Compare Their Transitions (Huffington Post) Jonathan Alter: It's a bit of an oversimplification to think that we're going to move left in lock step across the board, but as a general proposition there's no question that the country is moving left, the last line of my piece was "leftward ho".
• Can Obama Truly Deliver? (CBS News) "The country must be governed from the middle," Pelosi told reporters on November 5. One reason, Democratic advisers say, is that so many new members of Congress are centrists that the party won't be able to hold its majority in 2010 if it lurches left with meddlesome social programs and vast new spending schemes.
• Obama's community-organizing skills valuable in presidency (The Morning Sentinel) The CEO says, "Hire me and I will fix this company." The community organizer says, "Let me help you fix this community."

POLITICAL THEATER Bread and Puppet livens gathering of pro-secession advocates at Statehouse (Burlington Free Press) "We think the empire is going down," Naylor said. "Everyday it gets worse and worse and the leaders are clueless."

Talk/Talk: Colin Powell, Bronx Guy

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Colin Powell, Bronx Guy. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, October 19, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show", "Meet the Press", "The McLaughlin Group" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

Newman: I thought it was powerful. I like Powell. He's a Bronx guy.

Salit: Yes, he's a Bronx guy.

Newman: It was thoughtful, well considered and well presented. It will have some impact. There are a lot of liberal moderate Republicans who have felt very left out during these last eight years, who share Powell's sentiments. If they weren't already going to go with Obama, this will certainly influence them. I thought it was well put and thoughtful. And I thought that Brokaw's response to it was truly biased.

Salit: Indeed.

Newman: I don't think Brokaw followed even the limited rules that exist for television moderators. All of his questions were based on 'some people are not going to like this.' There was not a positive question on the list. I didn't think very much of that.

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

INDEPENDENT VOTERS
Nov. 4: Independents’ Day (LETTER to Denver Post)
It was at about this point in the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign that the fear-mongering began, and now it would appear the GOP is taking it one step further, from fear-mongering to hate-mongering. Recent attacks and name-calling, coupled with the usage of Barack Obama’s middle name in John McCain and Sarah Palin appearances have escalated the ugliness, calling upon the very core of people’s racial, religious and cultural prejudices. While the McCain campaign issued a statement saying they “don’t condone inappropriate rhetoric,” let’s not fall prey to the notion that they are innocent bystanders in all of this, for such rhetoric began there.

If the polls are right, it seems this Nov. 4 will be “Independents’ Day” in America, as non-party-affiliated voters will become the deciding factor in this presidential campaign. I urge independent voters to speak loudly and with one voice against those who perpetuate racial, religious and cultural intolerance. We cannot move forward as a country in these changing global times while clinging to the ignorances of the past.

Lynne Smithpeter, Lakewood


OREGON OPEN PRIMARY

• Open Oregon's primaries (by The Oregonian Editorial Board) Party leaders tend to love closed primaries. It's cheaper and easier for them, because they don't have to appeal to as many voters. They've forgotten one risk of clinging to a closed primary. Eventually, a critical mass of voters will either feel frozen out of the system or weary of partisan politics.
• Kate Brown for Secretary of State (by The Oregonian Editorial Board) Her opponents this fall are Pacific Green Party candidate Seth Woolley, a software engineer from Portland, and Republican Rick Dancer, a former television news anchorman from the Eugene area. We agree with Dancer on several points, including his desire to make the office nonpartisan and his support for Measure 65, which would open the state primaries to independent voters using a "top-two" system similar to Washington state's.

CAMPAIGN

• Florida independent voters likely to have the last word (South Florida Sun Sentinel) Registered Florida voters who did not belong to either major party amounted to about one of every 12 voters in 1994. Just two years later, they amounted to about one of every eight voters. This year, through August, nearly one of every five Florida voters was neither a Republican nor a Democrat. About 18.5 percent had no party affiliation.
• Professor: 'W.' film aimed at independent voters (Raw Story)
• Colorado Poll: John McCain 42%, Barack Obama 52%. (Transworld News)
• Obama leads McCain 48 to 44 percent in latest poll (Naples News/Zogby International) Obama retains a substantial 17-point lead among independent voters, but that edge receded from 21 points Sunday..... Among those who consider themselves members of the investor class, McCain leads by a 49 percent to 44 percent margin....
• Who's in control of McCain's campaign? (By: Roger Simon, Politico) To win, the Republican ticket must attract a significant number of independent voters, swing voters and even some Democrats. Do Sarah Palin’s attacks really help achieve that?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH

• Will 2008 Be a Critical Election? (NeoConstant) In electoral politics, a new partisan era is said to have emerged when the coaltions supporting the parties become disrupted and voters realign their allegiances, with a new party becoming the hegemonic party for decades at the presidency and congressional levels.
• Karl Rove's Broken Wings (Political Machine/AOL News outlet) Rove's Repubs cannot unite right and indies
• Why I Believe McCain Will Lose (News By Us -from Boise ID)

NOTE: It cannot be stressed too much that being independent does NOT mean being "neutral", "middle-of-the-road" or "wishy-washy". Independents run the spectrum from left to center to right. I believe that the current independent movement has shifted significantly from a predominantly center-right to a more center-left movement, hence the critiques from the right (in the articles under Off the Beaten Path above) of the disconnect between the McCain campaign and independents. McCain has tried to straddle the chasm between the traditional right and independent voters. Apparently this is not such an easy task.

Talk/Talk: Arnold and Donna

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Arnold and Donna. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, July 13, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Salit: Something else that I liked about Schwarzenegger was his commentary on flip-flopping. He said he was pro-flip-flop. Part of the story here is that more traditional progressives are saying that Obama's flip-flopping on the issues is going to undermine his base. They're really talking more about themselves than they are talking about Obama, it seems to me, meaning that Obama's changes undermine their position. In any event, Schwarzenegger says, 'I love flip-flopping. Flip-flopping is a good thing. You're allowed to change your mind.' It was a welcome change from the usual.

Newman: The last thing the Democratic Party gets upset about is its left wing being upset about flip-flopping. The Democratic Party left has never displayed that it has the courage to vote for what it says it stands for anyhow. They're strategic flip-floppers, so to speak

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk/Talk: Slick About Oil?

Sunday, July 6, 2008




Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Slick About Oil?. Every Sunday CUIP's president Jacqueline Salit and strategist and philosopher Fred Newman watch the political talk shows and discuss them. Here are excerpts from their dialogue on Sunday, July 6, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Newman: OK, let's take one soldier. He or she is over there, and they are fixing a bayonet and heading towards a building to go kill someone. Now, if you take that same soldier, have her or him over there standing in front of an oil refinery to make sure that someone from Al Qaeda doesn't come and blow up the oil refinery, that's still having an American troop there. It's the same soldier. But it's a different mission and it means something different. I really don't understand what it is that McCain is saying. He seems to be saying that the surge worked because fewer American troops are being killed.

Salit: They're trying to make the point, I guess, that this reflects well on the underlying mission.

Newman: How does it reflect well on the underlying mission? Was the mission to have fewer American troops killed? If that was the mission, why go in at all? You'll have no casualties. I don't get the logic. What if we had 10 times as many troops killed in the most recent period of the surge, but they captured or killed Osama bin Laden? Is that a success or a failure by virtue of the current McCain argument?

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

EAST COAST:

• New Hampshire: Whither the undeclared voter? Campaigns sizing up independents' role (Concord Monitor)


• New Hampshire: Dem staffers double population of state--it's like Christmas in July... (Concord Monitor)

WEST COAST:

• Washington State: Independent voters feel a bit nervous: Will moving the primaries move independent voters??? Why partisan showdowns don't impress non-partisans... (Columbian)


• Is The West turning lib? Are libertarians leaning Dem? What's a serious "independent streak"... West is Best for '08 Strategizing (Fox News)

Conversations on Independence

Let's talk about some of the psychological/cultural issues of the day. Ish has many good points in Three Scenarios posted on The Seminal, commenting on The Forgotten Reality in Reality-Based Politics by Kagro X on The Daily Kos--Ish's premise:

"Many in the Democratic base feel trapped between a party elite that has all but betrayed them on the one hand, and on the other a gaping political void whose depths they are reluctant to explore...."

Outlining 3 scenarios, 2 likely, and one that many independents are beginning to wish for, Ish goes on:

"The bind that Kagro X and many other Democrats find themselves in is real: the Elite doesn’t care if they are unhappy. The only way to make them listen, it may turn out, will be to vote for someone else en masse."

But, Ish says, grassroots Dems and Dem elites alike are afraid to move left....

Well put! At what point does someone decide to get out of an abusive marriage? Is what's "out there" more scary than staying put and putting up with continued abuse? Will your sister let you come live with her? Is there a knight on a white horse coming to take you out of there?

Fred Newman talks about independents and movement building this way this week in Talk/Talk "Apocalypse Now" :

"The fight going on is the people on the outside, whatever you want to call them – the people who are doing something new – to establish their group existence. It’s partly a psychological issue. In social therapy, we always talk to the group about building the group. But that’s very hard to do, because the individuated members are concerned with themselves, so creating a group is hard, even from the point of view of the people who are trying to build it. So, if you multiply that by millions, it’s hard to build a movement. The individuals – Perot, Bloomberg, whomever – who come and go for their own purposes aren’t going to build a movement. It’s got to come, somehow, from the millions of people “on the ground.” How do you acomplish that? How do you get independents to function as a mass movement? That’s very hard. And the Establishment is not going to give an inch on this. Not an inch. Independents are 40% of the electorate today. It could go up to 50%, 60%, 90%. It won’t make a difference...."

Can we build somewhere else to go? Can independent voters, who "swung" left and put the Dems in control of Congress in the midterm elections, join with grassroots Dems to lead America to a new place?

Talk/Talk: An independent left of some significance

From last Sunday's Talk/Talk "Topsy-Turvey Times" with Jackie Salit and Fred Newman:
Salit: And, the independent movement is moving left…
Newman: At least it’s being pushed to the left by a force that is becoming more formidable. The independent movement was born on the right. But it was re-shaped by the war and by the forces that have been developing it on the ground, most specifically the activist independents in the CUIP network. In effect, you now have an independent left of some significance in this country....