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)

The Black Independent: A new political category (and a cultural revolution)

One of the more positive things that's been going on in the past 20 years in America is the development of a new constituency: the Black Independent.

Six percent of black voters in 2008 were independent. Even the MSM noticed (they invented the category). Why is this significant? Because black voters traditionally, at least since somewhat after the New Deal, are Democrats. In fact, that's been a complaint of some black leftists for the 80 years since the Great Depression.

For those of us on the left--white and black, including the progressive independent activists of the CUIP networks, who have been slogging and blogging for the past 20 years plus, this is a special moment where the independent movement and black voters have come together. We have just witnessed a cultural revolution in the country. (And for the MSM pundits who think that Joe Lieberman is a spokesman for independent voters, pay attention!)

Let's take a look at some factoids:

• Barack Obama polled the majority of the independent vote: 52% (compared to about 44% for John McCain). That's an 8 point margin.
• Four years earlier, in 2004, independents split evenly between John Kerry and George Bush
• 29% of voters on November 4th were independents, that's up 3 points since 2004, while the Dems took 2% more of the total, and the Repubs lost 5 points
• The 2008 election was the first time since 1972 that a majority of independent voters cast ballots for a Democrat
• Third-party candidates polled about 1% of the total vote nationally, Nader (independent) and McKinney (Green) garnering about 200,000 more votes than Barr (Libertarian) and Baldwin (Constitution) -- again, a shift left

More details will be unveiled over the next period, of course. Keep an eye out for Jackie Salit's election analysis in the upcoming Neo Independent magazine.

In the meantime, keep slogging and blogging.

Talk/Talk: I Like the Mashed Potatoes

Sunday, June 29, 2008




Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, I Like the Mashed Potatoes. 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, June 29, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Salit: Going back to the Left. The Nation has to sell magazines and The Huffington Post has to keep people coming to its website and Nader has to run because he thinks he's the only pure person in America. There's a certain notion of purity operative here, that there are certain hard and fast definitions of what it means to be progressive and if you don't stick by those things no matter what, then that says something about your integrity.

Newman: That sounds like a comic book version of American politics. Nobody really believes that. Nobody really acts that way. It's funny. The critics say, often with a lot of attitude, 'You know how the game is played. Everyone just puts out what's most expedient.' And then these same critics say, 'A terrible thing happened. Obama put out something that was expedient.' Well, wait a second. There's a disconnect there. If you acknowledge that's what people do in these situations, then all you're pointing to is people doing it in these situations.

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Talk/Talk: Katrina (Not the Hurricane) Blows the Establishment Cool

Sunday, April 6, 2008
Below are excerpts from this week's Talk Talk, Katrina (Not the Hurricane) Blows the Establishment Cool. 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, April 6, 2008 after watching "The Chris Matthews Show" and "This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

Newman: That's an alternative position to the U.S. playing the role of global mediator in a military fashion. And that debate will likely be what the general election comes down to. But, we're not having a general election right now.

Salit: Right.

Newman: So, it's too early for that to emerge. But on the other hand, it's too late for any more primary issues to emerge, even with nine states and Puerto Rico still to happen.

Salit: Yes.

Newman: So, we're kind of in "no man's" or "no woman's" land.

Salit: Well put.

Read Talk Talk in its entirety here.

Conversations on Talking and Debates

Stop Talking, the title of this week's Talk/Talk with Jackie Salit and Fred Newman, about the end of the pre-primary season....

Renewing Political Debate has some interesting viewpoints: “You’re weird!” said Rick Tyler (currently the press spokesman for former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich) to 30 Washington DC American University students who claimed they watched Sunday morning talk shows, rather than sleep, watch football, or play golf like “normal people.”

Nancy (Pelosi), Harry (Reid) and John (Conyers) Are You Awake Out There... posted on Idealthoughts--Ideas, opinions,views, humor,and analysis. There are no sacred cows except the Constitution. (worth a visit if only for the absolutely gorgeous picture) by Constitutionalist has a debate question: ..."when you took your respective oaths of office, where did it say in your oath your allegiance to the Democratic Party or your vision of that party, superseded your allegiance to the Constitution?" Idealthoughts has endorsed John Edwards.

I recommend a visit to Rock the Debates, which shows progress in their "pop quiz" to the presidential candidates: Would you be willing to debate independent candidates in the general election? Positive answers from Ron Paul, Tommy Thompson, Steve Adams, Mike Huckabee and Bill Richardson. "No" from Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and Sam Brownback. And (of course) a generous "Ambigous" from Hillary Clinton. Please see the video responses at Rock the Debates!

In Beyond The Curtains (advertised as: Here at Beyond The Curtains we take reporting entertainment news to a new level. We are the first site that brings views unique to both sexes. Basically we bring the talk men love to hear and the exclusive news ladies love to read.... I'm already intrigued! -- I give them a "A" for originality and irony!), Why Are They So Afraid of Ron Paul? Quincy Morgan has some choice words: "As I predicted last month, the only consistently antiwar candidate on the Republican side of the aisle is breaking through – but in a spectacular manner that I certainly did not foresee. Suddenly, Paul is everywhere, from the Sunday morning talk shows to the length and breadth of the blogosphere.... All this buzz, however, has generated a counter-buzz, a sinister stream of smears and jeers coming from both Right and Left. What's instructive is how similar these attacks are in their viciousness, and, in the case of the "serious" mainstream critics, their juvenility...." Oh, but there's more! See this article for a very thoughtful and thorough history of libertarianism including the unfortunate left attack.... The official left (which is really irrelevant at this point but still has an impact in the way a revered dead aunt does on the children...) has come of age in its role as as attack dogs facing anything remotely left of the Dem Party. Their MO is to cry "facist" while the country dies...
NH