Conversations on Independence

Candidates, candidates, candidates everywhere.... Daily Kos has an interesting poll going that is currently showing 265 votes for Al Gore (is he running? Djneedle83 points to a "strengthening volatility" among the "democratic/independent electorate"... ), 88 for John Edwards and 61 for Barak Obama. Hillary comes in at 15.... Meanwhile An Ordinary Person and Politics in America "Fixing a Broken System" points out that one of the big problems in the approach that Unity 08 takes is that it only appeals to people who identify with one of the major parties.

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• CALIFORNIA REFORM Poll: Term Limits (Capital Notes-KQED)
• WASHINGTON STATE REFORM Ranked Voting: Working out the wrinkles in a new way of voting (Tacoma News Tribune)
• Time For A Third Party Candidate? How About Ron Paul Squared? (Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés - The Moderate Voice)
• Taking Ron Paul Seriously (Bruce Bartlett - RealClearPolitics)
• Tennessee Two-Step: Thompson, Gore And The Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome (CBS News, Dick Meyer)
• Dodd a long shot worth listening to; Connecticut senator keeps common touch (Concord Monitor)

Conversations on Independence

Some Dems continue to shun her, but Green Party activist Myles Hoenig on Dissident Voice applauds Cindy Sheehan for leaving the Dems.... and Jack E. Dunning over at The Dunning Letter takes it a little further: we need an Independent Party, he says... speaking of which, think Michael Bloomberg should run for President as an independent? Jackie Salit, president of the Committee for a Unified Independent Party, has some thoughts on that very thing.... And The Angry Independent on Mirror on America reminds us that a lot of folks just stay out of politics... If the independent movement speaks on behalf of -- and organizes -- the left-out, locked-out, all the people that the Dems and Repubs don't want -- we can change the direction our country is going. Let's get busy!

More on Cindy Sheehan: UPDATED 5/31/07 Eli Pariser, executive director of MoveOn.org, responds to relevancy issue in a CNN interview on Raw Story..... and here's a link to a long but interesting interview with Cindy Sheehan on Democracy Now. She's not quitting, she says. She's going to come back and do something "independent".

To: Independents in the CUIP Networks

Fr: Jackie Salit
Re: The Bloomberg Story
Date: May 30, 2007
The continuing stories about a possible independent presidential candidacy by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg prompt me to brief all of you on Mike’s history with independent voters and the independent political movement. The media assumes that if Mike decides to seek the presidency that he will automatically have the support of independents. My view is that nothing is automatic. Even a billionaire has to prove himself to independents....

Stop. Just Stop.: Guys Who Might Run

The Hankster takes note of Stop. Just Stop.: Guys Who Might Run which talks about Bloomberg, Unity 08, tradition and the meaninglessness of ideological labels. Am I being too generous?

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Six in 10 independent voters want troops out by 2008 (CQ Politics)
• We do need a new independent political movement. The good news is that there are now more registered independent voters than there are voters in either major political party. The bad news is that it will take a long time to develop such a movement. (Rochester MN Post Bulletin, Opinion)
• Delaware Bill to Ban Fusion (Ballot Access News)
• Clarence Page: (Chicago Tribune) Third party? Extremely possible

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• California independents vote "issues and people, not a party"... (Contra Costa Times)
• California "Rumpocracy"--a majority of adults are not registered with either of the two major parties and say that California needs another major political party... (California Progress Report)

Conversations on Independence

Writing on the wall in California: Swiftspeech! is "seriously considering" changing party affiliation because of the failure of the Dems to carry out an anti-war agenda. I say, Go for it, Swiftspeech! The California Progress Report tells us that nationally in 1961 independents (or in California, make that "decline to state", in New York unaffiliated voters are called "blanks"...) were 1.6% of the electorate--now independents are 21%. As a matter of fact, a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll put the number of self-identified independents at 42% on the day before the midterm elections in 2006. How closely is that increase tied to an anti-war vote? Plenty. But it's also tied to the fact that we keep electing Dems and Repubs and Dems and Repubs don't do what we elected them to do, whether it's fiscal responsibility or stopping "unpopular", illegal or immoral imperialistic wars...

Independents don't care for parties either--big or small. That's why Swiftspeech! rightly proclaims: Welcome to the independent movement!

Another Day in the Empire is flabbergasted that folks think there's a difference between Dems and Repubs and that the DP is the anti-war party--Pelosi's a sell-out....

Back in November, besieged with emails imploring your humble blogger to at minimum urge Americans to vote for Democrats, in order to grease the skids to get rid of Bush and the neocons, I responded by declaring my long held belief there is absolutely no difference between Democrats and Republicans—a vote for either side is a vote for tyranny and feudalism—a fact left out in the open for all to see. Now we have Nancy Pelosi pedaling a “freshened” version of NAFTA, that is to say a brand of neoliberal globalism that will eventually turn the planet into a slave labor gulag based on the Chinese “economic miracle” (or a miracle for loan sharks and financial sector swindlers).

I wholeheartedly sympathize--that progressives keep voting for the Dems because of the Dem message that the Repubs are scary, and then being really put out when the Dems escalate bad wars is not enough. But I daresay independents didn't go to the polls on November 7, 2006, "swinging" the election to the Dems, thinking that the Dems were going to lead us to the promised land of democracy and accountability. It was a statement, not a blank check. And that's what being an independent affords.

And speaking of checks, There Is No Blog in "Democrats: The Party of Pork!" gives this analysis of the current state of the Dems:

So amazingly spinelss was the the Democratic stance in essentially giving away the store to Bush and his merry band of Neocons that some in the traditional media have been forced to look at this bill not as a dead giveaway, but rather as some sort of compromise. After all, why capitulate so dramatically on an issue where the will of the people is so clear? As best as they can tell, the apparent "compromise" was in ramming through some "domestic spending" priorities--which the vast majority of Americans will read as Pork, regardless of its inherent legitimacy or lack thereof.

As skippy says on Independent Bloggers' Alliance (thanks for everything, kos) of the unofficial appologists:

...now, we don't think markos is to blame for the dems' caving on the iraq funding bill (he is, however, obvioulsy responsible for the virginia tech massacre). but we do think that his pointed efforts to "play to the middle" at the expense of actual convictions, plus his obvious work for getting anyone elected that claimed to be a democrat, is indicative of the core problems with the entire party....

Right. Ultimately, it's the American people who are responsible. We've tried, god knows we've tried. The good old fashioned General Strike has become turn-of-the-millenium Office Space (riseupeconomics has some wise advice on MyDD: "I actually think that it would be easier to build a movement for economic security than it would be to take on the corporations head on and force them to give us good jobs....")

Yeah, Politics sucks, make Politics suck less...

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Oregon Senate nixes open primaries: "We have created a system of exclusion." (Statesman Journal)
• The wooing of N.H. independents (Politico, by Ben Smith)
• Blacks debate impact of Obama's race on campaign (Chicago Tribune)
• Mike Bloomberg "California Schemin'" (New York Post)

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?

Conversations on Independence

Yesterday on The Daily KOS, commonscribe points out the gains that the Dems made from independent voters in the midterm elections and comments that those gains aren't likely in the presidential 08 election if things keep going the way they're going in Congress. As an independent, I'll add that independent voters are used to determining elections only to be forgotten in the interim. Let's face it, the pols are looking for votes, not loyalty....

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

Bloomberg News says New Hampshire independents are party crashers...

The Oregon state legislature doesn't want open primaries that would include independents...

And in other spots on the planet:
Leftists to the right, rightists to the left in Turkey... and of course in Canada....

The Hankster Test

TODAY'S NEWS HEADLINES for INDEPENDENT VOTERS

New York Times through the Congressional Quarterly reports that Oregon Dems see Repub Gordon Smith "vulnerable" on his left from independents...

Tony Blankley sees a third party freak show in Dem primary (Philadelphia Daily News)...

Mother Jones wonders if the Dems should be wary of Mike Gravel a la Ralph Nader...

Andrew Sullivan talks about Christianism...

Conversations on Independence

Dear Hanksteristas: The Hankster just had a very productive meeting with the newly emergent Hankster Board of Directors at Mayrose (21st St. and Broadway in Manhattan, where I once had a "siting" of Jimmy Smits -yes, he's tall and good-looking... and yes, celebrity sitings are very important in New York...) to get some direction (and yes, I was bored with my own Hankstering...). The Board advised me to blog (that's why we call them the Board--to keep an eye on mission drift...) -- so here's some new stuff for conversation:

Instapundit, gotta give him credit - how does he do it? -- so many posts, so little time... AND how very interesting -- anyway, Instapundit says Pelosi is yada yada with reform. Couldn't agree more! Two parties - too late... Look for Porkbusters update...

Just a New York conversation without independent voters...

They'll quote former New York mayor Ed Koch, they'll interview Rev. Al Sharpton (who calls Michael Bloomberg "Ross Perot with a resume"...(The Economist). But they won't call two-time independent presidential candidate Lenora Fulani, or president of the Committee for an Independent Party Jackie Salit (who ran Mayor Bloomberg's independent 2001 mayoral campaign in New York, giving him the margin of victory and winning him the election), nor will they pick up the phone and call independent voters... It's a curious world where empty conversations rule the day in the media.