Independents Can Favor My Ass

I'm happy to hear that political independents favor Democrats 2 to 1 going into November, but you know what? Independents are irritating. "Independent voters may strongly favor Democrats, but their vote appears motivated more by dissatisfaction with Republicans than by enthusiasm for the opposition party." This is irritating, since independents who abstain from primaries promote the radical elements they then later vote against (or for, mouth-breathing GOP candidates since 1994 are any indication). A while back Kevin Drum linked to a Johnson County Sun editorial about how this trend plays out in Peoria:

You almost cannot be a victorious traditional Republican candidate with mainstream values in Johnson County or in Kansas anymore, because these candidates never get on the ballot in the general election. They lose in low turnout primaries, where the far right shows up to vote in disproportionate numbers.

Independents also irritate me with their stubborn refusal to exist as a normative bloc. Thomas Edsall wrote last month for The New Republic:

In late 2000, even as the result of the presidential election was still being contested in court, George W. Bush's chief pollster Matt Dowd was writing a memo for [Karl] Rove that would reach a surprising conclusion. Based on a detailed examination of poll data from the previous two decades, Dowd's memo argued that the percentage of swing voters had shrunk to a tiny fraction of the electorate. Most self-described "independent" voters "are independent in name only," Dowd told me in an interview describing his memo. "Seventy-five percent of independents vote straight ticket" for one party or the other.

Once such independents are reclassified as Democrats or Republicans, a key trend emerges: Between 1980 and 2000, the percentage of true swing voters fell from a very substantial 24 percent of the electorate to just 6 percent.

Political independence is as convincing a bloc as a faux hawk is a haircut—neither is any way to organize your head. Yet the indies will be on hand again in 2008, fresh to irritate me anew with their shock, shock!, at the nomination of Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic Party primaries (in which they will not have participated).

Ian Welsh writes more in The Agonist. He describes the pressure that will be brought to bear on the Democratic Party, should it regain one or both majorities, by conservative pundits speaking on behalf of independents everywhere to "let bygones be bygones" in the name of progress—which would be one hell of an amnesty. Again, so irritating, because the revenge is the part I'm looking forward to, along with a robust war against Christmas and the mandatory abortions. In all seriousness, what else is the Democratic Party supposed to do with a majority, if not investigate and correct the mistakes of the previous Congress—which is less popular than scary ghosts?

Posted by Kriston at October 24, 2006 7:36 AM