The midterm elections coming up in November are all about the independents. Have the Dems given up in the face of the media onslaught saying indies are going Repub this time?
Independents voted in 2008 for Barack Obama, not the Democratic Party. And if independents vote for Repubs this time, it won’t be because they like the Repub party, believe me!
See Obama looks to youth vote for a late midterm surge (By Philip Ruckerand Anne E. Kornblut, Washington Post) Washington Post from this morning” [h/t to James Hertsch for this…]
With polls showing independent voters swinging toward Republicans in Wisconsin and the nation’s other battlegrounds, Democrats are turning elsewhere to make up ground. So on Tuesday in Madison, Obama will stage the first in a series of rallies on college campuses designed to persuade what some call his “surge” voters – the roughly 15 million Americans who voted for the first time in 2008 – to return to the polls this fall.
But without Obama on the ballot this year, his grass-roots network is a shadow of its former self. And with just five weeks before the midterm elections, Obama’s political advisers acknowledge that transferring the goodwill he cultivated over a historic presidential bid to an array of other Democrats has proved difficult.
“A lot of these voters feel very strongly about the president, but still a lot of them aren’t showing enough predilection to vote,” said David Plouffe, Obama’s 2008 campaign manager and an architect of the Democrats’ midterm strategy.
And there’s really nothing the Dems or the Repubs can do about that. When you’re a Dem, you’re a Dem all the way. That’s what partisanship IS! And that’s what independents don’t like. Looks like a nice little political trap for the parties. Good luck fellas!
PS — About 45% of youth under the age of 25 consider themselves independent. But knock yourselves out!
Elsewhere in news for independent voters:
Independents Abandon Democrats Ahead Of Midterms (by JOEL ROSE, NPR) Still, Bullock says she supports President Obama. So do Mark Balsam and Yvone Vazquez of rural Bucks County, Pa. They both voted for Obama two years ago, but neither seems excited about the candidates in this election. I will vote for somebody, probably,” Balsam says. “I don’t feel highly motivated, I guess.” “I might not vote at all, period,” Vazquez says.
Tired of ‘tea party’ sniping, moderates organize (By James Oliphant, LA Times) The No Labels effort, expected to launch later this year, is backed by Republicans such as McKinnon, the former Bush advisor, and Nancy Jacobson, a powerful Democratic fundraiser married to pollster Mark Penn. Another Washington group, think tank Third Way, advocates “a moderate ideology” built around such issues as free trade and clean energy. [Thanks to James Hertsch for a heads up on this article this morning…]
OPEN PRIMARIES
Power plays: Propositions 25 and 26 – they’re both bad policy dressed up as reform (EDITORIAL LA Daily News) There is a solution to this abuse of government and partisan political fights, and that is to elect a better class of leaders. That’s why we support structural reforms such as independent redistricting and open primaries that we think will help elect politicians who put the public’s interest before their own. But these two propositions, while dressed up as reforms, will do nothing but make our political problem worse. Vote no on Propositions 25 and 26.
For more news for independent voters, see The Hankster where The Moderate Voice is this week’s Now THAT’s Good Bloggin’! featured blog…
Provocateur/ pundit/ organizer Nancy Hanks is a long-time activist in the independent political movement who’s done it all: petitioning to put independent candidates on the ballot from New York to Texas and points east, west, north and south; fundraising for the independent think tank, the Committee for a Unified Independent Party (CUIP), and its online counterpart, IndependentVoting.org; running as an independent for New York City Council from Queens, New York City’s most diverse borough; serving as the current Treasurer of the Queens County Committee of the Independence Party of New York (of the IP NYC Organizations); conducting research for the Neo-Independent, a magazine that addresses the concerns of independent voters.