Lots going on on the independent voter front:
CNN launched a series this week called Broken Government, featuring interviews by Don Lemon with independents Dr. Omar Ali, Joe Gandelman and Nicole Kurokawa on Broken Government VIDEO
Opeds last week by Jackie Salit, a leading independent activist-analyst, in the Christian Science Monitor “Tea Party Activists: Don’t Confuse Them With Independents” and Huffington Post “Independents See Through Washington’s Magic Show” about the independent movement relative to both Barack Obama’s base of support and Tea Party conservatives…
Salit says:
Contrary to some of the spin, the tea party movement is not part of the independent movement. Anyone playing the political game, from the president, to the politicians, to the pollsters, confuses them at their peril… Bursting onto the scene in 1992 with an outpouring for Ross Perot, the independent movement began as largely white, leaning center-right. While the movement was quintessentially anti-establishment, left-liberals wrote it off as hopelessly right-wing.
But a network of unorthodox independent leftists with a base in the black, Latino, gay, and progressive communities, reached out to forge a populist coalition with the Perotistas. Appealing to the need to bring all Americans together against a self-dealing, corrupt two-party arrangement, a new coalition took root inside the Perot movement, which led to the creation of the national Reform Party.
Centrist John Avlon says “Photo-op centrism is not enough” and I couldn’t agree more. [John P. Avlon, senior political columnist for The Daily Beast and author of the new book “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America.”, says in his CNN post last week “Why centrist voters are fed up“
But photo-op centrism is, of course, not enough. It must be followed by substance. To really change the culture of Washington, we need to change the rules that reinforce this predictable partisanship.
The quickest policy cure would be to change the rigged system of redistricting that creates congressional ’safe seats’ and replaces competitive general elections with closed primaries, where party activists reign supreme. Nonpartisan redistricting and open primaries would reward politicians who reach across the aisle, and would empower independent voters.
Can centrists and independents come together on these systemic political reform issues? You betcha! In California, independents are fighting for open primaries (in the form of referendum Prop 14 – see VIDEO – on the ballot in June) which third party activists aren’t too keen on…
And what’s the relationship between depression and broken government?
We gotta get outa this place–before it’s the last thing we ever do!
For more news headlines for independent voters, see The Hankster
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.