The Wednesday-morning quarterbacking of last week's elections continues to this day, and much of it has turned, understandably, to analysis of independent voters. But few among political prognosticators begin to understand what an independent voter actually is.
John Fund of The Wall Street Journal is a case in point. He cites a recent Gallup poll showing that 52% of independent voters now "lean" toward the Republican Party, while only 30% "lean" toward the Democratic Party. That is a difference of 22%, up from 6% a month ago. That much is easy to check out. In fact, Gallup does say that if elections were held today, Republicans could count on getting 48% of the vote, against 44% for Democrats.
But what Mr. Fund and perhaps even the Gallup organization are missing is that a significant proportion of independent voters cannot be "leaning" toward either party. In obvious mathematical terms, the numbers don't add up to 100%. More to the point, though Fund correctly observes that Democratic politicians, especially in the Senate, have reason to be "nervous" as they consider various controversial Obama administration policies, he totally ignores the reason that the Republican establishment ought to be concerned.
This misunderstanding probably results from a failure to recognize what an independent voter is. An independent voter, called an "unaffiliated voter" here in New Jersey, is one who does not identify with either of the two major parties. Such a voter might vote for a minor or "third" party, or break for either of the two majors on the day of the election. More to the point, independent voters, by their very nature, can in theory express as many opinions on any given candidate, public question, or issue as there are voters who so describe themselves.
This means that "the independent vote" is unpredictable. And it will likely remain unpredictable as long as professional pundits and party bosses continue to talk down to such voters.
Robert Stacy McCain at the American Spectator probably has a better understanding of this. In his coverage of the Tea Party movement, he notes that Tea Party participants are quite as capable of making trouble for the Republicans' hand-picked candidates as they are of making trouble for Democrats.
But the riddle of the independent voter is even more complicated. In addition to refusing to identify regularly with either major party, an independent voter does not like to be told that his choices must be for one machine or the other. This is the real lesson of the still-unsettled special election in New York's twenty-third district: that independent voters, acting in deliberate conceert for the first time in anyone's memory, actually forced one "machine" candidate to drop out of the race, and still might yet defeat the other candidate.
This is actually the answer: independent voters, notorious for not wanting to be a part of anything larger than their own families, have suddenly decided to organize and are beginning to discover the strength that they have in numbers. The Tea Party movement is the most visible manifestation of this.
Furthermore, Tea Party patriots, as they often call themselves, resent any attempt by others to co-opt their movement and somehow re-enslave them, as they see it. Their concern might in fact be justified. Members of the Democratic base simply write them off and declare them to be Republican operatives in disguise. Republican organizers scare them more, because they sense that the Republican Party might actually like to pretend that the Tea Party movement belongs to it. Nothing could be further from the truth. When asked why, any Tea Party patriot will likely point to six years of one-party Republican rule (2001-7), during which overall government spending still increased (though not as fast as it has in 2009) and the Republicans never addressed border security, this while fighting an undeclared war against a movement whose members had killed nearly 3000 people in a single day.
Anyone who has actually attended a Tea Party rally (of which the Morristown Tea Party organization has hosted four this year) has likely heard this message, or a variation on the theme:
Democrats, get rid of your socialists and internationalists and one-worlders, and once again be the party of [Senator Henry M.] "Scoop" Jackson and [President John F.] "Jack" Kennedy, and we might vote for you again.
Republicans, get rid of your machine-like country-club operators, who say that they care about good governance and don't practice it, and actually be the party of fiscal responsibility that you pretend to be, and you'll more than likely get our votes.
Libertarians, join us! Let us all work together, and not go off this way and that!
Another common theme: Professional politicians are not welcome. That is what really makes an independent voter: one no longer willing to believe the blandishments of persons who, by their own admission (and sometimes their boast), live to manipulate public opinion.
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Comments
As an independent voter, I can tell you what an independent voter is. An Independent voter is a United States citizen registered to vote. When the United States began, all voters were independent voters. There were no organized political parties in the United States until the election of 1800, when a political party started by Thomas Jefferson took over the government of the United States. Since that time party politicians have passed laws at state level to prevent independent voters to prevent them from becoming candidates for office. For example, in Arizona an independent voter has to obtain more than three times as many nomination petition signatures to appear on the ballot as a major party candidate. As soon as independent voters obtain ballot access in the United States, they are going to take over the government because political parties have proven President George Washington right when he warned that political parties could not provide good government.
Can't argue with that, Mr. Winn. Those ballot access laws will have to fall, somehow, someway, if we're to regain our freedom.
Here in New Jersey, the large number of petition-nominated candidates for governor (Chris Daggett wasn't the only one) would stagger your imagination. That speaks volumes of the dissatisfaction of the average voter with both of the "machines."
What might be needed at each State level is a whole slew of Andrew Napolitanos to declare, "These ballot-access laws deny the equal protection of the laws to all but a handful of candidates, and thus are unconstitutional!" And to make that idea acceptable, we need to see more independent Congress members, and something I'd like to see the Tea Party movement push for: a spot on Presidential election ballots for a slate of uncommitted electors.
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