Date:
THE EMERGING INDEPENDENT MINORITY
35% of Americans are politically
independent, a larger bloc than Republican or
Democrat. Where is their power?
JACQUELINE SALIT
Forget Ralph Nader. He’s no threat.
We’ve got history on our side.
Such are the musings of a Democratic Party intelligentsia convinced
that it will not be out of power for much longer. Indeed, if party strategists
John Judis and Ruy Teixeira are to be believed, a political realignment is
already underway – one in which “the emerging Democratic majority” is about to
supplant the Republican majority that emerged in 1968 with the election of
Richard Nixon and reached its apex in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan.[1]
Since the election of George Bush in 2000 was an anomaly, say
Judis and Teixeira, the
result of political machinations in
Indeed, when the new independent vote
is broken down, it reveals a trend toward the Democrats in the 1990s and a
clear and substantial Democratic partisan advantage. The National Election
Studies show that about 70 percent of independents will say which party they
are closer to, and, once these ‘independents’ are assigned to the party they
are closer to, Democrats enjoy a 13 percent advantage over the Republicans,
which is close to the advantage Democrats enjoyed among the electorate in the
late 1950s and early 1960s. …a close look at today’s independent voters
suggests that the most likely successor to the dying Republican majority is
another major-party majority – a new Democratic majority.
There is, however, a striking methodological and political flaw
in their analysis. Like most political scientists, they take realignment to be
a phenomenon driven by economic, social, cultural and psychological factors
that the parties merely reflect. But what if a political realignment is underway
that is rooted in responses to the parties themselves? What if
post-industrialism is accompanied by a political postmodernism in which parties
are not only beholden to special interests but have become the most powerful special interests of all? And what if the resulting
transition ultimately revolves around the independent voter – a “demographic”
with huge breadth but as yet undeveloped power that has the potential to redefine
political coalition-building?
Perhaps to forestall the possibility that an anti-party
paradigm will take root before they have succeeded in capturing the White
House, the Democrats have begun to worry publicly about our democracy. In a
recent issue of the liberal The American
Prospect, Robert Kuttner writes: “If President
Bush is reelected we will be close to a tipping point of fundamental change in
the political system itself. The
Kuttner notes that during prior eras of one-party domination
the majority party “earned its preeminence with broad popular support.” Things
are different today because the electorate is closely divided and, Kuttner
argues, Republicans are attempting to engineer what is in effect a one-party
state.
“Both parties are partly to blame,” writes Kuttner, acknowledging that the Democrats participated in
creating and taking advantage of this partisan culture. But, he contends, the
abuses of power by the Republicans – manipulations of parliamentary procedure
in Congress by Majority Leader Tom DeLay, the
redrawing of congressional district lines to expand the number of safe GOP
seats – are so extreme that only the Democrats can save the country from an
encroaching one-party state. Ergo, ABB: Anybody But Bush.
And why haven’t the Democrats said or done anything to
redress the usurpation of power by the parties? Kuttner says it’s because Democrats
fear that “nobody cares about process” – that to do so makes them look weak, as
if they’re just whining losers – and the press “doesn’t connect the dots.”
But a lot of Americans do “care about process.” Many of those
are independent voters – who make up 35% of the electorate. The Perot
phenomenon and the McCain movement were all about political process, all about ordinary
citizens becoming aroused over special interests and partisan control of
government. The Perot movement inspired important elements of the Contract with
Independents are a huge and largely untapped (by Democrats
and Republicans) force for righting what is wrong with American democracy.
Moreover, the independent sector has grown significantly as ties to the two
major parties have weakened. Today 41% of college students identify themselves as
independents. So do nearly 40% of African Americans under 30.
Independents are a volatile voting bloc. Fifteen years ago
they were “angry white men.” (There were some angry women too – white and black
– but they didn’t get much press.) Today political pros prefer to classify independents
into “lifestyle clusters” defined by social and economic issues (Education
Firsters, the Young Economically Pressured). Nonetheless, however you slice
them, independents invariably erupt over process issues.
Independents are not, as both major parties like to cast
them, merely “swing” voters who can’t make up their minds. In a political
system dominated by a two-party structure, they have refused to identify with
it – whatever their “leanings” might be. Political scientists like Judis and Teixeira, as well as
television commentators like Tony Blankley of the Washington Times, underscore those “leanings” to disparage the
potency of the independent bloc. But it should go without saying that if independents
vote at all, they have to “lean” –
since most election contests only offer a choice between a Democrat and a
Republican.
More significant than any analysis of the “leaners” (which puts independents right back into the
two-party paradigm) is the evidence that the independent voting bloc as a whole
is moving left. Recent polling shows George Bush’s once strong support among non-aligned
voters to be eroding, based on a prevailing belief that he manipulated the
public about weapons of mass destruction in
Polling conducted by Choosing An Independent President 2004
(ChIP), which advocates for and organizes independents as a power bloc, not as
a political party, shows that independents reject Bush by significant margins.
At the same time they are very conflicted about the prospective Democratic
nominee, John Kerry, whom they view as insufficiently outside the establishment
to be effective in engaging special interests.
Independents can be very feisty about their political identity.
A major Democratic pollster recently asked independents the question: “Is there
anything that would make you more likely to become an active supporter of the
Democratic Party?” Twenty-five percent responded point blank – “Nothing. I
don’t like political parties.”
While independents are struggling to define themselves (ChIP
has conducted a year-long process in which independent voters have formed local
groups around the country dedicated to making the independent voter a power
player in national politics), the major parties are desperately trying to
define them, too. Both majors are searching for a way to bring independents
into the fold – or at least to the voting booth for their candidate – without validating
their independence. “It almost doesn’t matter who the Democratic candidate is,”
Joshua Greene recently wrote in The
But how? That’s the Democrats’ dilemma. If, in the pursuit of
ABB, they accentuate process and democracy issues too much, they run the risk
of exposing their own complicity with the Republicans and their poor track
record in fighting for an open and inclusive democratic process. Howard Dean told his followers: “You have the
power.” It turned out that they didn’t. Having raised those populist
expectations, Dean and the Democratic Party must now find a way to put a lid on
the simmering discontent among his supporters.
Yet if Democrats are unwilling to partner with independents
to transform the political culture, they are also vulnerable. Ralph Nader’s
decision to run for the presidency as an independent complicates things for the
Democrats on this score. While he wants to make George Bush Public Enemy No. 1,
he will also hammer the “liberal intelligentsia” and the Democratic Party
itself for failing to stem the tide of political reaction as Congress and the
White House became “corporate-occupied territory.” No wonder the Democratic
Leadership Council is urging Democrats to ignore Nader entirely and relegate
him to the fringe.
But the independent voter, 35% of the electorate, can hardly
be considered fringe. This year, Nader took a step away from the fringe and
towards the mainstream by deciding to run as an independent, not as the
candidate of the Green Party. In 2000 the goal of the Nader campaign was to garner
5% of the vote, thereby establishing the Greens as a national political party
qualified for federal funding in the subsequent presidential cycle. The
campaign fell short, hitting just under 3%. In the end its legacy was not legal
recognition for the Greens, but endless recriminations against Nader for being
a “spoiler.”
Nader refuses to accept that label. But this time around he
has rejected the Green label, too, and is running as an “independent
independent.” The Green Party run was limiting for Nader. Tied to their 5% goal,
he was boxed into a party-line sort of candidacy which constrained his appeal,
particularly since the vast majority of independents don’t like parties. It was
hard to have broad appeal to independent voters when the message was Vote for me to build the party. Being locked
out of the debates certainly hurt Nader in 2000. But so too did his partisan
advocacy, even if it was for a minor party.
Nader has just begun his efforts to contact the non-aligned
independent. His appearance at a national conference of independent voters in
In The Emerging
Republican Majority, written in 1968, the year Richard Nixon won the White
House, Republican strategist Kevin Phillips wrote: “The Democratic Party fell
victim to the ideological impetus of a liberalism which had carried it beyond programs
taxing the few for the benefit of the many (the New Deal) to programs taxing
the many on behalf of the few (the Great Society).” Then, Republicans created a
new conservative governing coalition based on the failures of liberalism. Today,
Democrats believe they can restore a Democratic majority with their
“progressive centrism.”
The independents are more circumspect. They see the failure
of ideology – conservative and liberal – and the need for significant reform and restructuring
that breaks the American political system out of strict party control. They are
far more populist than centrist. Indeed, as many political strategists – from Republican
Karl Rove to Democrat Robert Reich to independent Fred Newman – have observed, there
is no center in American politics any longer. There is, instead, a new paradigm
emerging that is more about the insiders and the outsiders than about left,
right and center. It is independent voters who are propelling that shift. And while
they are a minority, they could nonetheless emerge as a major force for change.
[1] John B. Judis and Ruy Teixeira.
The Emerging Democratic Majority.