The Rise of the Independents
Â?Right now, both parties are way too far apart and nobody is looking out for the good of the people,Â? he said.
He speaks for me.
The rising number of people who are fed up with their own party but don't feel they can cross over is increasing. Both parties frequently speak of "The Big Tent" they enjoy but I think the tent is only so big. Try being critical of the Bush administration and stay in the good graces of the GOP. Try supporting the war on the Dems side and see what happens. The "Big Tent" line is used to keep the dissenters in line long enough to get them to cast their vote. Thindependentsts as swing voters is not new. It's been a fact for decades. Each side enjoys a core consituency they have to turn out to win. Without their base they will undoubtedly lose. Similarly, they have to appeal to the center. There is the real trouble. The primaries are designed to gin up the base and support the right guy. How do you appeal to the center without diluting your message? That's the eternal question and as Rove has shown, metrics is everything. Messages must me massaged and modulated and timed and released and so on. That worked very well before Web 2.0 but now that's over. The 529's have destroyed message discipline and blogs and YouTube were the deathstroke. Now the most active, partisan sectors of the party hold sway. They're the ones willing to be the loudest and most shrill voices on a very limited budget. That gets people's attention and the rest of the party is painted with the same brush, rightly or wrongly.
Will the center ever coalesce into it's own party? Unlikely. The voters are swing voters for a reason. They're not very comfortable with a party label and don't care much for the 15 second soundbite and absurd ads about how "Candidate X is a family man and likes puppies." Blech.
DonViti is a critic of negative campaign ads and I understand why. They're dangerous ground and are often unseemly and borderline smearing. However, most issue ads are negative ones. If you ever see an ad for a candidate that you don't know it's impossible to tell which party the guy belongs to. The ads are all the same. In favor of: Good government, good schools, safe streets, working families and seniors. Well, great thanks. That tells me nothing. However, show me an ad that says "My opponent voted in favor of/against tax cuts" and that's something that tells me something.
I have a sense that the independent voters will be a phantom party as they are now, only larger. I also see that as a tremendous good for the country as well as both parties. The more they have to cater to the middle to win, the more tempered they will become. Cool heads make for good governance. The frothing indignancy of the left and the smug self-assurance of the right needs to be moderated by people who cast a skeptical eye on The One True Vision being foisted onto us. Less party affiliation also decreases the value of gerrymandering and thereby incumbency.
Those are not bugs, they're features.
He speaks for me.
The rising number of people who are fed up with their own party but don't feel they can cross over is increasing. Both parties frequently speak of "The Big Tent" they enjoy but I think the tent is only so big. Try being critical of the Bush administration and stay in the good graces of the GOP. Try supporting the war on the Dems side and see what happens. The "Big Tent" line is used to keep the dissenters in line long enough to get them to cast their vote. Thindependentsts as swing voters is not new. It's been a fact for decades. Each side enjoys a core consituency they have to turn out to win. Without their base they will undoubtedly lose. Similarly, they have to appeal to the center. There is the real trouble. The primaries are designed to gin up the base and support the right guy. How do you appeal to the center without diluting your message? That's the eternal question and as Rove has shown, metrics is everything. Messages must me massaged and modulated and timed and released and so on. That worked very well before Web 2.0 but now that's over. The 529's have destroyed message discipline and blogs and YouTube were the deathstroke. Now the most active, partisan sectors of the party hold sway. They're the ones willing to be the loudest and most shrill voices on a very limited budget. That gets people's attention and the rest of the party is painted with the same brush, rightly or wrongly.
Will the center ever coalesce into it's own party? Unlikely. The voters are swing voters for a reason. They're not very comfortable with a party label and don't care much for the 15 second soundbite and absurd ads about how "Candidate X is a family man and likes puppies." Blech.
DonViti is a critic of negative campaign ads and I understand why. They're dangerous ground and are often unseemly and borderline smearing. However, most issue ads are negative ones. If you ever see an ad for a candidate that you don't know it's impossible to tell which party the guy belongs to. The ads are all the same. In favor of: Good government, good schools, safe streets, working families and seniors. Well, great thanks. That tells me nothing. However, show me an ad that says "My opponent voted in favor of/against tax cuts" and that's something that tells me something.
I have a sense that the independent voters will be a phantom party as they are now, only larger. I also see that as a tremendous good for the country as well as both parties. The more they have to cater to the middle to win, the more tempered they will become. Cool heads make for good governance. The frothing indignancy of the left and the smug self-assurance of the right needs to be moderated by people who cast a skeptical eye on The One True Vision being foisted onto us. Less party affiliation also decreases the value of gerrymandering and thereby incumbency.
Those are not bugs, they're features.
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