I have no idea how this will translate in the midterms, but the independent vote swinging back to the Democrats is a welcome development.
Independents helped push the election close in 2000, and thanks to terrorism swung it to the GOP in 2002 and 2004. The media won’t broach the topic, but what began to shatter this image was Katrina. You read and study enough history and you see that events like this are true catalysts in American history. It’s no coincidence that Bush’s already shaky support took the nosedive from which it has not recovered right after Katrina, and then Iraq. Bush is only supported by the hardest of the hardcore of the Republican party. He never had Democrats, lost the few Democrats he had and has lost independents and moderate Republicans (if the Dems retake the House/Senate it will be thanks to the northeast and the west).
There is something to be said from how Bush campaigned as a "compassionate conservative" but then took a hard right turn once in office, even though he had less people vote for him. Then after winning a close re-election, he declared that he had a mandate and embarked on the worst domestic policy crusade (privatizing social security) since health care reform in the ’90s.
People on my side of the aisle regularly chide President Clinton from not governing from the most progressive position, and on some issues I agree with that, but the failure of the Bush administration is that he has never governed as the leader of all Americans. The next Democratic president most govern as the president of us all, Democrat, Republican, and Independent. It’s the American tradition, and its what’s right.
So my take on this group of voters is that they are generally skeptical of both political parties but they are also not inclined to making radical or precipitous adjustments. Members of both the Democratic and Republican party are apt to believe that these voters take far too long to decide that its time to toss out one group and enable the other…but I would argue that they are demonstrating what I might call the jurors mentality…they see the party in power as innocent until proven guilty. They sit back, evaluate the evidence, and then speak with a resounding and definitive voice. Again, I don’t want to predict an outcome but I do like to study the factors and attempt to offer some informed speculation…and it appears that these voters are prepared to be heard.
The fact that independents voted with the GOP for a number of years wasn’t necessarily an across the board endorsement of Republican values and should the presumed shift to the Democratic Party take place in November, I would still argue that they haven’t made a clear ideological shift. Frankly, I tend to believe that they would actually prefer that values issues be personal decisions and not an integral component of a political agenda…but they aren’t usually offered that choice so they vote on the issues that they find meaningful and accept that they are attached to a larger agenda.
In my opinion, independent and moderate thinking voters appear to have made the conclusion that the GOP should no longer be in power and they plan to vote accordingly. Further, if my theory is correct, it shouldn’t be difficult to predict when this group of voters is going to say enough is enough. We often hear assertions that voters are stupid…but if my speculation is correct…it may well be the politicians and those in positions of power that are guilty of stupidity. The bottom line is that it looks like that message is about to be delivered.
Read more here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
Refusing to meet with Cindy Sheehan the previous August (or even to send Laura down with a glass of lemonade) followed by the Terry Schiavo debacle I think created the narrative structure in which the Katrina story could be told - rank indifference and breathtaking hypocrisy.