Those Mysterious Independent Voters

Are independent voters really so mysterious?

Why is it that our simple refusal to claim party affiliation leads supposedly intelligent political writers/bloggers to speculate wildly about what goes on in the mind of an independent? I posted about this before, back when David Brooks wondered "What independents want".

I've been an independent from the time I first registered to vote until the 2008 primaries. Did I suddenly see the wisdom of playing for a team? Uh, no. I changed my registration for the specific purpose of voting in the primary, a right otherwise denied me in my state. I do not self-identify as a Republican, and there's a very real possibility I'll switch to Democrat for the next primary, based on what happens with PA's redistricting. I'm a moderate conservative, social libertarian, and -- at heart and in my mind -- an independent still.

So I get annoyed by the folks like Brooks who wonder in print what it is we independents want. I stick by my common sense answer from the time -- Why not actually ask one?!

Seems maybe that's a little too much like work... why not just make shit up? And hey! The more insulting, the better!

Take, for example, "The Indy Conundrum" over at Mother Jones where Kevin Drum has the answer:

First: the vast, vast majority of independents don't really have any idea what Obama's plan to handle the deficit is. They just know that (a) the deficit is high and (b) Obama is president.

Aahhhhh. I see. We're stupid. Reminds me of Brooks. (Cue the flashback music and wavy graphics.)

"If I were a politician trying to win back independents, I’d say something like this: When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. Each state was a piece...."

Heh. That line still pisses me off.

Anyway, Drum wasn't finished. (Don't blame me for the interruption. It was Brooks.)

Beyond that, there are kids to get to school, laundry to be done, bosses to be pleased, and leaky faucets to be fixed. The details of the deficit debate are just a bit of partisan background noise that they haven't really parsed yet.

See that? Not only are we stupid, we apparently suffer from the world's first case of collective ADD.

"Don't bother me with Teh Poly-ticks right now, sonny! The dishwarsher's runnin', the dog needs put out and I gotta get to work! How many thoughts do you think my precious little head can hold all at once?!"

(As an aside, this might be the first valid reason I've ever seen to join a political party... Mussolini got the trains running on time, and apparently when you pick up that little "D" or "R", all the broken crap in your house is magically repaired so you can concentrate on toeing the party line! Yea! Where do I sign up? My dishwasher hasn't worked since the hippies screwed with the soap formula.)

Seriously, what the hell?

Drum's brain fart brilliant observations were provoked by a Washington Post piece on the new McClatchy-Marist poll. It shows that while independents tend to feel similar to Obama on tax hikes and Medicare/Medicaid cuts, they still don't approve of the job he's done on the deficit... or really, the job he's done overall.

Thus, it's a mystery! An enigma! A fer-gawds-sakes CONUNDRUM!

Except it isn't.

A lot of moderates and independents allowed themselves to be bamboozled into believing Obama was himself somewhat moderate. (Not this indy. I'd heard his little critique of the Constitution early on and was telling friends and family the man was a socialist before he ever ran across the football-tossing plumber.)

A lot of independents and moderates did want change. -- Until they got a taste of the kinds of change Obama had in mind. Ramming through unread, unwanted legislation... government takeover of the auto industry... the stimulus... TARP... czars... class warfare... public sector vs. private sector... redefining "opaque" as "transparent"...

Are you getting my point?

And yet, now that Obama is back in campaign mode, the liberal press/bloggers want to make it as if it's the independent voters with the problem and not the President. (Don't bother to comment or email that Brooks is a conservative. Bovine excrement. He's a conservative like I'm an Olympic athlete. Read: Not friggin' remotely.)

So, in the interest of saving these heavy thinkers some actual effort at their craft, please allow me to repeat what I wrote in response to Brooks barely a year after the election. And bear in mind, I can't speak for all independents. (We hate that! Something the two parties have never been able to figure out.) But it isn't that different from what my conservative friends think:

...THAT'S what independents want most. A government that listens to its people, and does what we want. A government that remembers American people have minds (some of them damn brilliant), and treats us accordingly. A government that serves us instead of ruling us. A government that protects us without controlling us. A government that provides the framework, and then gets the hell out of our way.

Mystery solved.

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Pre-Posting UPDATE:

I wrote this yesterday (Wed., April 20) and didn't get a chance to post it. (I had to take the rabbit to get neutered, and hooboy do you ever wanna read that post when it goes up. Or maybe you don't...)

Anyway, I'm glad life got in the way for a minute. It gave me a chance to go and read the McClatchy-Marist poll results myself. Which I should have done in the first place. Turns out, the independent numbers track pretty closely to the overall voter numbers.

So Independents aren't the problem. Obama is the problem.

And the only real mystery here is how Drum came to his (baseless) conclusions...

But don't be too rough on him. Maybe his dishwasher won't work with hippy soap either. Can't expect him to concentrate on that and make sound political judgements at the same time, right?


Cross-posted at Republican Redefined.

David Brooks - Educated Idiot

I read the NYTimes piece by David Brooks yesterday. You know... the one where he breaks political disagreement down into the "educated class" and the rest of us ignorant, uneducated yahoos who don't know enough to listen to our betters.

Now, I already didn't like this guy. He's conservative like I'm a Siamese twin. (Meaning: Not at all, and only a blind fool would believe otherwise.) I've already addressed his less than stellar article on independent voters, and I was all set to rip into this latest bit of condescending, elitist crap.

I'm not the only one... Seems quite a few bloggers want a piece of Brooks this week. The Other McCain muses "How bad does David Brooks suck?", while Michelle Malkin subtly slams him by saying, "It’s David Brooks who needs to grow up."

But my absolute favorite reaction to Brooks' latest babble comes from Russ at That's Right. He captured my feelings towards Brooks and his verbal vomitus perfectly with this:

"David Brooks is a blithering idiot. Period. Fully aware of sounding like a pompous ass myself, by whatever metric you choose to measure intelligence, I would dust Brooks twice on any topic before breakfast."

Not only that, but I'll go farther. If you put this elitist jerk (or Obama... or most of Congress) in the real world with $10 bucks in his pocket and did the same with me (or most of the "uneducated class" Brooks looks down his nose at) and said "Now go survive!" - at the end of the bitter winter only one of us would be still standing. His glorious education may have equipped him for feeling superior to the rest of us, but I doubt it would serve him in any practical survival sense. Personally, I'll keep my practical skills and common sense, which will be more useful to me in life. And if things ever get too bad, maybe Brooks can figure out how to eat his education.

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UPDATE: Linked by RepublicanRedefined. Thanks!
Also, linked back by That's Right.

What Do Independents REALLY Want?

Hmmmmmm. There's been a lot of speculation by both parties about the independent voters. Since there are so many of us not affiliated with a party, both teams seem to be trying to decide what it is we independents are really after, and how they can recruit our vote for their side. Nearly every article on politics at this point has some angle on how the independents are the wild card, and winning us over is the key to success. Problem is, they can't seem to figure out what we want.

There isn't an easy answer. As independents, we tend to be... well... independent. What we want varies wildly in specifics. It would seem sensible, to me at least, for our politicians to reach out to us and ask what we want. They poll for everything else, right?

Instead, each team seems to have a preconceived notion of us and what we're all about. Yesterday, I read an article about independents written by a conservative author in a liberal publication. Sounds bizarre promising, right? Let's break down David Brooks NY Times article then, shall we?

"Independents are herds of cats who find out what they think through a meandering process of discovery."

What the hell does this even mean? Herds of cats? Meandering process of discovery? This makes it sound as though independents are blundering cluelessly through the world, and only making decisions if we trip across truth. OK... He has to have something better than that, right?

"The first thing to say is that this recession has hit the new suburbs hardest, exactly where independents are likely to live."

Not much better. Apparently Mr. Brooks thinks we independents are gathered into enclaves like immigrants used to group together in the slums of Young America. If this were the case, you'd see a bigger showing of independent votes in certain precincts and districts. In turn, you'd see a shift in elected representatives from those areas, and an actual independent political base. The truth is, we're much like cockroaches. We're everywhere, scattered across every demographic group and living among those who've picked a side.

"The second thing to say is that in this time of need, these voters are not turning to government for support."

Ummm... Hence the term "independent", right? We don't support any party, and we don't expect any party to support us. I'd give Mr. Brooks credit for this point, if it weren't such a self-obvious explanation that he never needed to say it to begin with.

"Americans have moved to the right on abortion, immigration and global warming."

I don't necessarily agree with this. I think politics has slid sooo far left on these issues that simply being moderate makes one appear right-leaning. In a herd of white cats (to borrow his metaphor), the ivory one stands out.

"If I were a politician trying to win back independents, I’d say something like this: When I was a kid, I had a jigsaw puzzle of the U.S. Each state was a piece...."

So, politicians who wish to follow Mr. Brooks advice should address independents like we're slow children, painstakingly explaining the situation to us? Heh. Try it, I dare ya. Being an independent or undecided voter does not mean a person is intellectually inferior or uninformed, and most independents I know personally or read in media would not respond well at all to this tactic. Want to piss off an independent? Treat him/her like an idiot. If we wanted to be told what to think, we'd sign on to a party and not be independent.

Well, so far THIS independent isn't too impressed with Mr. Brooks and his brilliant insight into my mind. But maybe he ends with a good point, some gem of understanding that will enlighten not only the independents, but those struggling to understand us...?

"Independents support the party that seems most likely to establish a frame of stability and order, within which they can lead their lives. They can’t always articulate what they want, but they withdraw from any party that threatens turmoil and risk. As always, they’re looking for a safe pair of hands."

Ah. I see. So we're back to independents as insecure children (of questionable intelligence) casting blindly for someone, anyone, to pat us on the head and keep us safe from turmoil.

How patently offensive. How completely arrogant and clueless. THIS nonsense is what drives away independents, and any politician foolish enough to take a word of this a fact deserves exactly what they get.

So, then... what do independents really want? I'm not a respected journalist, like Mr. Brooks, but I AM an independent. As such, I feel a little more qualified to answer. I've already said, the specifics of what we want vary wildly. We don't always agree, even amongst ourselves. But there are some general points I think are pretty much universal among independents. Ready?

We want the government to do its job, and only that. Get out of our personal business, and everybody else's. THIS independent doesn't care if gay people want to get married or grown adults want to smoke pot. I want my government to protect me from people who are an actual danger to society and leave the rest of us alone. Both parties struggle to put up candidates who take a hard line on things that are not government's business, and alienate those of us who don't care. Not every independent agrees with me on my examples, but as a whole, we do agree that government oversteps its bounds when it gets into our personal lives.

We want the government to be fiscally responsible. If I ran my home and checkbook the way the government runs finance, I'd have serious problems. STOP spending money you don't have (but take from us) on foolish things, and you'd have more to spend on necessities. Do what the rest of us do. If you don't have the money for something that must be funded, trim your budget before taking out a loan! Learn to do without things that are not essential. And actually spend money on the things the government is supposed to -- a stronger military, better education, and our infrastructure.

Stop making the government bigger. By definition, independent means we don't WANT taken care of and told what to do every second we breathe. We're turned off by the constant expansion of government into everything we are and everything we have. SMALLER government is better government.

Stop fooling around when it comes to the wars we're engaged in. Either get our troops out, or give them the money they need. This current holding pattern is ludicrous. Pick an option and DO IT! Your stance may turn out to be unpopular later, but for gawd's sake, take a side. Stop playing politics with people's lives.

And finally, you'd really better drop this idea that we're intellectually sub-par, or some mysterious phenomenon to be debated and understood. Both parties stand to lose elections if they choose this tactic. I vote for the candidate I think is best after carefully researching their positions with no thought to the letter next to their name. And I can tell you that I put a lot of weight into whether I think a politician is trying to decide what is best for me, regardless of my opinion on the matter. Want to lose my vote? Assume you know what I think without LISTENING to me.

Because THAT'S what independents want most. A government that listens to its people, and does what we want. A government that remembers American people have minds (some of them damn brilliant), and treats us accordingly. A government that serves us instead of ruling us. A government that protects us without controlling us. A government that provides the framework, and then gets the hell out of our way.

See? No mystery. Next time you want to know what independents think, just ASK one. What a nice change that would be...