In this era in which hyperpartisans — on both far sides of the aisle — have become adept at screaming their mantras and building their straw men, frequently dominating what passes for “debate,” something very interesting is happening in California.
The partisans are beginning to evaporate.
In 1990, California had 12 million voters registered as members of the two major parties. Today, after an increase of about 2 million in the number of registered voters, we still have only 12 million voters registered to the two major parties. The Democratic and Republican parties have not grown at all in California …
… The themes that work with independent voters are themes of a creative center. Support for government coupled with skepticism about governmental efficiency and new taxes. Tolerance and support for individual rights and diversity coupled with support for law and order programs. Strong support for environmental protection coupled with strong support for technological innovation and entrepreneurship.
Right now all that is working for Schwarzenegger while the conventional Republicans of the partisan right and the conventional Democrats of the partisan left scramble for attention and support.
Read the rest at Politics Central …
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Let’s hope the independents crowd out the shrill partisan hacks.
The hacks will keep doing their thing as long as they get paid up until their parties wake up.
As I’ve said before, with a majority of voters not registered in either party of the incumbent duopoly, all debates need to be open to all ballot qualified candidates and parties. Otherwise we independent and insurgent /third party voters are not represented, the spectrum of opinion is narrowed to a few sound byte issues, and new ideas and alternative solutions are denied a hearing.
Now that Angelides is speaking out as an ‘anti-war’ candidate, Peter Camejo has welcomed his stance and challenged him to further debate the issues he’s been actually working on for years.
Hyper partisan politics remind me of the dinosaurs…we will be digging them up for examination and learning from our dead political past. Unless, the younger generation of Westly’s and Newsom’s can change history.
I’m with Paul on this one. We should not tolerate the dinosaur parties’ exclusive access to debates and press exposure. The fact that the minors are unlikely to win the instant horse race doesn’t mean they’re irrelevant. There’s more at stake than the winner’s trophy. Election cycles are also about discussion of ideas and a vision for the future, and present a fleeting opportunity to engage Joe and Jane Public in those discussions. The public is cheated of that civic opportunity by the exclusion of all messages other than the canned pablum of the two machines who together have rigged redistricting to perpetuate themselves.
I’m sure this is very popular with many of Bill’s sources.
Undoubtedly.
“Voter registration is growing at a much slower rate than the population. Only 15.7 million of California’s 27.7 million adults are registered to vote”.
And this same PPIC study found that the majority of those 15.7 million adults are “predominately white,age 45,and older, relatively affluent” and homeowners….with “very different political views” than non-voters, who are mostly under age 45, renters ,non college graduates, low -income…so while California became by 2000 the first “large majority minority state” the self interest of the voting population “dominates the ballot box.”
Turning around the above is not just dependent of voter registration drives, it is much more dependent on public school education getting its act together. The above situation will take years to to turn around, but it won’t turn around at all with drop-out rates of minority kids like we have in LA Unified and throughout California…Education is the civil rights issue for this century…those were Antonio V.’s words, he understands the urgency of this issue,hence his take-over plan of LA Unified, and Arnold said the same thing at the last Reep convention, so I am hopeful that times are changing for the better…especially for California kids.
Bill:
interesting post. I fit squarely within it – lifelong Democrat, worked in Democratic campaigns and for Dem. politicians, but I now support AS. I moved here from Washington, D.C. – where I was considered a fairly liberal Dem., but out here, I find I’m actually a conservative Dem. And increasingly, I have no use for the collection of special interest groups in California, which are collectively known as the Cal. Democratic Party. the only good thing I can say about them is that they’re better than the right-wing theocracy which masks itself as the national Republican party.
I agree with Paul and Wilbur – let’s find out a way to get some of these independents involved in a substantive way…
Can’t say that I find much disagreement in anything Paul, Wilbur or Tim writes. And I especially agree with Wilbur on redistricting.
I would also like to see a change in term limits. Understand that it’s unlikely, but you would have a hard time convincing me that it’s not a major part of the problem.
Given the emerging new reality, the partisan play in elections will be to create a toxic environment that repels less committed voters.
That sounds like the Democratic primary.
Bill:
well, that certainly explains what the Dems. did this year in their primary. I hope the people pushing that hyper-partisan agenda are happy with the results – it’s hard to see how they could be, but one never knows…
not to let the Reps. off the hook here, either. They’ve often done the same thing in California – just not this year, at least not in the governor’s race – probably because they had no chance to. But they’re just as bad as the left-wing zealots…
If voters express their disgust by voting in big numbers for minors and independents, rather than just staying home as the partisans would prefer, it could be a wake-up call. The majors will only start playing to the disaffected middle instead of just their special interest constituencies when it stops being profitable and starts to carry a price. It’s a B.F Skinner thing.
It also could help greatly that Arnold is demonstrating just how much gold there is in that middle vein. (Just pray that he stays there after all that purple ink has dried.) IF the Reeps could finally learn from this that their path to success lies nearer the middle (I know, fat chance) and started moving that way, the Dems might have to respond in kind. One could wish that the Dems would start to learn that lesson themselves after this apparently imminent drubbing, but sadly I fear they’ll just shrug that off as evidence of a lousy campaign.
But more than anything else I believe that redistricting to produce competitive districts, and thus contests for the hearts and minds of DTS’s and crossovers, is the key to changing the parties’ own calculations and thus their behavior. If the League of Women Voters and their ilk do not pick up that flag and run it from the roots I will be sorely disappointed.
Everybody goes down kicking and screaming in this business.
I would hope at some point the redistricting issue becomes passable in the legislature. I’m also hoping this will happen in the next 4 years since the promise was made to deal with it this year but then got dumped. It would make races competitive and give those in the middle something to get involved with. To me it ranks up at the top of any agenda.