On the Promulgation of Independence

At The Hankster, Nancy Hanks features an article by Jackie Salit, a long-time independent political activist in New York, on the state and direction of independent politics in US. In the piece, Salit argues that though independents have swung to the left over the course of the last twenty or so years due to the work of independent progressive activists – "In 1992, 19 million independents voted for Ross Perot. In 2008, 19 million independents voted for Barack Obama" –, she warns Democrats:

Independents are vulnerable to being peeled away by the Republican right. The Pew Research Center reports that were the 2010 midterms to be held today, independents would lean towards Republicans by a 43 to 38 percent margin . . .

If Republicans are increasing their influence among independents, it’s also because the Democratic Party Left has not been a friend to the independent movement. Sure, Democrats were happy that indies broke for Obama. But they were disappointed that we didn’t become Democrats. They equate progressivism with being in the Democratic Party. But they’re wrong.

Neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party has been enthusiastic about the development of indies as a third force. For different reasons, surely. But they share a common goal: to maintain the primacy of two-value logic (where there is only one or the other, never neither) and make sure independents are passive companions. That’s one reason that the fight for open primaries – which allow independents to cast ballots in every round of voting – and the campaign to appoint independents to the Federal Election Commission are so important. Those fights are about our right to participate and our right to represent our interests in changing the political culture.

That independents appear to be "leaning" more toward Republicans than Democrats likely has less to do with "increasing Republican influence among independents" than it does with the fact that a great many newly declared independents are former Republicans. In any case, however, independent activists should be more concerned with ensuring that independent voters are offered the choice of a viable independent alternative to the duopoly party candidates in as many elections as possible, than they should about which of the two duopoly parties pollsters claim independents are "leaning" toward. As long as independents continue to legitimate the Democratic and Republican Parties by supporting either of them in any fashion whatsoever, whether passively or actively, they will never constitute a true "third force" in US politics but will rather continue to help in the maintenance of the two-party state and the political status quo, and hence aid in the reproduction of their alienation from representative government.