Uncovered Politics Features a History of Party Switching in the US Senate

Darcy G. Richardson and Austin Cassidy have teamed up to launch a new website this month: Uncovered Politics. Darcy Richardson is an author and historian who has written a six part history of the American third party and independent political tradition. Austin Cassidy is a political-media activist, among other things, co-founder of Independent Political Report and Third Party Watch. Understandably, then, the new site is devoted to covering "longshots, insurgents and underdogs." From the "about" page:

Uncovered Politics was launched in May of 2010 as a website dedicated to covering the stories the major media often misses. Our primary focus is on insurgents, underdogs and longshots. We cover Republicans, Democrats and those working outside the major parties.

Uncovered Politics thus promises to provide a unique perspective on our contemporary politics. And if its current featured article is any guide, UP will certainly deliver. In the piece, Darcy examines Arlen Specter's recent primary loss in the context of historical "party switchers," finding that the Republican-turned-Democrat is among the few who have lost their seats. Whereas comparable corporate and mainstream media analyses have compared Specter with the likes of Joe Lieberman and perhaps Jim Jeffords, Darcy's informed and informative piece glosses the careers of nine other US Senate party switchers over the course of the twentieth century. Some short excerpts from a lengthy piece:

One of the most famous examples of success — from someone without a party, no less — was that of Nebraska’s George W. Norris, a three-term Republican lawmaker who bolted to become an independent in 1936 . . .

In 1940, Minnesota Farmer-Laborite Henrik Shipstead, a distinguished-looking Glenwood dentist whose early domestic political views foreshadowed FDR’s New Deal, successfully switched to the Republican Party . . .

The Progressive Party’s Robert M. La Follette, Jr., of Wisconsin, son of the late “Fighting Bob,” rejoined the Republican Party when his state’s dejected Progressives, meeting in Portage in March 1946, voted to officially align with the GOP . . .

Six years later, Oregon’s Wayne Morse unceremoniously shed his Republican attire and became the first independent to serve in the Senate since Nebraska’s Norris . . .

J. Strom Thurmond’s situation was very different from that of Pennsylvania’s Specter. Having bolted from the national Democratic Party in 1948 to run for president on a States’ Rights ticket and spectacularly winning a seat in the U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate six years later . . .

The same thing was true of Virginia’s Harry F. Byrd, Jr. Fearing that the Democratic primary electorate might reject him, Byrd dropped out of the Democratic Party in 1970 and was easily re-elected as an independent later that autumn, becoming only the second senator in history to win as an independent . . .

Read the whole thing. Such pieces are the perfect antidote to the revisionist political history preferred by the ideologues of the two-party state and duopoly system of government, and their mouthpieces in the corporate media. The development of a site like Uncovered Politics was perhaps as inevitable as it is necessary. I'll certainly be checking in regularly.