How to Win the Battle and Lose the War: Elect Republicans and Democrats

Jake Towne, who is running for Congress as an independent libertarian in Pennsylvania's 15th district, reflects on Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts and concludes: "Scott Brown is just another Republocrat." Towne writes:

Brown is a career politician who has been in the Massachusetts state congress for 11 years. His Issues page is full of run-of-the-mill generalizations (although briefer than mine, something I am working on). There is zero mention of the most important foreign policy topic – the simultaneous wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, while he absurdly devotes a section to support Israel's border walls. Even on health care, while taking a direct stance against the Democrat plan, he supports nationalizing health care and has voted for the Romney health care tax solution which he offhandedly ADMITS is ailing, as I pointed out in my health care plank last summer.

During his victory speech (starting at about 4:30):

We're past campaign mode. I think it's important for everyone to get some form of health care. So, to offer a basic plan for everybody, I think is important. It’s just a question of whether we are going to raise taxes, we’re going to cut a half a trillion from Medicare, and we’re going to affect Veteran’s care. I think we can do it better. And to just be the 41st Senator and bring it back to the drawing board. There are some very good things as you just pointed out in the national plan that is being proposed.

The message cannot be any clearer – while those who oppose a health care takeover may have won a battle, they will still lose the war with poor choices like Brown. As Massachusetts voters are 51% independent/third party, Brown promoted himself as the independent's candidate, and successfully marginalized Coakley as an incumbent and made it into a single-issue election. Tea parties across the nation donated funds to his campaign's coffers, ignoring a true independent candidate, Joe Kennedy, who really did stand for removing the government from health care.

On the Inevitable Failure of Strategic Infiltration, or, the Degeneration of Tea Party Activists into Petty Party Functionaries

The state of moral, intellectual and political abjection that has been achieved by the Democratic-Republican duopoly system of government has become so deep that virtually every event of some political import leads to calls for third party and independent opposition to the two-party state. Indeed, the reproduction of the two-party state itself appears at this point to hinge on creating the appearance of opposition to the two-party state. For instance, Scott Brown's victory in the special election in Massachusetts was predicated upon his assertion, contrary to fact, that he is an independent and not, as is obvious from his record, a garden variety career politician in the duopolist mold. Perhaps at some point Brown will be forced to declare his political independence from the Republican Party in accordance with the old dictum, attributed to Kurt Vonnegut, that we are what we pretend to be. But, whatever the case may be in that regard, Brown's victory has led to a new consciousness of the power wielded by voters unaffiliated with either of the duopoly parties. CNN's Jack Cafferty, who certainly considers himself an independent, recently asked his viewers what it will take "to get a viable third party going in this country":

what we're seeing in places like Massachusetts, and also in those governors' races in New Jersey and Virginia, is swing voters swinging the other way. It's sort of like watching large groups of people rushing from one side of the Titanic to the other, causing the ship to lurch alternately from port to starboard - left to right. We just went through this a year ago when they all ran away from the Republicans and to the Democrats. Fact is, neither option is any good. Both parties stink. Our government is broken and no longer serves the needs of the people. Time for real change. Here’s my question to you: What will it take to get a viable third party going in this country?

Of course, this is precisely the wrong question to ask since there already are a number of viable third parties in the United States. The more pressing question is: what will it take to get US voters to end their abusive, co-dependent relationship with the duopoly parties? Consider how many tea party activists have proven incapable of liberating themselves from the ideology of the two-party state and now advocate an infiltrationist strategy that stands in direct contradiction with the movement's original opposition to Democratic-Republican politics as such. Ironically, if they continue down this road, they will likely suffer the same fate as the progressive anti-war movement, which was co-opted and then defeated by the Democratic Party. Support for Scott Brown's Senate campaign among tea party activists is a clear sign of the movement's degeneration. Many might be surprised to learn that the day after the election, Brown emphasized that he supports national health care, saying "there are some very good things in the national plan that's being proposed." But not all tea party groups fell for the ruses of the duopoly parties' propaganda machines. The Boston Tea Party, for instance, endorsed independent Libertarian Joe Kennedy's bid for US Senate in Massachusetts.

Establishmentarian Republicans no longer even hide the fact that they are explicitly pursuing a co-optation strategy with respect to the tea party movement. Neil Cavuto recently interviewed Dan Quayle and asked the former Vice President about "that whole tea party stuff" and whether it represents a "potent third party." Dan Quayle came right out and said it:

here's the challenge of my Party, is basically to co-opt the populist movement, the so-called Tea Party Folks whether they are Republicans or Democrats.

Naturally, tea party activists overtly and vehemently reject this notion even as they tacitly accept it. At Right Wing News, Warner Todd Huston writes of Quayle:

These guys just don't get it that the Tea Party goers have the political power here. They don't understand that their flawed Country Club Republican way of thinking has been rejected by the people. If they want to stay in power, the GOP better come to terms with the ideals and principles as espoused by the nation-wide phenomenon that is the Tea Party movement . . . You can't "co-opt" us, Mr. Quayle. You will be lucky if WE co-opt YOU!

But the co-optation of the tea party movement by the Republican Party is already in full swing, and is perhaps most clear in the adoption of the neighborhood precinct strategy. Bob Adelmann sums up the idea at the New American:

The strategy that has spread rapidly across the internet is “The Neighborhood Precinct Committeeman Strategy” which, according to the popular website Resistnet.com “entails a tried-and-true, peaceful, Constitutional, ballot box solution to our present political predicament.” According to the strategy, all one has to do is to “go to a Republican Party meeting or walk a precinct on behalf of a candidate.” According to Darla who outlined this strategy in detail, presidential candidate Obama used this strategy to defeat Hillary Clinton.

The infiltration of the Republican Party by tea party activists is the co-optation of the tea party movement by the Republican Party. Such groups are as deluded as their progressive counterparts in the Democratic Party. Their emulation and adoption of the Obama strategy, which they deride as "far left radicalism," is evidence of their complete capitulation to that which they claim to oppose. Instead of organizing real, independent opposition to the Democratic-Republican two-party state and duopoly system of government, these activists have chosen to accommodate the ruling political establishment by becoming its willing functionaries and call it resistance!

Corporatist Liberalism Victorious in Massachusetts

At Ballot Access News, Richard Winger provides the results from yesterday's special election in Massachusetts:

At the point at which 94% of the vote had been counted in the special U.S. Senate race in Massachusetts, the vote was: 1,148,400 for the Republican nominee; 1,029,600 for the Democratic nominee; 22,100 for the Libertarian who was running as an independent candidate. The percentages at that point were: Republican 52.2%; Democratic 46.8%; Libertarian independent 1.0%. Here is a newspaper interview with the Libertarian candidate, Joseph Kennedy, conducted after the results were known.

Yesterday, at the Humble Libertarian, W.E. Messamore compared liberal Republican Scott Brown's candidacy with that of independent Libertarian Joe Kennedy:

One candidate supported a major tax increase on the people of Massachusetts. The other opposes tax increases on principle. One candidate supported and helped pass Massachusetts' 2006 universal health care law. The other opposed it. One supports President Barack Obama's foreign policy. The other is unequivocally opposed to it. One is a lawyer. The other is a businessman with a background in information technology, computer science, and business management. One was born to a political family, and held signs for their father at a young age. The other was born to poor immigrants and adopted as an infant by a pastor and his wife. One supports the nanny state and agrees with Barack Obama's opposition to gay marriage, but support for civil unions. The other believes government should stay out of the issue of marriage altogether. One supports the Federal government's role in taxing income, regulating education, and allowing the Federal Reserve Bank to continue printing money out of thin air. The other adamantly opposes all three.

The first candidate in the comparisons above is not Democrat Martha Coakley . . . The first candidate is actually Republican Scott Brown, who as a state senator voted for a major tax package and Romney's universal healthcare plan, who supports Obama's reckless troop surge in Afghanistan, and who is a career lawyer and politician. The second candidate is the Libertarian Party candidate in the Massachusetts' Special Senate Election, Joe Kennedy.

MA Special Election: Media Analysts Predict Majority Will Prove Decisive

The trajectory of the special election for the open US Senate seat in Massachusetts has defied the expectations of both professional politicians and the mainstream media's armies of analysts. Fixated on the imaginary political and ideological color coordination provided by the binary "Red State/Blue State" divide, such strategists and pundits marvel that their totemistic model of political antagonism has failed to predict the particular contours of the race. Ironically, however, this election has demonstrated that what passes for insight, according to the political media's conventional wisdom, is little more than trite tautology. I am referring, of course, to the claim that it is independent voters who cast the decisive vote in American elections. It would be a difficult, if not impossible, task to track down an electoral contest in recent memory where this proposition was not put forward by some analyst, strategist or other.

Though it is often asserted that Massachusetts is a Democratic Party stronghold, the majority of its registered voters are not affiliated with either of the major parties, which is to say, the majority of registered voters in Massachusetts are independent. Were it not for the professional obscurantistism practiced by the political press and the spokesmouths of the duopoly parties, it might not be considered deep insight to assert that the majority of voters will decide a given election. Let's look at a few examples. In the Christian Science Monitor, Tracey Samuelson writes:

Massachusetts has long been regarded as a liberal stronghold, but the special election to replace Sen. Edward Kennedy in the US Senate is showing Massachusetts has a more conservative streak as well. State Sen. Scott Brown (R) is proving to be a major challenge for Attorney General Martha Coakley (D), who was heavily favored early in the race; a poll released late Thursday had Mr. Brown leading Ms. Coakley by 4 percentage points. Brown’s success may have to do with his ability to appeal to independent voters in the Bay State – 51 percent of voters here are unenrolled. [Emphasis added.]

It does indeed stand to reason that a candidate's success would hinge on support from a majority of voters. But don't take a mere reporter's word for it. Boston's NPR affiliate WBUR queried Democratic and Republican strategists about the importance of the majority vote:

With the special general election for the U.S. Senate set for Tuesday, Democratic political analyst Dan Payne and Republican political analyst Todd Domke, in a Monday interview with WBUR, both stressed the importance of independent voters.

USA Today, however, proves to be more circumspect, couching the proposition in the subjunctive. Under the headline "Independents May Settle Mass. Race Today," we read:

Independent voters . . . could be a deciding factor at the polls today, political analysts say. [Emphasis added.]

The decisive independent majority in Massachusetts is also causing polling organizations to account for inconsistencies in their political and ideological metrics. Gallup Polls writes that, "Massachusetts leans Democratic but nearly half are independent." Gallup writes:

As Massachusetts prepares for its high-visibility special Senate election on Jan. 19, a new Gallup analysis shows that the state has significantly more residents identifying as political independents (49%) than as Democrats (35%). The percent identifying themselves as Democratic matches the national average, while the percent independent is well above the national norm. Many Massachusetts independents, however, lean toward the Democratic Party.

As regular readers might recall, I have debunked the myth of the "myth of the independent voter," and emphasized the senselessness of the "leaners" category on more than one occasion. Those who assert that the independent voter is a myth, arguing that the ranks of independents appear inflated because most independents are actually "leaners" or "weak partisans," clearly have some explaining to do. Gallup goes on the defensive:

the majority of Massachusetts' independents say they lean toward the Democratic Party when they are asked a follow up question about their political leanings. This yields the type of Democratic skew in party identification that may be more representative of typical perceptions of the political make-up of the state.

Nonetheless, whatever the outcome of today's race in the Bay State, it is clear that Massachusetts voters have not yet overcome their co-dependent relationship with the Democratic and Republican Parties, as the only independent candidate in the race, Joe Kennedy, appears unlikely to receive even 10% of the vote. However, not voting for Ted Kennedy is a step in the right direction – though we shouldn't be surprised if the late Senator still receives some portion of the write-in vote. The real test of the independent vote in Massachusetts will come this November, in the gubernatorial election, which is shaping up to be a competitive three-way contest between some Democrat, a Republican and Independent candidate Tim Cahill.

MA Special Election: Debate on the Debates Resolved

IPR relays a report stating that independent candidate for US Senate Joe Kennedy will be included in all debates leading up to the special election in late January:

BOSTON – The two major party candidates for U.S. Senate will share the stage with the independent hopeful in a series of debates, including one in Springfield early next month.

Attorney General Martha M. Coakley, 56, the Democrat, insisted that independent candidate Joseph L. Kennedy, of Dedham, be included in debates along with state Sen. Scott P. Brown, 50, of Wrentham, the Republican.

MA Special Election: the Debate on the Debates II

Following the Boston Globe's explicit statement of support for duopolized Democratic-Republican debates leading up to the special election for US Senate in Massachusetts, the Boston Herald appears to be coming out in support of an inclusive debate format with a set of three articles released today. The Herald's, Hillary Chabot interviews independent US Senate candidate Joe Kennedy about the state of his campaign and his inclusion in upcoming debates:

Front-runner Democrat Martha Coakley, vying for a Senate seat against Republican Scott Brown, is pushing to open debates to a longshot third-party newcomer who says he has “no idea what my chances are” in the race to succeed Sen. Edward M. Kennedy.

“I haven’t hired any pollsters,” said Joseph L. Kennedy, an unenrolled candidate who has never run for public office and has only four part-time campaign staffers and $20,000 in his war chest.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m running to win, but a lot of it is not about Joe Kennedy running and winning. A lot of it is about you have three people who have three different ideas - who do you want to represent you?” . . .

But this champion of small government says he’s counting on media exposure he gains in the debates and on the campaign trail to vault him past his better-known and better financed major party opponents.

The Herald's Jessica Heslam, on the other hand, interviews Grace Ross, independent Green Rainbow candidate for governor in 2006, who "took part in all four of the race’s major debates as the media embraced diversity in the race." Heslam writes:

the Boston Globe ran an editorial yesterday saying voters deserve one-on-one debates between Democratic Attorney General Martha Coakley and Republican state Sen. Scott Brown.

Ross disagrees. “If you’ve done enough work to manage to get your name on the ballot, which is not a small task in a statewide election, the voters have a right for information,” she said . . .

Ross said yesterday that the media has forgotten its role. “They want to make themselves into political players where they get to say - instead of the voters - who is worthy of being heard and who isn’t,” she said.

Finally, in an opinion piece for the Herald, Wayne Woodlief calls on sponsors to "open debates to all":

Martha Coakley is right on the principle and smart on the politics in urging three-way debates, not head-to-head combat against Republican Scott Brown, in the Jan. 19 special Senate election for Ted Kennedy’s seat.

The AG strikes a blow for full representation by insisting that libertarian Joseph L. Kennedy of Dedham, running as an independent, also be on the stage. He earned a right to debate by getting 13,998 validated signatures - well over the 10,000 required - with winter dawning, to boot . . .

Voters need to hear from this Joe, too. Sure, he’s a long shot. But so is Brown. And Kennedy would offer some variety. He told me, “There’s no difference between the two parties. With Bush we saw wasteful spending, huge debt and costly invasion of other countries. And Obama has just continued all that. He inherited a mess but he’s dealt with it with new trillion dollar bailouts and war-mongering, too.”

Thanks to Kennedy Seat for its morning roundup.

MA: The Democratic-Republican Duopolist Media Complex

The editorial page of the Boston Globe takes sides in the ongoing debate over whether all three ballot-qualified candidates for US Senate in Massachusetts should be included in the contest's debates, writing "The debate voters deserve: Coakley vs. Brown." Coakley and Brown are, of course, the Democratic and Republican candidates for the office, respectively, thus demonstrating yet again the mainstream media's explicit bias in favor of Democratic-Republican Party rule and their complicity in reproducing the duopoly system of government. We read:

Massachusetts voters are entitled to one-on-one debates between the Democratic and Republican candidates for US Senate. Democratic nominee Martha Coakley’s campaign insists that, as a matter of principle, she will only take part in debates that include all the candidates on next month’s ballot. That would include not just state Senator Scott Brown, the Republican nominee, but also a little-known independent candidate named Joseph L. Kennedy.

At Ballot Access News, Richard Winger notes:

The Boston Globe says the independent, Joseph L. Kennedy, is “little-known”. Obviously, if he were included in all the debates, that problem would be overcome.

Indeed, beyond that, however, one would think that in a well developed federal constitutional republic, there would be an institution devoted to informing voters and the wider public about candidates for local, state and federal offices, and provide them with the means of making an informed choice when they enter the voting booth. In effect, this institution would mediate the public's relation to government, reporting on events of immediate or potential importance to its future development, even going so far as to interview candidates for elected office. That independent libertarian candidate Joe Kennedy is "little-known" is not an argument against his candidacy but rather an indictment of mainstream media outlets like the Boston Globe which are dedicated to reproducing the Democratic-Republican duopoly system of government rather than informing voters on the array of choices they will find on their ballots.

MA Special Election: the Debate on the Debates

In the race leading up to the special election for US Senate in Massachusetts, the structure of the contest's upcoming debates has become a point of contention between Democrat Martha Coakley and Republican Scott Brown. The Boston Globe reports:

Coakley, the state’s attorney general, said she is reluctant to participate in any debates that do not include a little-known independent candidate, Joseph L. Kennedy. Most of the invitations Brown accepted are for debates that do not include Kennedy; six are scheduled during a nine-day period, and most are sponsored by media outlets.

Joe Kennedy is an independent libertarian and gathered the necessary petition signatures to qualify for ballot access last month. For his part, Kennedy is eager to confront Coakley and Brown in any and all debates. As noted by The Senator at Kennedy Seat, who is following this race very closely, the Brown campaign has now effectively "shifted the onus to the various debate sponsors." But the Boston Globe article above quotes Coakley saying:

“It shouldn’t be two people in some debates, three in other debates,’’ she added. “I think everybody should be included, and I think we’re going to hold pretty firm on that.’’

The Democrat's apparent call for inclusiveness is undercut by the fact that there will be more than three candidates on Massachusetts ballots in January [see correction in comments -d.]. Both Politics1 and The Green Papers list eight other independent candidates running for the seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy, among them Jean Anne Kennedy-Windsor and Stewart Lustgarten. Thus, one is justified in questioning the Coakley campaign's motives here. Nonetheless, Joe Kennedy has found an unlikely ally in the Democratic candidate. The question remains as to how debate sponsors will react to these developments. As it is in their best interests to do so, the people of Massachusetts should demand the inclusion of voices independent of the Democratic-Republican duopoly system of government.