This post from Steve Benen on Maddowblog has been bothering me for several days, and I’ve finally decided to get it off my chest. It concerns the both the characterization of the political landscape as well as the implications that come from it.
As we discussed a few years ago, part of the problem is that the “independent” label, in practical terms, has little real meaning. It’s widely assumed that self-identified independents see themselves as moderate/centrist voters. As the argument goes, the left sides with Democrats, the right sides with Republicans, which leaves independents in the middle.
It’s a tidy little summary, but it’s not true. The Monkey Cage’s John Sides published a piece several years ago that doesn’t appear to be online anymore, but it continues to ring true.
[H]ere is the problem: Most independents are closet partisans. This has been well-known in political science since at least 1992, with the publication of The Myth of the Independent Voter.
When asked a follow-up question, the vast majority of independents state that they lean toward a political party. They are the “independent leaners.” … The number of pure independents is actually quite small – perhaps 10% or so of the population. And this number has been decreasing, not increasing, since the mid-1970s. […]
The significance of independent leaners is this: they act like partisans…. There is very little difference between independent leaners and weak partisans. Approximately 75% of independent leaners are loyal partisans.
Gallup’s findings, often seen as proof of strong independent support, show that most of the Americans who describe themselves as independent actually lean towards one party or the other.
So why do so many Americans bother with the label? Perhaps the most important thing to understand about independents is that there are so many different kinds of independents. Some are on the far-left or the far-right, and see the major parties as too moderate. Some are closet partisans who get a personal sense of satisfaction from the independent label, using it as a synonym for being “open-minded” or a “free-thinker.”
Nowhere in the post is addressed the elephant in the room: the fact that political parties change position on the political spectrum[1]. The Republican Party has been flying rightwards since the days of Gingrich, or perhaps even Reagan. Or even Goldwater. Recent activities within the Democratic Party suggests there’s at least a bigger standard deviation in terms of political position across the party than there used to be. Will conservative-inclined voters continue to vote Republican in the face of a Republican President whose main hobby appears to be lying in order to keep his cultists solid? Will liberal-leaning independents buy-in to the New Green Deal and a proposed further push of the health system to the left, not to mention a worrying movement towards forming their own cult? And what are we to make of numerous moderate Republicans who’ve renounced their party ties in favor of being independents – or even Democrats?
But let’s ignore all that and concentrate on the implications of Benen’s argument. How, then, are political campaigns to be structured? Well, we already know the answer to that hypothetical, because it already is an aphorism of the trade: Get the base out!
But I fear the move towards cultist strategies in which the tenets of the cult are reinforced at the expense of real intellectual debate. We see this in the empty-headed attempts to destroy the ACA without a responsible plan for replacing it, which may have damaged the Republican brand among independents – if you disbelieve Benen. But many strategies attach to the cultism angle. For example, blogs, which formerly functioned as opinion bullhorns with little respect for orthodoxy, are gradually dragged into line as the writers are insensibly influenced by the political currents of their favorites. As they become mere outlets for propaganda, they lose their value, little more than a place for the authors to bray in unison. Don’t think it won’t happen? I saw it happen with REASON Magazine during the Obama years. Under editors Postrel & Sullum (1990s-2008, roughly), it was an interesting, if sometimes usefully flawed, exploration of alternative approaches to governance, and how the market might resolve problems society encounters. Under Welch, though, it became a right-wing rag whose only goal was to level any old criticism at Obama – and I never renewed. Not because I had voted for Obama, but it was dull, sometimes incomprehensible, and quite often dishonest.
Is that how we want our political discourse to run from either party?
Governor Hogan’s On The Issues Political Spectrum position.
Right now, the parties are so differentiated that it’s hard to see an “independent” voting one way or another on overtly political ballots (i.e., something above the level of your town council, if you’re not in a big city), although there are some edifying exceptions, such as Governor Hogan (R-MD), who must have captured a large number of independent votes in the very blue state of Maryland in order to win by 14 points last year. Tellingly, Hogan is a never-Trumper and quite moderate Republican who probably appealed to moderate Democrats, especially as his opponent, Ben Jealous (D-MD), scores as a Left Liberal. However, in 2014 Hogan’s opponent, Anthony Brown, scored as a Moderate, and also lost, albeit by a smaller margin than Jealous. Senator Klobuchar (D-MN) also springs to mind.
My point is that I regard Benen’s view of the political landscape to be without nuance and rather chilling. I’d prefer to think of the citizenry as calm, rational people who evaluate candidates based on attributes such as ideology, competency, personal character, and that sort of thing – not to which party they may currently belong.
OK, stop laughing. They can have their delusions, I’ll keep mine.
1 The mouse in the room is the fact that voters also change positions on the political spectrum. Without data, I can only suppose that it’s credible to argue that the net result of such movements is of little relevance year to year, but over decades it will add up. It’s tempting to point at examples, but without solid data it’s a waste of time.
