Longtime So Cal resident Charles Carr is a nationally published journalist and playwright. His award-winning Southpaw column has appeared in college textbooks published by Macmillan, St. Martin's Press, Bedford, and others. Charles writes Southpaw for his hometown newspapers, The Times-Advocate and The Roadrunner.
Independents' Day
A massive and growing segment of the American electorate is signaling that it has had it up to here with our current bizzaro political environment. Generally categorizing themselves Independents, some by party affiliation, the way Senators Bernie Sanders and Angus King are registered as Independents (but caucus with the Democrats), as are senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin (who also caucus with Dems but create headaches for everyone). But most have no formal affiliation. They simply see themselves as being outside our two-party system ("I'm not exactly sure what I am, I just know I'm not a Democrat and I'm not a Republican.").
The presidential candidates are going after this group as if their political lives depended on it. And for good reason: they do. Without Independents, neither Biden or Trump can win in Nov. Not a chance in the world, notwithstanding the corporate news media's seeming mission to make every national election appear as if it's a breathtaking nose-to-nose photo finish horserace.
Turns out there is reason for Democrats to be optimistic, assuming Joe can (dramatically) improve his performance following the first Presidential debate. Let's look at some numbers.
In a recent Gallup poll, the percentage of adults who identify as Democratic was 27% -- a drop of about 11 points since 2008 (that is a telling number; we'll see one suspiciously like it in a bit). Over those 16 years, Republicans have held pretty steady at around 27%. But the big surprise is Independents, who have risen to a current high of 43%. Which leads us to the big question: What will this group do come election day?
It's hard not to see good things for Dems here. Recent election results suggest strongly that, while these voters are not about to plant either political party's sign on their front lawns (maybe in the back yard), when they get in the voting booth, like the aforementioned Independent senators they disproportionately "caucus" with Democrats. Start with the 2018 midterms where Dems picked up more than 40 seats and wrested back control of the House. Then, in 2020 Trump lost re-election to Biden by more than seven million votes, four million more than he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton in 2016. You'd think the guy would do better, not worse. And in the 2022 midterms, the almost universally predicted "red wave" ended up being more of a "pink trickle," with Democrats only barely losing the House and even flipping a seat in the Senate.
It gets better.
"Special-election results are clearly indicating that the political winds are now at Democrats’ backs. And it’s not just special-election results," reports fivethirtyeight.com. "Democrats and their allies have also done well in other, non-special elections." Maya Boddie at AlterNet adds, "So far this year, in dozens of special elections, Democrats are overperforming by a whopping 11 points." There's that number again. Sounds like more than a few Dems have been having a wild fling with the sexy Indy party but made sure to do their fooling around close to home in case stuff got real.
Stuff got real when Trump's Supreme Court's Dobbs decision ending Roe vs. Wade hit like a thunderbolt, thanks to all three of Trump's nominees, each of whom characterized Roe as "settled law" during their confirmation hearings, then went right ahead and did exactly what they were always going to do the first chance they got. While the ruling had a lot to do with the Dem gains cited above, there's something even more important going on. Even for voters who don't rank abortion rights as a key issue, the stunning piggybacking of laws and rulings by red states following Dobbs is seen as a barometer of how the right will likely react to future favorable rulings. Fool me once.
So, what has all that got to do with the presidential election? Grab your umbrella and curl up at the beach with some light summer reading: the 1,000 page Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project (project2025.org), an ultra-right manifesto sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, the group which vetted all of Trump's Supreme Court nominees. Then factor in the likelihood that the next president will appoint one, perhaps two justices. Imagine eight Clarence Thomases or Samuel Alitos on a nine seat Court. You think they're radical now? At that point nothing -- literally nothing -- could impede the pro-corporate, anti-environment, anti-personal freedoms nightmare that would ensue.
What will Trump do if reelected? What has been his M.O. before now? Bleed it dry, tear it down, and walk away without so much as a backward glance at the explosion he set off.
And then there's Joe. Boring old Joe.
We know what Biden will do the next four years: He and the couple thousand people at the White House who implement his philosophy of government will do exactly what they've done the last four. Yes, he looked pretty bad at the debate but if you read it rather than watch it, for the most part he nailed Trump time after time, calling out every lie, every conspiracy theory, every paranoid delusion. He's the same old Joe.
There's a segment of the voting public that is not crazy about Biden but there's an even larger segment that utterly, unreservedly detests Donald Trump. This group needs to understand not only the stakes of the upcoming election, but that choosing to sit out the election is not "making a statement." It's throwing the election to Trump and the horror show that will certainly follow.
Halfway into Trump's term, Barack Obama said, “The average American doesn’t think that we have to completely tear down the system and remake it. There are a lot of persuadable voters… who just want to see things make sense. They just don’t want to see crazy stuff.”
Have a fantastic 4th. It's America's day. But please don't forget the 5th... November 5th.
Independents' Day.