Plight of the Independent
April 21, 2016
By: Keith C. Burris, Toledo Blade
April 21, 2016
A friend said: “I think it’s a shame presidential campaigns turn on independents. I don’t get the independents. To me they’re just people who can’t make up their minds about which side they are on.”
That’s one way of looking at independents.
And I remember thinking my friend had a point.
But today I rise in praise of the independent — who cannot decide which side he or she is on.
How refreshing.
It seems to me that this is the year of the independent. Only it isn’t.
Donald Trump has been registered as a Republican and as a Democrat, as well as an independent, which seems like the most accurate label he could don. But far more than registration, his behavior is that of an independent — some ideas from the left; some from the right; and a lot from Mr. Trump. This is one reason people who have been Republican for years, or all their lives, are made nervous by him. Promising Pittsburgh that he will bring back steel, as Mr. Trump did in Pittsburgh the other day, or taking on the trade issue, is not something a Republican is supposed to do. And Mr. Trump is not exactly your “boots on the ground,” neoconservative when it comes to the Middle East.
Most of the Republican establishment still wonders how the Trump phenomenon happened. But, as an old teaching colleague of mine, a committed and involved Republican from Pennsylvania, said: “He has embraced an issue and a populace the Republican Party didn’t even see”: the deindustrialization of America and the diminution of a prosperous working class. Put another way: he has raised up the suffering of cities like Toledo, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Detroit, and Cleveland for the sake of abstractions like “free trade” and the NAFTA agreement.
Who were the last national figures (other than Marcy Kaptur) to raise this issue? Two independent presidential candidates from, seemingly, opposite ends of the ideological spectrum: Ross Perot and Ralph Nader.
Mr. Trump is really walking in their shoes. He’s actually an independent, sustained by independents.
Ditto Bernie Sanders. He was elected as a mayor, a congressman, and a senator as an independent. The polls show that he, a self-described democratic socialist, is the most popular candidate in the race today, in either party. And the one with the lowest negatives. Same trade and jobs issue. He too, is an independent sustained by independents.
Mr. Sanders believes, and I think he may very well be right, that had independents been allowed to vote in the New York primary, he would have won that contest. From his point of view, three million independents were disenfranchised in New York.
And here is the way that this has NOT been the year of the independent: In both parties, the party insiders, the activists, the folks involved in the organization are doing their level best to mute, if not negate, the voice of the independents. In some states — with closed primaries — they are turned away at the polls. One person told me: “I was dumb. I didn’t understand the system. I thought: I am not a party person. I am by nature a political independent. So I registered that way. I didn’t get that this meant I could not participate in 50 percent of the process” — the part that sets the choices.
In most states, independents are restricted by fierce ballot access limits. Let’s face it, that’s why Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders are running within the major parties and not as third-party candidates. You cannot win that way: Ask Mr. Perot and Mr. Nader.
And, in some states, the party can award delegates as it sees fit, despite primary results. Both Trump and Sanders have squawked about superdelegates and undemocratic rules — to no avail.
I understand the party argument: Why should we let people who are really outliers and don’t truly believe in our party choose the nominees of our party?
It’s a fair point.
There are two obvious answers:
One is tradition. We have big-tent parties here, not political parties in which you carry a membership card, adhere to a strict credo, pay dues, and take a loyalty oath.
The second is that, without independents and independent Republicans and independent Democrats, there would not be many people voting. Most American voters see themselves as people with no permanent side — people “who cannot make up their minds.” They vote in primaries so that they don’t sacrifice half of their franchise.
We regularly bewail the number of people who choose not to vote. Yet we suppress the political independent by closing primaries, tipping delegate selection toward party hacks, and making the formation of independent runs and new parties almost impossible.
Toledo has elected two independent mayors in recent years — Mike Bell and Mike Collins. But Mr. Bell has failed twice to regain the office as an independent and has now become a Republican. Mr. Collins knew that he was elected as the default choice of the Democratic Party and that he would not be the Democratic choice in 2017. When his widow, Sandy Collins, ran for mayor as an independent, she did not get far.
Independents are the great not-so-silent majority today, but the party apparats want to keep them at bay. If both Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump are denied by the parties this year, where do all the independents go, and what are the implications for our democracy?